Dischell - Backwards Days

Table of Contents

also by stuart dischell

[copyright TK]

ISBN : 978-1-4406-1905-2

Acknowledgments

Certain of these poems, sometimes in different versions or under other titles, first appeared in the publications to which my grateful acknowledgment is made: Agni: House and Highway, While an Old Clock Rang the Hour, and You; Cave Wall: From a Long Way Off, The Hungry Hour, and Three Addresses; Chattahoochee Review: Psychological Poem and Elegy Without a Name; Forklift, Ohio: Relentless Soliloquy and Song of the Night; Greensboro News and Record: To a Compass Rose; Haydens Ferry Review: Karma from Scratch and Krakow; Kenyon Review: Backwards Days and This Time in the Sky; Naked Punch (UK): Well Till He, Too, Fell Ill; Roger: In Polynesia; story-South : Everywhere the Desert Met the Wind, Heaven Was Elsewhere, The Interrupted Sleep of Skeletons, and Later There Were Swans; Terminus: A Week of Rain in my Republic, Death Perception, In the Manner of SD, Lyric Poet Disease, and Tale of the Garrett; Verb: Unsung and Lively in the Twilight with Abandoning Fleas; Washington Square Review: A Signal.

She Put on Her Lipstick in the Dark first appeared in The Atlantic.

Around the Corner contains a translation and variation of Autumn by Guillaume Apollinaire. In Shanty, When will I see you again is a lyric from A Man Needs a Maid by Neil Young. The Laugh of the Thief is titled after a phrase used by Martin Arnold. In Corcovado refers to a song written by Antonio Carlos Jobim and Gene Lees: Corcovado (Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars). My thanks to the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro for their support during the time in which I wrote these poems.

I got everything wrong. I did not get one single thing right.

Randall Jarrell
The Truth

Where Wires Tangle

Behind the bookcase is a balled-up tissue
A safety pin and the fur of a now dead cat
(I dont think I will clone him)
There is a price tag for parts
And a key to my old apartment (hello!)
This is the birthplace of sneezes
The depository of receipts
Condom wrappers (yippee)
And coins coins coins coins
Here is a ticket stub from the ball game
(Row HH) a quote from a roofer
The business card of a dwarf
(My father had me shake his hand
At the side show) three bobby pins
A toothpick a suit button
Here lies a pen with a lady
(Shes naked upside down)
Mold resembling a fruit peel
A postcard of the Rockies
(Hows the weather down there?)
An aspirin and a root beer barrel
And a matchbook with a number
(I did not write the name)
To start a fire

You

Out on the leaf-blown yard where the wind has made a skirmish
In the leaves, where the red and yellow and yellow and red
Have arranged themselves in momentary heaps like drifts

Of snow on the right and left of the yard still mostly green,
Where each caught leaf behind the drainpipe running down
From the eaves, each on the lawn appears slick as fresh paint

After rain. On the pathway, points down, three maple leaves
Scatter in the noon already too cold, where the shadows
Of the trees cross this path, the fieldstone wide, the mortar flecked,

The little mosses retreated to the shade, the mosses nearly black
Smudges in a tangle of roots. The mosses live to the side
Of each heel print, the scuff of brooms and mowers and the rake

Now leaned against a red oak trunk. The pathway
Leads up three brick steps to the porch. The black iron railing
Whose underside needs repainting is attached to the brickwork

At its base. Two cement urns stand at each side of the red door
In which six thick small panes are framed. The door has a mail slot
On a spring. It opens three quarters of the way. Daylight

Illuminates part of the floor and the letters on the wide boards.
The brass handle of the door turns with great effort, the lock
And wrist click. The edge where the mechanism is concealed

Contains two brass buttons, the jutting tongue of the latch, the flat
Heads of four three-inch Phillips head screws, the company name,
And the retracted bolt echoing in the hall (is that you?).

House and Highway

The house was old, the floors were crooked.
A marble rolled several ways before stopping.
One hallway led to nothing but a window
At the edge of the city, near the highway

Where a dog was always crossing
The median in the rain. Under the overpass
Two men sitting up in sleeping bags
Passed a bottle while a third
Grilled dinner on a wire shelf rigged
Across a fruit bin salvaged from
A junked refrigerator. The clever one,
He knew the collection schedules,
Assembled his office among the pigeons,
Bookcases and a desk and chair
He had gotten the others to carry
Down the embankment. He was the one
Who found the money taped under the drawer,
The one who looked for such things
That bought the chicken, bread, and beer
And the spirits the others were drinking
Toasting the success of their leader
After he swallowed half the bottle.

In the front yard the lawn needs mowing.
Theres a well choked with weeds.
The rusted bell without its tongue
Can still be sounded with a stone.

Everyone in the Story Is Dead but Me

There was a fistfight around the corner just breaking
Up and one boy said my dad was in it, but it was over
By the time I came around the corner. My dad by then
Was rolling down his shirtsleeves and I could not see
The other man if there was one because I no longer
Remember if what I saw or heard was true because
My dad said it never happened. He may be right
I may have dreamed his glasses in his shirt pocket,
His bleeding knuckles because I wanted it to happen
That my dad was the kind of man who got into fistfights
On his way home from work, that I would be that kind
Of man, too. Once I put a friend of mine in a headlock
Outside a bowling alley. He drank a cup of piss
He thought was beer. He blamed me for not telling him
And tried to sock me in the mouth. I was glad the joke
Was not on me. He should not have been so eager to grab
The cup another friend pretended he was drinking
I hit my friend in the face to keep him from squirming
And his glasses fell in a puddle of spit, and the friend
Who pissed in the cup laughed even more and nearly
Stepped on the glasses as I pressed my friends neck
Down close to the sidewalk. Give? I told him, give.

While an Old Clock Rang the Hour

One evening early in the century
On streets familiar to the heart, I saw
Benches and light poles, rooftops and spires,
Bridges one after the other across
The river lit at the far end of its line, the red
Sun mixing the blue and green,
The thread of the river a fuse to my mood.

I was glad to be out of the little room,
The bed that filled it, the half moon
Of the table, the folding chair where
I ate bread and soup and wrote my notes
Concerning a person much like myself
At peace in a foreign city, perambulator
Of urban regions, seeker of elusive moments.

I wanted new friends and new music,
Dive bars at the edges of the citys core,