Poems accepted in 2008 - Geo. Staley

Always

One Friday afternoon after

11 years of smoking

3 well-remembered failures to stop

2 bouts of blood-spewing pneumonia

4,475 cartons of Kools, mostly,

          44,750 packs

          895,000 cigarettes

          12,330,000 drags

I quit cold.

Now, some 31 years later,

I think about it now and again,

          with intensity, sometimes,

wondering if I am one cigarette away

from becoming the addict

I always loved being.

                                                    Chest, Fall 2008

Little Miss 1565

            HARTFORD, Conn. — A little girl known for 47 years only as “Little Miss
         1565” after she died in a circus fire that also killed 167 others has finally
         been identified.

When you entered the Big Top

            that humid July day in 1944

            you had a name: Eleanor Cook

                        a mother and two brothers there.

            You held her hand,

                        didn’t want to get lost.

You were eight and liked the Ring Master’s shiny black boots,

                                    caught the glint off his silver whistle.

The elephants padded about,

                        babies close to their mothers.

The clowns made everyone laugh.

Until    someone set a fire in the Big Top

            someone else smelled smoke

            others screamed “Fire!”

            and the trample was on.

Under the Big Top that July 6th

            you were trampled:

                        perhaps by the polite family seated behind you,

                                    or the family from Boston to your right

                                                who had just laughed at the clowns

            your mother: badly burned and

                        hospitalized for six months

                        (and mentally off forever)

            one brother, six:  trampled and

                        died the next day

            other brother, Donald, nine: survived.

At the morgue you were numbered—1565

                                    photographed, displayed,

                                    to countless strangers for identification,

                                                                        unsuccessfully,

and finally denied by your aunt,

                        even as Donald cried,

                                                            “It’s Eleanor.  It’s her.”

You went into the coroner’s book as 1565

            and into the newspapers as “Little Miss 1565.”

You had lost your mother’s hand

                          separated from your brothers

                                                even the dead one

                          awkwardly rejected by the living

                        as if God had taken your name and memory

                        as well as your life

                        and let you wander for 47 years,

                                    lost from your mother.

Until a diligent firefighter,

            plagued by your black-and-white morgue photo

                        and the mystery of your unclaimed body

            pieced together God’s scrambled puzzle—

                                    what had once been your life

                                    what should’ve been the memory of you—

            and retrieved at least a part of you, Eleanor

                                    from your wandering

                                    from the number 1565.

                                      Connecticut River Review, Summer 2008

At the Funeral

All the mourners had fine things to say

            except his father and mother

            who wept throughout.

His tall Auntie said:  He could’ve been a basketball star.

The deeply religious neighbor noted:  He was always kind to his mama.

A balding guidance counselor added:  He really tried hard in school.

Of course, the high school coach reminded everyone: 

                                                                        He had a lot of potential.

On and on the praise went

            as the father and mother wept

            for their 17 year old crack addict son

            who terrorized them, the neighborhood, all decency

            who died, naked and deluded,

                        at 6th & Taylor on a cool October afternoon

                        in a flurry of almost too-willing police bullets

until Pastor Hixon closed with a prayer

                        to send his soul wherever.

All those fine things said

wasted

because no one

            except his father and mother

            understood what those words were doing:

            poking his soul so full of holes

            preventing it from going wherever

                                                    forever.

                                                                Main Street Rag, Fall 2008

Me and Dorothy

Growing up, I feared Flying Monkeys,

envisioning headlines

            “Oz Comes to Stratford; Flying Monkeys Circle Boy’s House”

            “Using Crystal Ball, Flying Monkeys Locate Scared Youth”

            “2nd Grader Snatched by Flying Monkeys Outside School”

dreaming such occurrences and worse

            being dropped from several hundred feet up

                        by an inattentive Flying Monkey

            the sailboats on the wallpaper of my room

                        becoming so many Flying Monkeys

            having wings stitched to my back, no anesthetic,

                        by a snarling, winged Curious George

So I always look back over my shoulder

            for Flying Monkeys

and, every now and then, am fortunate

to catch a glimpse of where I have been.

                                                 Sunday Oregonian, 8/31/2008

***

Additional poems in Where Orphans Live.  For ordering information, see the following link.  Much thanks.
http://www.hometown.aol.com/finishingbooks/flptitlesindex.html