Excerpt from Jack Powers' EVERYBODY'S VAGUELY FAMILIAR

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Category: Excerpts from Our Books

Published: Thursday, 30 August 2018 21:50

Written by Super User

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OLD

A thousand yawns from now

when I am a bent question mark

and the children are busy living

and a push of a buzzer

summons the night nurse,

I will drag my oxygen tank trolley

resistant like a leashed mutt

across sticky linoleum

to peek between drawn blinds

and squint to find Orion,

the Big Dipper and Polaris

and remember a beach in Rhodes

where stars littered the sky

like luminescent river stones

so close

we could pluck them

from the heavens,

offer them to each other

and the universe

seemed – like our lives –

to roll on forever.

We had few questions

and the sky seemed full

of answers, some hurtling

like arrows into the future.

PUT DOWN THIS POEM AND CALL YOUR MOTHER

It’s only now, four years gone that I see her clearly –

not the mute and creaky shadow of her at the end, breath shallow,

aides holding the phone to her ear as I read meaning

in each hesitation. No, the real her. But I can’t hear her voice

mischievous as she feeds raccoons in the backyard oak,

or singing tinkle tinkle little star outside the bathroom door

as Zak, then four, peed. Or asking the obscene phone caller

if he was lonely. I can’t hear her detailing the who-sat-with-who

at the senior home dinners or sightings of long forgotten neighbors

at the mall, her thin fingers twirling the cord we’d never fully cut.

I long to hear her inhale before a laugh, her long sigh,

the busy silence when she searched for topics.

“Hello, it’s me,” I’d say. “Hello, me,” she’d answer,

her blue eyes an amused squint.

HOW TO WRITE A COLLEGE ESSAY

Start with your greatest loss, biggest obstacle, the woman you loved, the man you killed. Open your heart. Relax. Show the real you. Write like your hair is smoldering. This is the most important paper of your life; be unique. Never mention the word “special.” Be specific: the time your mother wished she'd never adopted you; the night your father died in the fire. Make the reader see the veins in her neck, feel the words strike, the door slam. See you in the garage smoking by the turpentine; see the garage ignite.