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2004 PAGE 12 Len Roberts The Way of the Cross When Sister said God was unknowable
and unknown,
that only silence could express
His Nothingness,
we hushed for a few seconds
in that sixth grade class,
Joey McGraw, up front, white shirt,
tie, pants pressed,
nodding his head, as though he could
hear Him,
and Leslie Stiles, tall, blond girl with
pimples
who carried the nuns' lunch from the
convent,
sitting with her mouth open as though
waiting
for God to soundlessly enter, Richie
Freeman and Donald Wilcox
cocking their ears as they bet
on an ant
that crawled past their desks,
Richie stomping down when it turned
back,
making me laugh even as Sister wafted
up the aisle
with the three-edged brass ruler, tapping
heads as she went,
Good, Good, Good, she said till she got
to where
I sat, then hissed Bad, Bad, and whacked
till I bled,
the rosary beads on her belt clicking
between
her knees, the silver cross on her chest
thumping
while she shouted, This is what happens
to sinners,
stumbling her way back to the front of the class
where she wrote The Way of the Cross with red chalk,
told us
we must lift our crosses up, up,
so the sinner among us might, might, she whispered,
get into heaven,
making us stand to do it that very second,
twenty-two eleven-year-olds lifting heavy crosses
of air onto our shoulders,
balancing them there as we staggered around
the empty seats,
some bumping into the scarred desks,
some easing them from shoulder to shoulder,
some stopping to kneel and catch their breath,
no one daring to put down the crossed weights
or whisper a joke
as we circled each other for a silent hour
that gray, darkening, December day.
The American Poetry Review/Pushcart Prize In book: Counting the Black Angels Learning on Olmstead Street The tattoo of a heart with an arrow piercing it has MOTHER written in blue across the pink center, and it moves each time my father piles another stack of coins on the kitchen table or reaches to lift the gold glass of beer. Who was the sixth president, he asks, What's the capital of Nebraska, the difference between the Arctic and Antarctic, the change for two boxes of doughnuts at twenty-three cents each if the man hands me a five- dollar bill? Even as I stand to wrap sandwiches in wax paper, folding the corners in neat triangles the way he taught me, he asks the names of the last three governors of New York, says in French I've dropped the knife. Bending to pick it up, he's suddenly beside me, his eyes bloodshot, his breath blue smoke as he repeats the average life span of an ant, a moth, then wipes up the stain in looping figure eights, the sign for infinity he says, tossing me the dirty cloth. POETRY In book: Black Wings
Second-Grade Angel Each Choir had 6,666 Legions, with 6,666 angels in each of these and I knew as sure as the fluorescent light in that second grade class kept blinking that I had been one of them, still was, but sent to Earth because of some unforgivable sin, that all I had to do was lift the window and I could soar out onto Ontario Street, wings erupting from my shoulders, the white shirt tearing off, the school's striped tie and gray trousers floating away, and I knew I had fire in my tongue, my right hand filled with lightning, that Sister Maria must have seen it but decided to keep quiet so the others wouldn't bow down to me and lose their places as we Pledged Allegiance and recited the Commandments, the Mysteries, the invisible wings on my either side telling me again my true father was not a road man for the Golden Eagle bread company, my mother not a textile stitcher who danced nights with drunks at Boney's, knowing I could soar above the blue Earth, up into the darkness where my brother did not walk alleys calling for rags, that dogs howled when I walked by because they sensed the fire in my body, that the dates of my birth, 3/13/50 added up to the magical number of 66 and gave me power over seasons and planets, able to make Margaret Blake throw up because she tripped me, giving Ronny Michaels the hiccups for shoving me down the stairs, sure even then I would ascend again some day, despite my heavy body, the warts on my hands, and I would become who I was, and I would know my real name. The Hudson Review/Counting the Black Angels
The Sparrow and the Winter's Nest of Snow Long winter day of cutting wood, old cherry trees strangled by poison ivy, one a good three foot thick, the trunk set aside for the lumber mill, the rest cut up and stacked while I thought of my distant son in his distant room, of the full-page poems he sends in the mail, The winter's nest of snow scribbled in his first-grade red and yellow and blue letters, and the picture with each one, huge oak trees and tiny daisies, always the sun in a blue sky. And I remembered my father's drawings before he died, how the sparrow came into each sketch, sometimes on an arcing branch, sometimes on a gutter, the scruffy brown feathers and yellow-orange beak, the tiny claws clasping whatever it was on, sparrow with its small song, sparrow indistinguishable from the winter's brown weeds, sparrow of the mind of my father that has flown into darkness, sparrow above the glass of Schaefer's, the pack of Luckies, sparrow of the blackened heart and short distance flight, sparrow of 47 years and a mad wife. Sparrow darting now over my buzzing saw and bent head, making me look up at the steel sky, upstate New York winter wind whipping my eyes, poor, stupid sparrow in this five below, searching for the winter's nest of snow, sparrow stumbling down the streets of Cohoes mumbling Irene, Marjorie, Irene, sparrow pulling out the racks of doughnuts, cakes and pies those early mornings of the Golden Eagle bread route, taking the iced curves in the road at seventy miles, pock-marked, skinny, malarial-ridden, drunken sparrow, I follow you a few seconds in this light, then let you go. The Chicago Review In book: Counting the Black Angels
The Equation Twenty-six years dead
and still you stir
my sleep, wake
me four a.m.s
the entire week
before your final date,
point me to sit
and learn the assigned
words, commit
to memory the capitals
and states,
the value of x
always bringing you
hovering, close, your
beer breath in my breath,
clouds of Lucky Strike
smoke bluing your face
as you bent to trace
the known and unknown,
as though
that might explain
why the woman had left
or the other son's death,
how you had come to weigh
105 beer-soaked pounds at
the end, a stick figure
of a man bent over a sheet
of scratchings you tried
desperately to show me
made some kind of sense,
whispering in that hushed
voice I hear as clearly
now as I did then
to pay attention
to the equal sign,
that what is given
is given is given.
The Southern Review
© All Copyright, Len Roberts.
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