Hometown for an Hour: Poems

Two Postcards from Forest Lawn Cemetery

Two Postcards from Forest Lawn Cemetery Buffalo, New York 1 I browse among masons and veterans; Elks; the first woman architect; a thousand fathers and mothers, none of them mine. Leaves pack the graves with their excelsior like boxes of Victorian knickknacks. What spectacular excess! One man’s weighed down beneath ninety tons of Carrara marble! It’s November, but warm. A few maples still burn with flames that seem to defoliate the obelisks, whose forest of smooth, hard erections soothes me somehow, their lusty boldness the best cure for dust’s coldness. . . . 58 You are reading copyrighted material published by Ohio University Press/Swallow Press. Unauthorized posting, copying, or distributing of this work except as permitted under U.S. copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. 2 This place is like my favorite kind of town: its old facades not yet torn down; the neighbors not nameless, and always around. I hear the sound of Spoon River’s conversations if I listen to the ground long enough. A hearse passes. Yes, I’m a woman alone on a lawn, half-hearing voices. Some promise peace and no more losses. Squirrels twirl around trees, revolving like barbers’ stripes in sepia cities. At home here more than anywhere, I could wait until dawn but the obelisks’ streetlights would never go on. 59 You are reading copyrighted material published by Ohio University Press/Swallow Press. Unauthorized posting, copying, or distributing of this work except as permitted under U.S. copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. ...