The Poetry Of..
Eleanor Howell...............................................
The Rainbow
On the main highway
an old church stands crumbling
the last relic of community and character
in a mass of chains.
Olive Garden
Toys R Us
It's like swimming through a sea of jellyfish
looking for that one tuna,
says my dad.
Staples
Old Navy
Circuit City
When it stopped raining we saw a rainbow
that stretched from end to end.
We could see the dome
and where the ends ducked down
behind the trees.
Pizza Hut
Toyota
McDonald's
Ihop
We pulled off the main road and onto a side winder
where there were no cars.
The three of us stood at the edge of the graveyard,
light streaming through the old rain,
and looked up at the rainbow.
Three generations: mother, son, daughter
and the dead next to us,
their chains broken, and ours breaking.
Evening in September
Ghosts and old souls creep up
from the fields of wheat-
black from the summer's rain.
They linger there till others join them,
till they've risen up from every pore of the land,
you've always thought was alive.
They even come out from between your lips
when you sigh your peace
into the chilled air.
They blanket the drooping sunflowers,
and settle the yard in for bed-
a bicycle, a boy, a lawn chair,
all tucked in, kissed, and covered,
ready for the cold night.
Inside, the kitchen is lit and someone
cooks potatoes.
Mother
My mother used to lick her thumbs
and rub the blotchy stains off our soft cheeks,
the hard scratch of the grooves in her skin
braising us.
On the palms of her hands were needles and pins
and blackberry bristles.
With her pressure we would turn the other cheek-
and she would start afresh.
She said once that she wished she could sleep
in a cloud at night.
To lie with father curled in white fluff,
like Zeus and Hera.
Peaceful, like them, only at night.
I think she wanted to escape the sharpness of the day,
the sharpness of her sheets
and her hands
and her mother's memory.
But in the night when she lay in her bed
she could hear the whir of the refrigerator
creeping under the bedroom door.
She would close her eyes and count sheep
as they jumped, one-two-three
into the sea.
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