Three Poems, by Bill Yarrow
Babble
We had a family copy of Isaac Babel’s
stories out of which my dad would read
aloud when he was home, which owing
to his employment issues was very often.
I had no idea what I was listening to, but
that’s just another way to fail to define
childhood, I guess. Anyway, the stories
were short, some just a page, and I let
my imagination sail away on some word
that jumped out at me (one always did)
and then, for those few minutes, I was
outside the battered gates of self, alone
in a city empty of rockets and God, where
I saw tower after tower of arrested escape.
Chapel Access
Every tunnel’s a piercing, every road’s a tattoo.
The billboards are pimples, road signs are scars.
Cranshaw said he saw eternity last night
wearing a sarong and smoking a cigar.
“You’re full of shit, Cranshaw,” I said
and stared at the fraudulent broken line
that stuttered in front of me. Madeleine
in the back seat touched me on the neck.
Why so ornery? she asked. “Because time
crossed the road. That’s why,” I snarled.
I don’t know what was eating me. Maybe
everything. Definitely Cranshaw. I didn’t like
his smarmy teeth and mildew jitterbug. And I
didn’t like his dragonfly belt. It shouted poseur.
Eleutheria
Eleutheria bent in the hedge searching
for asters for the Sunday wedding
of her son. She was thinking about the
letter she had just received from her hobbled
father. It was incoherent. He was failing.
She watched an inky cloud suck all the color
from the trees. She watched a conspiracy
of garden moths circle The Rock of Prayer.
Walking over to the frog pond, she stared
at her reflection. Something had congealed.
Her childhood was gone. His had returned.
There was nothing to be done though there
was much she had yet to do. It began to rain.
She stared at her reflection. It continued to rain.
