American Literature

Poets and storytellers
move into the vacancies
Edward Hopper left them.
They settle down in blank spaces
where the light has been scoured and bleached
skull-white and nothing grows
except absence. Where something is missing,
the man a woman waits for
or furniture in a room
stripped like a hospital bed
after the patient has died.
Such bereft interiors
is just what they've been looking for,
with their lumpy beds, 
their birdcages and decks of cards,
their dog-eared books, their predilection
for starting fires in empty rooms.

--Lisel Mueller

Gas

--after Edward Hopper

The lonely man
    performs some necessary ritual
      behind a pump. We cannot tell
exactly what it is he does because
    the angle is so odd. A rack of cans

of oil between
    two pumps on the island stands, as they al-
      ways do, conveniently avail-
able, in easy reach of any needy
    motorist. The light is low, and the trees,

massed heavily
    behind the man and his pumps, march darkly
      off to the right. A modest shock
of roadside weeds attends the greenery
    as it condenses. On the periphery,

out of our ken,
    shines a source of artificial light. We
      are meant to feel the clutch of the
evening. It is not benevolent. 
    The artist has invested his talent

in loneliness.
    The values and the crusty inflections
      of his particular diction
demonstrate devotion to the modest
    fears of the soul in the longest moments

of late after-
    noon. A sign hangs white above the station.
      Mobilgas and Pegasus. A 
flag of sorts, a standard, here, to more
    than gas. The language, though hard, is clear.

--Sidney Wade

Hopper's "Nighthawks" (1942)

Imagine a town where no one walks the streets.
Where the sidewalks are swept clean as ceilings and
the barber pole stands still as a corpse. There is no
wind. The windows on the brick buildings are
boarded up with doors, and a single light shines in
the all-night diner while the rest of the town sits in
its shadow.

In an hour it will be daylight. The busboy in the
diner counts the empty stools and looks at his
reflection in the coffee urns. On the radio the
announcer says the allies have won another victory.
There have been few casualties. A man with a wide-
brimmed hat and the woman sitting next to him are
drinking coffee or tea; on the other side of the
counter a stranger watches them as though he had
nowhere else to focus his eyes. He wonders if
perhaps they are waiting for the morning buses to
arrive, if they are expecting some member of their
family to bring them important news. Or perhaps 
they will get on the bus themselves, ask the driver 
where he is going, and whatever his answer they 
will tell him it could not be far enough.

When the buses arrive at sunrise they are empty as
hospital beds--the hum of the motor is distant as
a voice coming from deep within the body. The
man and woman have walked off to some dark
street, while the stranger remains fixed in his chair.
When he picks up the morning paper he's not
surprised to read there would be no exchange of
prisoners, the war would go on forever, the 
Cardinals would win the pennant, there would be 
no change in the weather.

--Ira Sadoff

No Ideas but in Things

The Importance of First Objects: a good read if you can get your hands on it.

Compost

There is magic in decay.
A dance to be done
For the rotting, the maggot strewn
Piles of flesh which pile
Upon the dung-ridden earth
And the damp that gathers
And rusts and defiles.
There is a bit of this
In even the most zoetic soul — 
The dancing child’s arms
Flailing to an old ska song
Conduct the day-old flies
Away to whatever rank
Native is closest. Just today
I was walking along the river
With my daughter in my backpack
And I opened my email
On my phone and Duffie
Had sent me a poem
Called “Compost.” I read it
To my little girl and started
To explain before I was three
Words in Selma started
Yelling, Daddy, Daddy, snake!
In the path was a snake,
Belly up and still nerve-twitching
The ghost of some passing
Bicycle or horse. Pretty, Selma said.
Yes, I said. And underneath my yes
Another yes, the yes to my body,
Just beginning to show signs
Of slack, and another, my grasping
In the dark for affirming flesh
That in turn says yes, yes
Let’s rot together but not until
We’ve drained what sap
Is left in these trees.
And I wake in the morning
And think of the coroner
Calling to ask what color
My father’s eyes were,
And I asked, Why? Why can’t
You just look — and the coroner,
Matter-of-factly says, Decay.
Do you want some eggs, my love?
I have a new way of preparing them.
And look, look outside, I think this weather
Has the chance of holding.

--Dan Chelotti

My Brook

Earth holds no sweeter secret anywhere
Than this my brook, that lisps along the green
Of mossy channels, where slim birch trees lean
Like tall pale ladies, whose delicious hair,
Lures and invites the kiss of wanton air.
The smooth soft grasses, delicate between
The rougher stalks, by waifs alone are seen,
Shy things that live in sweet seclusion there.

And is it still the same, and do the eyes
Of every silver ripple meet the trees
That bend above like guarding emerald skies?
I turn, who read the city’s beggared book,
And hear across the moan of many seas
The whisper and the laughter of my brook.

--Helen Hay Whitney

My Father's Hats

   Sunday mornings I would reach
high into his dark closet while standing
   on a chair and tiptoeing reach
higher, touching, sometimes fumbling
   the soft crowns and imagine
I was in a forest, wind hymning
   through pines, where the musky scent
of rain clinging to damp earth was
   his scent I loved, lingering on
bands, leather, and on the inner silk
   crowns where I would smell his
hair and almost think I was being
   held, or climbing a tree, touching
the yellow fruit, leaves whose scent
   was that of a clove in the godsome
air, as now, thinking of his fabulous
   sleep, I stand on this canyon floor
and watch light slowly close
   on water I’m not sure is there.

--Mark Irwin