Switchbacks
There were
days when we hiked the Rockies,
navigated switchbacks,
hauled backpacks,
tipped a
wineskin at 9,000 feet.
I open the door for Paula, my wife’s
physical
therapist, and tell her that she’s arrived
at the
most glorious moment of Beethoven’s 9th
where an ode to joy opens a world of hope,
opens a soaring glow drunk with fire. Poor
Paula, I might as well be speaking German,
not talking about Germany’s greatest
composer.
She’s probably thinking, Oh god, why can’t
I
just walk into a house and start my routine? Why
do I have to deal with some overweight
codger
who wants to gouge my gord with classical
music? I
take her to our porch-room where Judy
sits in a wheelchair. I say, I’ll turn
off the music
and leave you two to your torturous
machinations.
On the flatscreen Riccardo Muti conducts
an orchestra and chorus. I turn him off
just
as the chorus gears up for that blissful
finale. I’m
grateful for Paula. Her skills might make
my wife’s
last years more bearable. Hell, I’d put The
Troggs
on the flatscreen if it would help Paula
help Judy.
At daybreak the
smell of pine surrounded us.
At night the
purling river played a lullaby.
The stars
were so bright.
Farther
When they carried him out of our house, the
color of his sunken cheeks sparked in me a lifelong interest in lividity. The
bottles he hid in his desk, the linen closet, the kitchen cabinet, and under
the driver’s seat of his car birthed in me a romance with booze. Those car
rides when mother forced me to help her dig him out of a Cheyenne bar produced
in me a bone-dry weariness. I once tried to call him “coach,” but he wouldn’t
remove the cigarette from his mouth in order to catch the ball I threw. In
school I constantly misspelled the word father, always put an “r” where it
shouldn’t be: f a r t h e r.
Daddy
Did he ever want something beyond
the booze? Did he ever aspire? He
lied on the marriage certificate with
his first wife. He was 16, not 18.
She was much older, an angry, racist,
woman.
They had a daughter, my half-sister.
He walked out on them while the baby
was still an infant. Left them with
nothing.
What did he want when he married my mother?
Did he ever aspire? He drank all the time.
Is that all he wanted?
I was thirteen when they carried him
out of our house. His purple face had
an odd expression. He looked perplexed.
Death is a puzzle no one ever solves.
Trains
That gap between the depot platform
and the first step onto the railroad car:
kindling to ignite childhood nightmares.
Would the gap suck me under, its mighty
jaws chew my tiny body to bits? Was
that how I filtered into darkness daddy’s
drinking, mommy’s screaming?
Once inside the car its rhythmic rocking,
soothing clicking, sent me to the womblike
safety of no outside.
Still, there was only one direction
available,
only one boarding place, only one
destination:
the terminal.
Five Haiku
louder
than the frozen earth
Spring
seeds wink and smile
Hare tracks in deep snow
wind cold and sere slaps my face
So much life in death
crispy
smell of furrowed earth
Morning
hides the moon
Withholding your love
lips puckered and chapped
A dead rose knows pain
Winter walk tonight
two deer appear/disappear
Invisible wings
Charlie Brice won the 2020 Field Guide Poetry Magazine Poetry Contest and placed third in the 2021 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Prize. His tenth poetry collection is A Brief History of the Sixties (Alien Buddha Press, 2026). His poetry has been nominated for the Best of Net Anthology and the Pushcart Prize and has appeared in Atlanta Review, The Honest Ulsterman, Ibbetson Street, Chiron Review, The MacGuffin, and elsewhere.
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