Three Poems by Jane Hicks

 

 

Close Order

 

Fern’s feet did not reach the floor

yet she sat in the upper level

at Pyburn School, in the shadow

of Chimney Top Mountain.  Her dark

eyes measure the tree shadow, compute

the height, the formula new and impetuous

to be tried.  She figures the corn in crib,

and tallies the bill at Uncle Wilbur’s store

before he can ring it in the great register.

Numbers sing and dance for her

swift and sure, they measure the world.

 

Exam papers tallied, she exits eighth grade,

dreams of high school ten miles down

the creek bed to the all-weather road.

She is eleven and does not know

she will not attend the school

that refuses a scrawny, underage girl

who chops corn, tops tobacco, captures

gardens in endless rows of pale green jars

until the town textile mill calls

her at eighteen to pack her bags,

walk out of the holler to become the

right hand of the plant foreman

who does not hear the song of numbers

in the bobbin whine and loom clack.

 

She trains his tallies, rights his orders,

moves from hairnets and brogans

to neat ledgers and spectator pumps

in the front office where numbers

march and drill to her order.

 

 

 

Tonic

 

The wind cuts, my nose drips,

my fingers burn then numb,

gloves left behind in the almost April.

On my grandmother’s old land,

the new owner knows my purpose,

waves me on to the fields

spotted with new growth.

With trowel and paper sack,

I seek that dark green delicacy,

Creecy greens, Dry Land Cress,

served with vinegar and egg

to purify slow winter blood.

My grandmother’s habit urges me

out toward spring

that lies in fat buds at field’s

edge, Redbuds and Dogwoods wait

for the call of sunlight.

Though ice laces creek banks,

young frogs peep as shadows grow long,

the clouds slow down. I think

of a warm kitchen, Corn bread,

and bitter greens

cleansing my grandmother’s blood

that flows strong in me.

 

 

 

The Cosmic Possum Among the Exiles

on Poet’s Row at a Book Fair

 

A row of poets, tabled and arranged,

display our wares like the whores

of Amsterdam in their lurid shop windows,

entice eye contact, push the point

of connection, make the buyer come

closer, examine the stock, the sale.

Many avert their gaze, avoid the taint

of verse, poetic perversion of plain

language, words for sale, like peddled

affection, cheaper when bought,

not won and wooed.