A. E. Stallings

For the Briarcliff High School class of 1986 Just what I needed, Just when the dreams had almost totally receded, The dreams of roles for which I learned no lines and knew no cues, Dreams of pop quizzes with no pants on and no shoes, Just when I understood I was no longer among Those ephemeral immortals, the gauche and pitiable young, Suddenly come phone calls, messages sift out of the air To ask who will be there: Names I haven't given a thought to in a score (A score!) of years, and names I used to think about but don't much anymore, And those I think of all the time and yet Have lost somehow like keys to doors I've closed, and some I have tried to forget— And some who will never arrive at this date Here in the distant future where we wait Still surprised at how We carry with us the omnipresent and ever-changing now. We wince at what we used to wear, Fashion has made ridiculous the high hubris of our hair. Heartbreak, looked at through the wrong end of distance's glasses, Is trivial, and quickly passes, Its purity embarrasses us, its lust, The way we wept because it was unjust. Why should we travel back, who've come so far— We know who we are. How can we be the same As those quaint ancestors we have left behind, who share our name— Why have we inherited their shame?

The rain is haunted; I had forgotten. My children are two hours abed And yet I rise Hearing behind the typing of the rain, Its abacus and digits, A voice calling me again, Softer, clearer. The kids lie buried under duvets, sound Asleep. It isn’t them I hear, it’s Something formless that fidgets Beyond the window’s benighted mirror, Where a negative develops, where reflection Holds up a glass of spirits. White noise Precipitates. Rain is a kind of recollection. Much has been shed, Hissing indignantly into the ground. It is the listening Belates, Haunted by these fingertaps and sighs Behind the beaded-curtain glistening, As though by choices that we didn’t make and never wanted, As though by the dead and misbegotten.

One was fire red, Hand carved and new— The local maker pried the wood From a torn-down church's pew, The Devil's instrument Wrenched from the house of God. It answered merrily and clear Though my fingering was flawed; Bright and sharp as a young wine, They said, but it would mellow, And that I would grow into it. The other one was yellow And nicked down at the chin, A varnish of Baltic amber, A one-piece back of tiger maple And a low, dark timbre. A century old, they said, Its sound will never change. Rich and deep on G and D, Thin on the upper range, And how it came from the Old World Was anybody's guess— Light as an exile's suitcase, A belly of emptiness: That was the one I chose (Not the one of flame) And teachers would turn in their practiced hands To see whence the sad notes came.

The tulips make me want to paint, Something about the way they drop Their petals on the tabletop And do not wilt so much as faint, Something about their burnt-out hearts, Something about their pallid stems Wearing decay like diadems, Parading finishes like starts, Something about the way they twist As if to catch the last applause, And drink the moment through long straws, And how, tomorrow, they’ll be missed. The way they’re somehow getting clearer, The tulips make me want to

Why should the Devil get all the good tunes, The booze and the neon and Saturday night, The swaying in darkness, the lovers like spoons? Why should the Devil get all the good tunes? Does he hum them to while away sad afternoons And the long, lonesome Sundays? Or sing them for spite? Why should the Devil get all the good tunes, The booze and the neon and Saturday night?

Mid-sentence, we remembered the eclipse, Arguing home through our scant patch of park Still warm with barrel wine, when none too soon We checked the hour by glancing at the moon, Unphased at first by that old ruined marble Looming like a monument over the hill, So brimmed with light it seemed about to spill, Then, there! We watched the thin edge disappear— The obvious stole over us like awe, That it was our own silhouette we saw, Slow perhaps to us moon-gazing here (Reaching for each other's fingertips) But sweeping like a wing across that stark Alien surface at the speed of dark. The crickets stirred from winter sleep to warble Something out of time, confused and brief, The roosting birds sang out in disbelief, The neighborhood's stray dogs began to bark. And then the moon was gone, and in its place, A dim red planet hung just out of reach, As real as a bitter orange or ripened peach In the penumbra of a tree. At last We rose and strolled at a reflective pace Past the taverna crammed with light and smoke And people drinking, laughing at a joke, Unaware that anything had passed Outside in the night where we delayed Sheltering in the shadow we had made.

With a nod to Jonah Winter Now we’re all “friends,” there is no love but Like, A semi-demi goddess, something like A reality-TV star look-alike, Named Simile or Me Two. So we like In order to be liked. It isn’t like There’s Love or Hate now. Even plain “dislike” Is frowned on: there’s no button for it. Like Is something you can quantify: each “like” You gather’s almost something money-like, Token of virtual support. “Please like This page to stamp out hunger.” And you’d like To end hunger and climate change alike, But it’s unlikely Like does diddly. Like Just twiddles its unopposing thumbs-ups, like- Wise props up scarecrow silences. “I’m like, So OVER him,” I overhear. “But, like, He doesn’t get it. Like, you know? He’s like It’s all OK. Like I don’t even LIKE Him anymore. Whatever. I’m all like ... ” Take “like” out of our chat, we’d all alike Flounder, agape, gesticulating like A foreign film sans subtitles, fall like Dumb phones to mooted desuetude. Unlike With other crutches, um, when we use “like,” We’re not just buying time on credit: Like Displaces other words; crowds, cuckoo-like, Endangered hatchlings from the nest. (Click “like” If you’re against extinction!) Like is like Invasive zebra mussels, or it’s like Those nutria-things, or kudzu, or belike Redundant fast food franchises, each like (More like) the next. Those poets who dislike Inversions, archaisms, who just like Plain English as she’s spoke — why isn’t “like” Their (literally) every other word? I’d like Us just to admit that’s what real speech is like. But as you like, my friend. Yes, we’re alike, How we pronounce, say, lichen, and dislike Cancer and war. So like this page. Click Like.

Blacksmithing demonstration, mountain arts and crafts fair, Monteagle, TN “But can you forge a nail?” the blond boy asks, And the blacksmith shoves a length of  iron rod Deep in the coal fire cherished by the bellows Until it glows volcanic. He was a god Before anachronism, before the tasks That had been craft were jobbed out to machine. By dint of   hammer-song he makes his keen, Raw point, and crowns utility with rose: Quincunx of facets petaling its head. The breeze-made-visible sidewinds. The boy’s Blonde mother shifts and coughs.Once Work was wed To Loveliness— sweat-faced, swarthy from soot, he Reminds us with the old saw he employs (And doesn’t miss a beat): “Smoke follows beauty.”

Every night, we couldn’t sleep. Our upstairs neighbors had to keep Dropping something down the hall— A barbell or a bowling ball, And from the window by the bed, Echoing inside my head, Alley cats expended breath In arias of love and death. Dawn again, across the street, Jackhammers began to beat Like hangovers, and you would frown— That well-built house, why tear it down? Noon, the radiator grill Groaned, gave off a lesser chill So that we could take off our coats. The pipes coughed to clear their throats. Our nerves were frayed like ravelled sleeves, We cherished each our minor griefs To keep them warm until the night, When it was time again to fight; But we were young, did not need much To make us laugh instead, and touch, And could not hear ourselves above The arias of death and love.

You squeezed its leash in your fist, It followed where you led: Tick, tock, tick, tock, Nodding its wooden head. Wagging a tail on a spring, Its wheels gearing lackety-clack, Dogging your heels the length of the house, Though you seldom glanced back. It didn’t mind being dragged When it toppled on its side Scraping its coat of primary colors: Love has no pride. But now that you run and climb And leap, it has no hope Of keeping up, so it sits, hunched At the end of its short rope And dreams of a rummage sale Where it’s snapped up for a song, And of somebody—somebody just like you— Stringing it along.