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Iowa
Some call it God’s country.
Some don’t.
1.
An occasional flattened tin can, a beer
bottle tossed from a pickup truck’s window,
a dusty old slab-ribbed hunting dog
or predatory coyote are usually the
only signs of life, living or dead, along the
neglected two lane dirt road.
Closer to town a few tires lay about,
a wringer washer is on its side next to a
portable TV with a smashed-in screen.
There’s a silo that used to be red but the
paint, farm and tenants have long vanished.
Corn, wheat and soybeans are tended by an
off-site pinstriped conglomerate.
Alvin, town mayor and a Republican, wants
to pave the road but that’s because he owns
Alvin’s Asphalt Paving Company.
It would create jobs, he says.
The town board also voted against Ben’s request
to tear down the silo. Ben’s in the construction
business, you might have guessed.
It’s a historic landmark, they say.
Board did pass an ordinance requiring dogs
be on leashes but coyotes are not covered.
The conglomerate wants to lease land to the
billboard companies, and the zoning board has
taken that motion under advisement.
2.
Running her finger along the window sill,
creating a noticeable furrow in the dust, she
absently looks at the empty cement birdbath
in the side yard next to the soybean field.
Amy knew what she was getting into when they
spoke their vows, but now they have their
own hundred acres, theirs and the bank’s.
In thirty years they’d have some of the
town folk in to dance around a fire and
celebrate a festive mortgage-burning party.
Setting the two suitcases in the closet, she
shakes her head, runs a hand through unruly hair.
Only two miles to the nearest tavern
as the crow flies.
Good that Ed don’t have wings.
Should check all the door locks.
Ed! Ed! You want me to fix some supper?
3.
Hair in curlers, cigarette in hand, the woman
of the house stands by the white enamel gas stove
frying a skillet of ham and potatoes on one burner,
boiling a pot of water on another while the
next door neighbor lady sits at the red Formica
and chrome kitchen table droning on merits of
Viceroy versus Kool cigarettes as a revolving
table fan swirls the smoke of the two brands.
A damp dishrag falls unnoticed to the linoleum
floor as three young boys return from school,
letting the rickety screen door slam as they romp
straight to the living room, fighting for position,
adjusting the blonde console Motorola TV’s
rabbit ears while hollering for food.
The slamming of the door jiggles the water in
the goldfish bowl, spooking the lone fish darting
over transparent blue marbles at the bottom
of the bowl.
Outside, a bony black dog dozes in the dirt yard,
finding a corner of shade next to the garage door.
There is no family car for Shadow to cadge rides;
the garage is for storing cardboard boxes of
newspapers for the next paper drive.
I should be going, says the neighbor, tapping out
her cigarette, smoothing her print dress.
Ed likes for me to be there to get him a beer
when he gets home. Thanks for the coffee.
Well, you’re welcome to stay for ham and potatoes.
Thanks, but I have to get started on a casserole.
Let me know if you need a ride to the A&P.
4.
Medium blue Chevy Silverado utility pickup
wheels into the Family Fare Supermarket
parking lot, lightly tapping the van parked
directly in front: payback for someone having
cracked the Silverado’s taillight last month
in the same lot.
A family of three—forty-ish parents, a son
about twenty—exit the truck, the mother
letting her door bang heavily against the car
parked to the right.
The parents wear faded t-shirts and shorts,
the son slouches in undershirt and cargoes.
Dad tugs on a Detroit Tigers ball cap,
his boy shows off a bareheaded Mohawk
and they all wear black plastic flip-flops,
ambling to market with necks bowed
as though scavenging for lost change
on the patchwork, sun-faded gray asphalt.
Twenty minutes later the family returns,
the starch-addicted mother pushing a
wire shopping cart with a wobbly wheel.
Junior jams three grocery bags behind the
passenger seat then piles in, letting the cart
roll back against the neighboring car, ignoring
the nearby “Please Return Carts Here” sign.
7:30 PM on an early August weekend.
The sun is still up.
Hootenanny Saturday night.
5.
Red, shiny, mint and financed—15 years ago.
The pickup turns off the dirt road onto a gravel
drive, pulls up to the green warped-plywood shed.
Neither driver nor passenger are much at talking,
too full from the all-you-can-eat $3.99 weekend
pancake buffet brunch at The Greek’s.
Getting out of the car Garth Brooks music
can be heard on a distant radio.
Looking up, Ed squints against the high sun
and then at the ladder laying in the August heat.
Man could get blisters grabbing at
that ladder barehanded, he says,
preparing to scoop out last years accumulation
of rotted leaves in overflowing gutters.
Hurry up, Ed. I’ll hold the ladder but
be careful where you drop the leaves,
she says, putting on her gardening gloves.
The rickety aluminum ladder wobbles
from side to side as he clumbers up,
a good fifty pounds over recommended
safety weight maximums. She looks to the side.
Don’t be dropping that slime on my head.
He grunts, doesn’t look down.
Used to be they’d spend weekends in bed
together: sex in your own bedroom was free
and you can’t spend what you don’t have,
plus it killed one helluva lot of time.
Now they just seem to watch the television.
Improving their minds, babysitting the grandkids.
6.
Kewpie doll circles of color brighten
pale, puffy cheeks and the layers of glossy
red lipstick are as fresh as her tight perm.
Forty overweight pounds won’t
show in the head portrait:
Amy is sitting quite pretty.
Don’t look straight at the camera,
the photographer says. Look this way.
