five poems
by Dan Russell
Snow Like Ash
I haven’t been hurt in a long time
And it makes me unable to feel
I’m blunted, near dead
Lost like a lamb falling off a cliff
Before the shepherd can catch me.
You took something from me
On the side of the road
I’d take it back
I realize now it wasn’t for you —
It was worth saving, like marbles.
My heart stumbles down dirt roads
Like a drunk too engorged with blood
So hot it boils over
When my mind thinks more than it should
They found our class president yesterday
Hanging from a branch like chimes
The little girl found her when she got off the bus
It was awful. Just awful.
Y’all were friends. You remember?
I bought you both cigarettes and cheap wine
That tasted like strawberry and regret.
I’d give anything to walk back in the store
And buy all the smokes and wine I could carry.
Sometimes I lie still in the dark
And stare up into oblivion
And I wonder whether all of this is a dream
Or something more.
Is it worth all of the pain?
I think she must’ve thought that
When she tied that rope around her neck
She was probably reciting it
Like a proverb before she let go.
When I finally give in to sleep
I dream things no one should see
Mermaids and kites
And faces of people I’ve not seen since school
who want to visit though we never really spoke.
The night we drove to St. Louis
It plays like a film
Grainy and jagged with warbling sound
Struggling to be heard over the present.
The parking lot was empty except for us
And the few cars belonging to people at work
I counted the money
I shoveled out grain bins to save.
The smell was rotten.
I was happy to give it up.
I said I’d come, you told me to wait,
So I did and I watched you walk in.
The snow fell like ash
I listened to Styx
sing about blue-collar men
I wanted a metal lunch box
I wanted a hammer to swing
I wanted to burn Rome
And then fiddle to fan the fire
Time seemed to stop
Like I was waiting on a train
With hoodlums running at me with knives
And before I screamed out for help
You opened the door and slid inside.
Your eyes were the color of water
You looked at me and nodded
Like a cowboy ready to go
I let off the clutch and drove us toward nothing.
I write letters to people
Who cant read anymore
They believe anything with a cross
Or shout things Satan wouldn’t say
Because he knows better.
No one told me I’d be as alone
As I am when I think of yesterday.
Sunrise is some damned phoenix
Every day making me go through it again
I’ve tried to rehab everything
But you can’t buy silence. You cant find peace
Enough to feel anything more than lost
I’d give anything to feel something. I’d shovel those wasted seeds again To know I was doing something that mattered No matter how badly planned.
The Duck Hunters
The sun creeps above the horizon
like a man driving to town to pay his taxes.
It’s still too dark to see.
I hear duck hunters in the distance,
blasting away.
They tear at the breasts,
leaving the most beautiful parts to rot in the mud.
I’ve scarred my knuckles
trying to make them leave.
Only the weather runs them off.
The older I get, the easier it is
to see my youth in sleep.
I dream of ice cream and dances and
sex with girls who don’t exist anymore.
Last night I was lost
in the bayou without a light.
I tried to navigate home
by memory, but you were all I saw.
The duck hunters fire into the clouds
hoping for banded pleasure.
What lesson comes from bloodied faces and drifting feathers?
Poachers
He runs the knife from neck to belly exposing flesh he’ll flay and fry to feed his family.
She’s shelling peas on the porch popping them into a pail.
He wipes the knife on his hip. Plucked feathers dance on the breeze, across the property line.
He can hear the children playing throwing a ball of tinfoil– innocent and free from the shackles of life.
He hopes to keep them away from the chicken plant, away from the blue vest of greed, away from lines drawn in the dirt by men who divide the land and people like a hog on a foggy morning after the first frost.
Subiaco
We drank wine in the cellar near the abbey
Where the suicidal poet yodelled his songs
About love and death and feeling
Things others might think wrong
A red tail hawk circled the valley
In a sky streaked purple and blue
And I thought of nothing, not a damn thing
More than that moment spent there with you.
Pictures
My mother texts and calls, begging
for pictures of the kids, of me, of my wife, of the dog.
She posts them online so her friends can see
a vision of perfection she longs to be true.
When I was younger, we never did that.
We never posed or smiled, or thought
anyone would want to see us in a picture.
I’m glad we didn’t.
I was afraid they’d see through it all,
discovering the truth of who we were.
So I always say I don’t have any new pictures of me, the kids, the dog, or Allison. Even if I did, there’d be people and things in the pictures I’m not sure she would recognize.
Photo of Dan Russell
BIO: Dan Russell is the author of Lies We Choose to Believe and Poor Birds. He lives in Arkansas with his wife and family, and teaches the craft of writing at Concordia University–St. Paul.