Poets, Inland North County

Terry Spohn has an MFA from the Writer's Workshop at the University of Iowa and lives with his wife, Dionne, in Escondido, where he is not quite retired. His short fiction, prose poems, and poetry have appeared in Ascent, Grub Street, Mississippi Review, North American Review, Oyster Boy Quarterly, Eclectica, and other small magazines; and his poems have appeared in three anthologies.

 

The Next Village

Dad, your birthday's sitting abandoned
an old shack with a pipe stand and a radio
your wishes are a warped door now
and won't be pushed
your fears are mice tangled in the curtains
the shack still sits by the railroad tracks where
the westbound Wabash Banner Blue scattered the chickens
at sundown when you were a boy in Ohio, Illinois

I'm thinking of the next village, today
and how long it takes to get there
and that big black radio filled with batteries
like an ammunition magazine
and how after dinner in Chicago when Gunsmoke was over
you'd sit by that radio in the dining room with the antenna pulled out
and a World Book revision deadline prickling the back of your neck
and you'd tune through the static blasts, slumped toward the speaker
waiting for Eisenhower to die with a blue pencil in your hand

I read about Columbus in World Book, Dad
he navigated by the stars, but
the world was larger than he thought it was, and he got lost
he kept two sets of books so his sailors wouldn't know
how far they'd come
after his great discovery Columbus kept sailing
back and forth between creditors and savages
beyond his horizon in an even larger ocean
savages navigated log rafts by the shape of the ocean swells

by the time you abandoned your birthday, Dad,
you'd forgotten how you'd made a living
I'm not going to remind you
but I remember shooting baskets in Danny Mankowski's driveway
when you'd come home from work
halfway between our house and the Norwood station
you'd set your briefcase down to shoot a few
with your wingtip shoes scuffling the asphalt
and that old two-hand set shot and the unfriendly rim
your keys and loose change jingling in your pockets
a constant reminder that you'd soon be on your way

Terrence Spohn, all rights reserved.

what train will come to take me back across so wide a town?

I'd been counting my money in a mirror
so I'd have twice as much
and someone to spend it with
I'd been sitting with my elbows and Jim Beam rye
on an empty table in a yellow kitchen
listening to BB King sing
"somebody changed the locks on my door"
both windows held me beneath the bare bulb light
and there we sat, the three of us,
each wondering which of the others
was going to make his move
I'd been haunting the dark hallway of my dreams
where the doors of all my old lovers were shut tight
and they were living their lives just out of reach
a bright slat of light at the bottom of each door
in one the soft shadow of a foot paused, then passed
I'd been listening at the doors in my house
for signs of life behind them and there they were
ice cubes tumbling in the kitchen
the heat pump on the roof
clocks ticked and roof joists ached
in percussive whispers in all its other rooms
my house was arguing with itself about me
that disheveled, freeloading, half-mad cousin
who somehow, finally had to be sent packing

Terrence Spohn, all rights reserved.

Baby in an empty room

We are making a life here, looking at our own etch from so far above, window filled with streams of light, milky glitter of the ice caves above the tree line behind us. Since we were children the glacier has spawned yet another new lake right where all the old ones were, just the same shape, just as cold and deep.
   
I remember the moment before the baby began, before the tide of him reached my heart. Almost nothing made sense any more. I flew up out of my life on the black wings of sadness, up past the rooftops and the wailing mothers of all my friends. The treetops were filled with men wanting handshakes, handshakes all around, the rustle of cuff against wrist that makes a summer evening so restful, the cicadas falling to sleep at last.
   
We are all here, the parents, aunts, and uncles, looking down onto the baby whose dumb blue eyes simply let in the light. From here things curve back toward us. Leaves curl like empty hands. This is the smell of old milk and the clutter of temporary clothing no scented powder can sweeten. This is our anger and hunger and fear in the middle of the night. This is the one whose secrets will finally push us out of the house and into a dream whose only window is an old photograph.

Terrence Spohn, all rights reserved.