Poetry
Robert Peters
CHURNING BUTTERCream skimmed from a crock into a glass churn with a wooden dasher. Salt worked through with a blond bird's eye maple paddle. A bead of dye. A golden mass packed into pound-sized wooden butter molds. HOME-MADE ICE CREAMWith pan and axe, by the well where glare ice has formed from the drizzle and spill of water pumped for the house and the animals, you kneel, chipping. Sugar, cream, blueberries, and eggs whipped inside an aluminum can inside a salty ice-packed wooden tub. Spin the crank. The loaded dasher is yours. MAILBOXESThe flapping gray tongue of your mail box. Ours, on a post, cylindrical, has a flat bottom and a red flag. Martins, those flashers, excavate nests in the loamy bank. Wasps thrive. Earth- drilling grubs strike my toes. Sparkling mica. Wintergreens. The slap of Sailer's running board. When there's mail he beeps. He gives folks lifts to town. Life comes Thursdays, True Story every month. A letter from Grandma Keck, news of deaths, babies, and blizzards so caustic cattle are frozen ice statues. Boys sent to fetch them, blinded, grip fence wire with steely fingers and freeze. LETTER FROM GRAMDMA: JULY 1928"Dear Bobby. Glad you liked your visit. Good of Cousin Elmer to drive out here in his flivver And you made it home fine? Sure, you were naughty to let my Barred Rocks loose. Another scorcher. Not quite so bad in Fargo, I hear. My old bones can't take heat much anymore. I'd rather be cold. Most nights we get crosswinds through the windows. I can't wait for fall and all the colored leaves. Then the snow will fly! Your Christmas cactus still has red flowers. I don't water it too much. You're a good boy, Bobby. Grow up and be a doctor or a lawyer. Us Kecks and Havilands never had any. Hugs for you and your Mom. Wish you were here for pancakes and cream. I'll close for now. Write me back real soon. Pencil tablet is just fine. Grandma." AMERICAN YETISEvery August, during dog days, naked crazy men jumped up and down among the birches. They laughed and screamed. In dreams, their tawny locks bubble with blood-gorged ticks, sexual. MRS. JOLLYJennie Jolly, mother of ten, punched and baked daily batches of bread in a wood- burning Home Comfort range. Her dress, stained with baby soil, was secured by pins big enough for horse blankets. Her black hair, bowl-style, hung in uncombed twists. She wore no makeup. The family ate baked beans and pork from a roaster set on a bare plank table. They grabbed handfuls, stuffing their mouths, eating bread smeared with lard or bacon grease. Near the table was a grimy bed where infants cuddled up with their folks. Bill and George invited me fishing, tapping sugar maples, and swimming in Sand Lake. Sex included lassoing a sleeping brother's hardon and, from down stairs, yanking him awake. George liked mooning girls. Bill taught me to masturbate. Bill wears a fresh blue dress shirt turned up at the sleeves. We share a schoolbus seat. He strokes my hand. He died at Anzio early in the war. I hoped we'd go to college and then live together. NIGHT SWIM WITH TOADSBitter wild apples skipped over the lake. Drift wood burning on the beach. Three of us, nude, crouch near the flames. I hold Bill's scrotum. From the water dozens of toads, their knobby heads leaving wakes, croaking, swim towards us, hop towards our fire, tumble with one another in foul copulations. Here are a set from a brand new sequence FAMILIAL LOVE AND OTHER MISFORTUNES. The whole book will be appearing next year from Red Hen Press. |