Eggshells Around This House, and: Mother’s Crossword, #26 Down
Rent from DeepDyve- Eggshells Around This House, and: Mother’s Crossword, #26 Down
EGGSHELLS AROUND THIS HOUSE
unlike fonts forgotten or scripted with shellac our history went along making itself in stray gaps of what conversation bubbled upkin to curses uttered ages back now blue-collar provisions or buried shames unknownsins committed long before we came & it wasn’t so much the mess but the smellgarbage undiminished gluts of jerky scraps & ceiling chain hooks bottle spilt peroxide& battery acid flaking crust sharp stink of diluted vodka tonics soaked milky on newsprint silence common as quivers of unfinished arrowsor bowstrings’ slacked appetites or the dank garage hung with stags & sawed horns [End Page 104] or obtuse smiles of load-ready shotguns open thus we never talked about killing or the time coming where he knew he would [End Page 105]
MOTHER’S CROSSWORD, #26 DOWN
Like her fingernails, the pencil gnawed & short— a tic, her small specter of control. & this thing like letting go:What’s a four letter word for ‘assertion or demonstration of power’? So few ways to see it otherwise,with dishes piled up & faucet leaking—her armchair session’s weekend meditation. After piano, she’d rehashour own domestic politic, shake her bauble sitting there. Which is it? she says to me, is it ‘WARS’ or ‘GODS,’ or ‘DADS’?Since she was never great with riddles, clandestine interludes— never played a mind game in her life. ‘VETO’ was the wordI volunteered but she wasn’t really all that wrong I guess. [End Page 106]
Dave Harrity’s work has appeared in Memorious, Revolver, Killing the Buddha, The Los Angeles Review, Confrontation, Softblow, and elsewhere. His book of poems, Our Father in the Year of the Wolf, is forthcoming from WordFarm. Harrity teaches at Campbellsville University and lives in Louisville with his wife and family.
