Ode to the Slick
- Ode to the Slick
slick (n.) — a large chisel used mainly by shipwrights and timber framers
Half of the tool is heft, its weight given to the single-minded & shining, to the thinnest want
for cutting, ground hollow & honed, this tooth made for to enter the skin of the wood, for to lessen
the body of what it is; in one’s hands, it asks to be put to task, it cleaves to the wood raising long strips of what is
there—it: ancient; it: your grandfather’s grandfather; it: the bone of a man who could make anything,
the making-bone, we shall call it, that even in its hunger can, with grace, lift translucent scarves from
the heaviest of timbers, through which one can clearly see the world. [End Page 61]
Matthew Nienow’s latest chapbook is The End of the Folded Map (Codhill Press, 2011). Recent poems have appeared in Agni Online, Blackbird, and New England Review, and are forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Crazyhorse, and Poetry Northwest. He received an NEA Literature Fellowship in 2011 and has been awarded scholarships to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, among other grants and fellowships. He lives with his family in Port Townsend, Washington, where he works as a boatbuilder.
