Available from Jane's Boy Press:
NO ARCADIA Release Date: August 7, 2020 54 pages, paperback $16.00 MSRP |
D. Eric Parkison
D. Eric Parkison grew up in western New York State. He received his MA in English from the University of Rochester, and his MFA in Poetry from Boston University. He lives in Lynn, MA.
NOT ASLEEP, NOT AWAKE
In summer the one air conditioner Is shared: you sleep on the floor In the air-conditioned room. His silence. His room. You wake because there’s a presence Before he starts. See the curtain, the pale Moon. Again, his breathing. Each inhale, Pulls deep, like collecting burrs drawing a bull-nose plane Along fresh boards of white pine. Like pulling off soft strips of birch bark. When he begins again, you cinch your breath To his. Sleep, his dominion. His country. You, at the edge of a cool wood. Go in. -from NO ARCADIA POTATO GRADER ELEGY
No engine. No belt-drive. Even then Wayne county people wouldn’t spend Money to burn gas. No: for a few blisters, With a little muscle ache, For a few dark mornings in the weeks after the digging, They could do it themselves: no sense In being wasteful. We climbed down the hay-chute Into the basement of the barn, Dropped to the floor, straddled the manure gutter Behind the stanchions, the water dishes Rusted stuck on their pivots. We crawled over mounds of clapboard: Kindling for the winter, nails popping in the fire. Simple. A hand-crank. The flat planes Of the roller first kinked, then caught The chain-link track, the conveyor. I turned the handle. My little brother rode the belt, Arms up to keep his fingers clear of the rollers. Hopped off at the other end. Baby reds and fingerlings would’ve fallen through And gathered underneath. Grade A’s would make it, be collected In a rough sack, sold for little. The people before us Knew not to want more than you can have. He has been ashes for eight years. I never learn. I like the things that keep me big: Pizza, white cake, cold bottles of good beer, Late conversations, little sleep. He is where he is. I keep what I can. - from NO ARCADIA |