S. Scott Whitaker – Three Poems
My Grandmother’s Table
Locked in the long room, the chairs tucked
under the dingy tablecloth
that has been around as long as Granny’s memory,
which goes back before the war,
and before those that died had any other notion
that fried chicken
and catfish, ice tea, and the love of a woman
would tender their appetites.
Those that are gone and return remark
how it looks the same, how it has held up over the years,
how the small can of pellets
left by a boy in the summer of 1955
still sits behind the crystal bowl,
whose dusty face warps the rusty circle
into carnival novelty.
The table has served the sick, the sad,
the lonely who not what they were,
the newlyweds, the mourning,
the boy whose mother
left him for Texas. It’s a bit wobbly,
but who can blame it, for all the stones
it’s balanced over the years.
**
Delinquency
The afternoon he broke the kid from Brighton’s jaw
his left molar had been bothering him,
iron deep pain,
and he was only thinking about the dentist’s scalpel,
white walls, and the technician’s tight sweater,
but not so much about the kid from Brighton,
he’d figured he suffered so much already that day
that someone else should pay.
After all, this is America.
**
Christy On the Mend
But they sometimes behave so strangely:
Upper truck ramp and the little girl left there
Is lucky for the rumble down lorries leave her alone
Her black hair licking over her lips
As her mother pauses to light a cigarette
Low and lean are the shrubs under skim lights
Weak as powdered milk.
The little girl is left alone
And looks at the posters laquered to the poles.
The sky is open page, the thin clouds erased,
The lights about the city leaden.
It was my thirteenth birthday when she left for good
And I took all her pictures off my mirror
And burned them, I was so mad. Then I went out
To scour cigarettes from the bums who owed me
A favor. I wanted to blow my throat out
With menthols and that sour gin she kept
Behind the syrup.
She didn’t call for a week
And by then I’d already sold everything
At a yard sale and moved in with Tammy,
Her queer friend; I needed a place to crash.
I played it up when she finally did call
As if to insinuate we were lovers.
She responded with a snort, “Whatever
Kicks down your ears.”
I was furious for days.
My grades went through the floor, and nobody
Noticed. Desire’s empty gut is wide enough
To swallow any sound. Why would anyone care?
The last thing I remember of her was her last friend.
How he was nice to me, and always offered
Me a piece of whatever he was eating, or drinking,
Coffee, sandwich, beer, cigarette, and the final time
Fractured nut meal and shell in the palm of his hand,
“You want some?” in his finest Texas drawl,
Her cigarette smoke a tailspin screw behind his head,
Her disappointed mouth pointed at me like a gun.