Verse:
Flanders, Frank Lonergan, Kath Howell, David Garrison, Jane
Frank Lonergan Mother at the Department Store Virago, she's your match! The crust & nerve of the low-born Irish. I'm trying to hide in her skirt in Bamberger's, suddenly a shrinking violet. Mother...
...some won't...
...stained by the grass...
...Kath Howell Sharpening a Serpent's Tooth to thread as her needle old Gramma Eve she sit in her shinglebcnch shade made comfortable as she can, patching the second hasd-tne-downs, clothing in stitches time...
...His countless generations loom . . she staggers, weaves falls (again...
...Some will...
...He wilts...
...But their first loss, they claim, is early light, this dawn-glow pressed pearl-white on the faces of houses, folding itself in the fists of the aged...
...The baby plays with his toes...
...a man's fist: lungs for calling chickens...
...Jane Flanders Care: The Hess Children...
...She arranges them all in the yard under a tree, placing the baby where one of the girls can catch him if he moves beyond the frame...
...Ring it up at the counter...
...Gramma Eve milks the viper, distilling a dram for Adam, she drinks up swilling her toast to Abel's unborn fulfilled in the unfulfilling...
...calls into the gathering gloom: Has Cain children...
...I am ten & ready to dive into the Passaic River & swim miles away from her...
...Muddied & water-logged...
...The prim man with the white carnation eyes her warily: red neck like beef...
...One of the little girls grins...
...And by whom...
...1912 There is a woman behind this photograph, ironing the girls' white dresses, flounce by flounce, braiding their hair, tugging at bows...
...A big girl fidgets...
...I had it only six months & yesterday kicked it into Watsessing Brook where it broke a seam...
...Mother has my worn-out basketball in hand, demanding her money back...
...The children are handsome...
...The voices whisper how they miss those shelves stored with simple produce-canned goods, cloves, tomatoes that an old man's hands had grown...
...Even leaving the store, with me red-faced & grinding down teeth, she is still grumbling about the ball...
...She is waiting for boys to go off to war, for girls to get married...
...Sewing, sewing she smile, while the grandchildren play at grownup: girlish boys, and boyish girls, fairly dark and fatly thin skinned tightknit her kith cover all, akin folk the same a world over running like a cup...
...Now, in this cool, infants sing in noisy circles, their green, bright bones singing the voices those old lives create...
...David Garrison Old Lives in the Neighborhood This morning, my son and I step outside at dawn, called by the quiet voices of human loves...
...They are more than that, But all she can think of now is immaculate dresses, how she must save them before they are stained by the grass...
...We stand, near elms, amid those sounds of lives that issued ceaselessly front kitchens, gone now, years and years, love by love, not our own...
...And now she is standing behind the photographer, so they will all look this way, giving back her patient stare...
Vol. 110 • May 1983 • No. 9