She moves her eyes to the left,
the rest of her body immobile,
hands folded in her lap.
I’m not going to get any younger or
better looking, Amy had decided,
using the $19.95 discount coupon
at the strip mall portrait studio to get
an 8×10, a 5×7 and four wallet photos,
a package of immortality for about what
she earns doing three loads of wash
for the young working couple next door.
How about a big smile, the man asks,
and her lips make a little movement.
She doubts anyone will display the
photos; they’ll be hidden away
in a book or drawer or box.
Better be certain to write her
name and the date on the back.
7.
By the time the bottle of Jack Daniel’s
was drained, getting the clothes out of
the dryer had become a complicated task.
Ed fumbles the Dockers out first, folds
them over, then over again, lays them
at the bottom of the plastic hamper.
Shirts are next, one at a time, fiddling
around with inside-out arms,
hanging them on flimsy wire hangers.
T-shirts and underwear follow with
socks spilling about onto the basement
floor, everything still dryer-warm.
Numb feet stumble up worn,
green painted wooden steps;
the hamper gets set in the foyer
where it will stay at least ’til noon.
For another week
everything has been refreshed.
For another night,
Ed’ll just twist off the top
of a fresh bottle of JD.
Not a damn reason in the world not to.
8.
She puts her hands in her pockets,
sits down hard with a grunt on the
porch steps and tugs at faded
red rubber knee-high boots.
A dusty pink ball cap, yellow gloves
and blue cloth zipper jacket are piled
beside her and damn, the thing she
misses most after riding the mower
around the yard in hot circles for hours
is a husband to help pull off snug boots.
Get ’em off and he can have all the
Jack Daniel’s he wants and play euchre
all night long she says aloud to herself,
pushing back sweaty wisps of white hair.
At 76 it helps to have a man around,
at least once a week for yard work.
(The other stuff don’t count for much).
She sighs.
Don’t really want help with the boots;
needs a man to mow the five acres
so she won’t have to wear red boots
in the first place.
Just common sense.
9.
An archive of the river town as it thrived
in the mid-nineteenth century, the white
farmhouse has stood as long as the town itself,
atop a bluff looking down on the shipping trade
river where tourist paddle boats have replaced
canoes of warring Indian parties and work barges.
Over the years the significance of the house
has been acknowledged by dutiful upkeep:
a proper sidewalk leads to the lattice trellis
entry gate in the center of a white picket fence,
while to the north side a perennial garden
features giant clusters of pastel hydrangeas
and rose bushes accented by well-tended shrubs
and bluegrass, nourished by a coiled green
hose that lays about an oak tree near the
flagstone walk.
Open the front door: to the left is a parlor,
defined in modern floor-plans as a family room.
The parlor in fact has been converted to a
guest bedroom just as the historic house now
functions as a bed-and-breakfast.
In a front corner of the parlor, next to six-over-nine
windows, sits a small round table holding a
squat lamp with a maroon ceramic base and
off-white shade sitting on a white crocheted doily.
Two faux Early American spindle chairs, painted black
with a stenciled floral design along the back braces,
are at angles to each other beside the table.
Fragile and uncomfortable, they are best used
to collect discarded clothes.
A large reproduction painting of a three-masted
schooner battling a storm hangs over the table,
dramatizing a white-with-rage sea roiling across
its deck as the prow carves into resistant waves.
The adjacent wall houses a wood-burning fireplace
long ago converted to gas, while the third
wall holds a flat screen TV.
A La-Z-Boy chair fills the far corner and
a daybed and assorted furniture edge a
braided rug of durable synthetic fabrics.
Birthed with the house, the locks and keys
have failed their obligation.
10.
Looking up the long stretch of sidewalk,
weeds beginning to seep through cracks,
remembering the sagging wooden porch steps
and wrap-around veranda; not much about the old
wood frame Victorian farmhouse has changed,
vandalized only by neglected upkeep.
Still a shabby white, beginning to peel yet again,
dark green shutters, stock-still lace curtains
lining the edges of the front windows.
At the side of the house a rubber tire swing
hangs by a thick rope from a paternal oak:
no grass grows around the tree or the swing.
’Way in the back in the far northwest corner
is where all the family pets are buried—
not much grass grows there, either.
All in all, the quiet house is measured off
by a black wrought iron fence turning to
rust that can’t keep much out, or in.
Pushing against the reluctant gate Amy
looks down at the back of her hands.
Wad up a wet dishrag, dry it in the sun
and then try to smooth it out: her skin had
not always looked like that, nor had the house.
Hello! Is anybody home? Anyone here? Anybody?
11.
A skinny-wheeled bike with flat tires
is propped against the front yard oak,
raindrops sliding down its rusting frame.
Inside, a yellow rain slicker waits on a peg.
When the rain lets up, leaving
soaked and rotting leaves
too waterlogged to fly or drift,
it’s then that silence returns.
That is, until an intrusion sounds
at the door, a knock, knock, knock
that’s not to be ignored.
Its rhythm is unrelenting.
A skeletal blue-veined hand pulls aside
the front curtain just enough to see a
vacant taxi waiting, its motor running.
No, not today.
It won’t be today.
ISBN 1-59661-150-2
89 pages/$9
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An Ice Axe at Dusk is Gene McCormick’s twelfth book, and fifth poetry collection. In addition to the anthologies, his work regularly appears in select literary publications, and four of his narrative poems have been converted to songs and performed professionally. He lives in Wayne, Illinois.
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