Exodus

Sure I love Jesus, I tell Miss Hooker,
I even swear it and while I do say
Cross my heart and hope to die, oh that was
a pun, ha ha, but she can't kick me out
because class is over and it's just we
two, not counting the Trinity, They're here
somewhere but I'm not afraid as long as
I'm not alone in the church, and besides,
she kicked me out about halfway through class
because I fell asleep during some psalm,
maybe the one that goes I shall not want,
I like it a lot but I stay up late
Saturday nights reading comic books and
sucking licorice sticks, the two make for
some pretty strange dreams and I don't sleep well
but what are Saturday nights for, then I'm
up early to dress and eat and come back
to my room to dress all over again
this time in Sunday clothes I can't afford
to spill Tang and Count Chocula on, God
wouldn't like that and I aim to please but
you'd think that He'd let me have a quick nap
in Sunday School the next day but no dice,
Miss Hooker woke me and now I'm going
home, it's about a mile away, I like
to walk to church early when no one else
is awake, not even my folks, they play
it smart, they sleep late and don't go any
-where all damned day, they've got me to attend
church for 'em, I guess, I'm what you might call
a sacrificial figure, that's college
-talk for sucker, maybe, I got that from
Public Television one night when I
couldn't find anything else on the tube
but Miss Hooker told me after class that
I can't love God and fall asleep on Him
and I almost said My folks fall asleep
on each other but I'm not supposed
to know that and anyway I don't know
what it signifies, I wish I knew what
grownups know but could stay ten years old, I
don't want to die, there's no future in it
other than Heaven or Hell but I like
Earth fine. When Miss Hooker tries to hold me
back for leaving without feeling sorry
I shake her off like dust and firmly but
politely say Let my people go, me
first, and then I run away, my father
would say split, the Bible says flee, Uncle
Ray Charles would shout Hit the road, at least his
backup singers would, I'll bet not even
God knows that or if He does He doesn't
care or if he cares He can't care enough,
one day I’ll be a preacher and in my
church preach that kind of thing, it's gospel, too,
God should hear it and see that it's good and
I'd say hear it and hear that it's good be
-cause if you can see what someone says then
that's better than X-ray vision. Almost.

~~~

Gale Acuff has had hundreds of poems published in several countries and is the author of three books of poetry. He has taught university English in the US, China, and Palestine.

In an Antique Store

A sampler hanging from a dowel
on the wainscoted wall of an antique store—
Sarah, age 12 wrought this in 1830.

There’s a discipline in its hemmed edging
of connected triangles, an order
in the cross-stitched alphabet that runs
along the top. But her listing willow trees 
loiter in the margins, cheerless and frail, 
like fireworks in the rain. And scattered 
across the field are knots of failed flowers, 
snarls of bright scarlet and canary. 

I imagine Sarah’s frustration 
with this form—her fingers half as nimble 
as her imagination, the spring morning 
calling to her from the schoolhouse to play.

But instead of comfort in this connection,
the sense of continuity that brings me
to these retail museums, I’m stretched taut
and pierced through, back and front, struggling 
with Sarah and her skeins of tangled floss,
lurching with each awkward running stitch
from the 1800s and that antique shop, 
into the cold air of the present,
my fingers still warm where I brushed them 
against the blue threads that spelled out her name.

~~~

Kevin Casey is the author of Ways to Make a Halo (Aldrich Press, 2018) and American Lotus (Glass Lyre Press, 2018). And Waking... was published by Bottom Dog Press in 2016. His poems have appeared in Rust+Moth, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and Ted Kooser's syndicated column “American Life in Poetry.”

WONDERS OF THE WORLD

We had taken the elevator deep underground,
five souls from the surface,
and been led through the Hall of Giants.

You would never have known it was January,
much less New Mexico, above.
The place felt nowhere, outside time.

Back-lit draperies.
Columns thicker than the Parthenon’s.
My sons were young then—

a perfect span of ages for the stories
my father was waiting to share
at his ranch near Mayhill.

Who knows what they thought of it all?
They did as told when the park ranger
performed her set-piece

like Charon must have done,
untold times, before shoving off—
each boy’s palm an inch from his face

when she killed the lights
and sent us into a darkness absolute.
How long would it last,

everything unknowable by sight?
I remember looking
for my sons’ faces and finding nothing.

And then, in three days’ time,
my father was gone from this world,
like a myth. Like all light.

~~~

Todd Copeland’s poems have appeared in The Journal, High Plains Literary Review, Southern Poetry Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Sewanee Theological Review, and Columbia Poetry Review, among other publications. A native of Cleveland, Ohio, he currently resides in Waco, Texas.

Clam Diggers

Labor Day, late morning: Crane Beach
sprouts fungal umbrellas, shallows
heat, tide charges for the horizon.

Out in the colder chest-deep water,
four men in shorts and T-shirts scoop
out space for their bodies, scallop

the waves with their curved backs.
When they make a V toward shore,
a green grocery sack bulges, hidden,

towed in the youngest man’s strong grip.
Talking in loud, happy voices, women
wait on coolers, necks bared to the sun.

Tumble and thunk, soft exultation.
The men stride off again, holes
in the empty bag glinting like silver

fish skimming the shallows, coursing
toward the deeper water, where, wide
as a man’s palm, heavy with meat,

their shells big enough to hold a gulp
of water, surf clams live buried. Sudden
shadow: like a lost moon, a striped ball

sails over the men. They laugh a little,
toss it back to suspicious boys gaping
at their forks, the wicked tines flashing.

The clam diggers return to their work.
The swelling sea takes them back,
helps them disappear in its pull.

~~~

Carolyn Oliver’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Indiana Review, Cincinnati Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Shenandoah, Thrush, Southern Indiana Review, FIELD, and elsewhere. She is the winner of the Goldstein Prize from Michigan Quarterly Review, the Frank O’Hara Prize from the Worcester Review, and the Writer’s Block Prize in Poetry. Carolyn lives in Massachusetts with her family. Links to her writing: carolynoliver.net.