Self Help

      A Guide for the Retiring

      Copyright © 2017 Elizabeth Poreba. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

      Resource Publications

      An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

      199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

      Eugene, OR 97401

      www.wipfandstock.com

      paperback isbn: 978-1-5326-1975-5

      hardcover isbn: 978-1-4982-4631-6

      ebook isbn: 978-1-4982-4630-9

      Manufactured in the U.S.A.

      Acknowledgements

      Boomer Lit: “Fissures” and “Tourists”

      Canary: “February Thaw”

      Ducts: “Yellow-Crowned Night Heron”

      Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion: “Feast of St. Philip”

      Limestone: “A Walk in the Back Lot”

      Mom Egg Review: “Passed On”

      Mudfish: “Feast of the Holy Guardian Angels”

      Time of Singing: “Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 61”

      Written River: “Verde Que Te Quiero Verde”

      Among the many indignities of aging is the irresistible temptation to reach for some menu of bromides and convey to the world those invaluable lessons about living.

      —Laura Kipnis

      I

      Fissures

      I’m made of words mostly.

      The rest is thin.

      Words hold me up

      like bones beneath the skin.

      The thought of a soul within

      is mute or moot

      and slides in a vowel shift

      from silent to irrelevant.

      Perhaps such accidents

      of sound are not mere

      motions of the tongue.

      I ponder them as seers once

      studied fissures in burned bone.

      Leaving Thessaloniki

      I would leave, but the farmers have closed the airport.

      Besides, they have a story around here

      About a mother and daughter parting

      And it doesn’t turn out well

      From the mother’s point of view.

      They have circled the airport with their green tractors,

      And they look like reliable men,

      Worried like their saints.

      Why should they pay taxes?

      These changes are probably not for the better.

      I would leave if they opened the airport,

      Though how fair is it that I

      Should go and never know

      The color of the tight buds

      I first saw a week ago?

      I would leave, but I can’t.

      Why should we part, anyway?

      Farmers here keep their families close.

      They build walls around their compounds

      And include chickens and a vegetable garden.

      Sundays, I’d set a table outside,

      We’d eat and listen to the chickens mutter

      About the boredom of staying together.

      Sister Ghost

      for Gertrude Tredwell of 29 East 4th Street, 1840–1933

      In the favored front room, in Father’s bed,

      windows papered to keep out cold,

      she lay ready to die to the Kingdom

      as she’d been told, propped on feathers plucked

      from geese of bygone feasts, remembering

      the great china platter, grace intoned

      before meals, also perhaps graces

      she had missed, the drapes always drawn

      to spare the furniture from the sun.

      It was hers at the last, the stately parlor,

      the marble stoop pocked by coal ash,

      the triple friezes belting the high ceilings

      and the columns on Father’s fine wardrobe,

      temple to the camphor-scented topcoat,

      the opera hat and folded cravats.

      Even when the charming nephew died

      she continued to preside, imperial,

      object of rumors of wealth and madness,

      living past the money until rot took the walls

      and soot shadowed the plaster work.

      Now I, the smiling docent, guard

      the fine red Rococo parlor set

      where she and her sisters sat for life

      waiting for the maid to light the fire.

      I watch the sun touch the carpet square

      as it did in her day at the same hour,

      waiting boxed in her house, hard-pressed

      against the tenements, even

      the Ladies’ Mile gone, a thread pulled uptown.

      The tourists depart. The house hunches,

      its fanlight flutters, its pillars brace

      like shoulders tensed above the street.

      It is the hour for Gertrude to appear

      and wait with me until it’s time

      to close the shutters and take in the sign.

      We sit, straight backs scarcely touching

      our chairs, two ladies about to disappear

      like the house, holding tight

      to our consequence, despite

      accumulating evidence.

      Feast of St. Phillip

      Fellow literalist, your doubt

      about the loaves and fishes

      always comforted