Doug Ramspeck
My Father, Drunk, Shakes the Apple Boughs
and the Stars Fall
I remember him sitting nights on our back porch,
looking up at the sky as though the moon were a door
that was nailed shut, his hands in his lap like hibernating
creatures. And the sky was the dark tongue of a blackbird
and the stars were stalled wagons and the hours were
like the laying on of hands. Maybe my father was remembering
how his brother drowned in a river when he was nine,
while the crows, on the bank, offered their constellations of caws,
some metronome of letting go. And I wondered if
peering up at the sky while he was drunk was the only
fixity my father knew, and if the country songs
he sometimes sang cast their words into disappearing circles.
Doug Ramspeck is the author of eight poetry collections, one collection of short stories, and a novella. One recent book, Black Flowers, is published by LSU Press. Five books have received awards: Distant Fires (Grayson Books Poetry Prize), The Owl That Carries Us Away (G. S. Sharat Chandra Prize for Short Fiction), Original Bodies (Michael Waters Poetry Prize), Mechanical Fireflies (Barrow Street Press Poetry Prize), and Black Tupelo Country (John Ciardi Prize for Poetry). Individual poems have appeared in journals that include The Southern Review, Kenyon Review, Slate, and The Georgia Review. He is a three-time recipient of an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award.
Return to March 2022 Edition
and the Stars Fall
I remember him sitting nights on our back porch,
looking up at the sky as though the moon were a door
that was nailed shut, his hands in his lap like hibernating
creatures. And the sky was the dark tongue of a blackbird
and the stars were stalled wagons and the hours were
like the laying on of hands. Maybe my father was remembering
how his brother drowned in a river when he was nine,
while the crows, on the bank, offered their constellations of caws,
some metronome of letting go. And I wondered if
peering up at the sky while he was drunk was the only
fixity my father knew, and if the country songs
he sometimes sang cast their words into disappearing circles.
Doug Ramspeck is the author of eight poetry collections, one collection of short stories, and a novella. One recent book, Black Flowers, is published by LSU Press. Five books have received awards: Distant Fires (Grayson Books Poetry Prize), The Owl That Carries Us Away (G. S. Sharat Chandra Prize for Short Fiction), Original Bodies (Michael Waters Poetry Prize), Mechanical Fireflies (Barrow Street Press Poetry Prize), and Black Tupelo Country (John Ciardi Prize for Poetry). Individual poems have appeared in journals that include The Southern Review, Kenyon Review, Slate, and The Georgia Review. He is a three-time recipient of an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award.
Return to March 2022 Edition