Film of the Building of a Coffin Viewed in Reverse, and Growing Cold
- Film of the Building of a Coffin Viewed in Reverse, and Growing Cold
Film of the Building of a Coffin Viewed in Reverse
The little tacks that pinned the satin in fall outlike baby teeth. The satin passes back throughits fantasy of becoming a prom dress, all the wayback to the silkworms in the mulberry.The pillow blows apart and the down dartsback into the plucked goose. The black labswims backwards with the bird in his mouth:the goose flutters up into the sky and fliesbackwards with the flock into the north countryas the shell inhales the lead shot and the shellitself returns to the oiled dark of the gun.The hammer kisses the nails back out of the wood.The nails pass from his white lips to his dark pockets.The screws spin out on the roads of brassand the boards part ways. The boards, of heavyash, lay stacked along the wall for a night.The hands of the clock over the workbenchspin counterclockwise. Come morningthe boards return to the mill and convergeinto trees that float back into the woodsin search of their stumps like the phantomlimbs of amputees. They know which onesare theirs by the rings, swing up onto themand heal. The birds that were scared offby the roar of the chainsaw come back. The deadman gets up off the floor and his broken cupbecomes whole again. He puts it to his lipsand fills it with coffee from his mouth,coffee that grows hotter and blacker. [End Page 168]
Growing Cold
There was a time when I could be woundedby something the moon did.
When the sight of my mother kneading doughsent me out into the snow.
When something my father saiddrove a green lance in my side.
When I had to put the book downin awe of all the dead know.
When it took me hours to prepareto visit the ailing mare.
Now, I’ve built a castle and armed myselfwith buckets of boiling tar and arrows.
Stocked the moat with fish with knivesfor teeth. Cleared the trees for miles.
I can just see to where the far woods faint upwards,steep and green. In that bower cower
all those once-beloved things,come to do me harm.
How vigilant I am!I don’t even look up to watch the moon
catapult over me nightly, though I knowit by my shadow. [End Page 169]
Austin Smith grew up on a dairy farm in Illinois. His poems and stories have appeared in the New Yorker, Harper’s, Poetry, Yale Review, Sewanee Review, Narrative, VQR, and ZYZZYVA, among others. His first collection of poems, Almanac, was chosen by Paul Muldoon for the Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets. He is currently finishing a story collection and working on a novel, both about the rural Midwest.
