Adam Houle
Second Echo
Her words by sound alone were spring,
far off bells ringing and birds
above a land of cobble lanes―
the stuff of a storybook Wales.
But now, hearing it again, event
And voice coalesce into the Cardiff Blitz.
This was roaches grown bold, at ease
in light as they ate the baseboard glue
all the endless winter. No new coal
in weeks, she woke and found
her breath alive above her bed,
a soul gone forth on shreds of smoke.
She followed it down the stairs
and onto the ruins of Craddock Street.
Overcast skies. Engines in the clouds.
For these, my grandmother would rumble
a low burbling growl, then a rising glissando
into a teakettle’s whistle until the bombs
falling in her mind arced toward home
and rocked, and rock again, a target.
Private Waters
“wholsome for many infyrmities”
So darling! The skirted girl with pink and blue
Wellington boots who aims a rushing hose
at the zinnias. It is summer. This is fun.
Soon, the bed is flooded. Chips of dyed mulch
float on the minor pond. Palmetto bugs bob
along, calm enough but paddling for a far shore.
Mother loves her gardener. The gardener loves
cool water. The zinnias, full bloomed spikey heads
of color, love everything. Everything loves them.
The mailbox is monogrammed, and mother ran
a marathon. She’s training for another. This is life
well made: everything behaves and, groomed
by the latest trends, the flowers offer no complaint
when the water runs and runs. Then it sits.
It laps at each green stalk. The seeds of rot begin.
Tomb of the Muses
Today, language lives
even if it’s gossip that flowers the halls.
Gaudy, gauzy, buzzing
out like wasps from a paper hive,
the prom report is here.
No one is happy
but passes along scandalous
tidbits of a limp rebellion.
Someone kissed someone’s
someone. Pollen pricked the wispy hairs
of his upper lip. I heard it felt weird
but tasted―o spring!―delicious.
Adam Houle is the author of Stray (Lithic Press, 2017). His poems have appeared in AGNI, Shenandoah, Guernica, and elsewhere. He lives in South Carolina. For more information and a picture of a dust storm, please visit http://www.adamhoule.com/.
Return to September 2017 Edition
Her words by sound alone were spring,
far off bells ringing and birds
above a land of cobble lanes―
the stuff of a storybook Wales.
But now, hearing it again, event
And voice coalesce into the Cardiff Blitz.
This was roaches grown bold, at ease
in light as they ate the baseboard glue
all the endless winter. No new coal
in weeks, she woke and found
her breath alive above her bed,
a soul gone forth on shreds of smoke.
She followed it down the stairs
and onto the ruins of Craddock Street.
Overcast skies. Engines in the clouds.
For these, my grandmother would rumble
a low burbling growl, then a rising glissando
into a teakettle’s whistle until the bombs
falling in her mind arced toward home
and rocked, and rock again, a target.
Private Waters
“wholsome for many infyrmities”
So darling! The skirted girl with pink and blue
Wellington boots who aims a rushing hose
at the zinnias. It is summer. This is fun.
Soon, the bed is flooded. Chips of dyed mulch
float on the minor pond. Palmetto bugs bob
along, calm enough but paddling for a far shore.
Mother loves her gardener. The gardener loves
cool water. The zinnias, full bloomed spikey heads
of color, love everything. Everything loves them.
The mailbox is monogrammed, and mother ran
a marathon. She’s training for another. This is life
well made: everything behaves and, groomed
by the latest trends, the flowers offer no complaint
when the water runs and runs. Then it sits.
It laps at each green stalk. The seeds of rot begin.
Tomb of the Muses
Today, language lives
even if it’s gossip that flowers the halls.
Gaudy, gauzy, buzzing
out like wasps from a paper hive,
the prom report is here.
No one is happy
but passes along scandalous
tidbits of a limp rebellion.
Someone kissed someone’s
someone. Pollen pricked the wispy hairs
of his upper lip. I heard it felt weird
but tasted―o spring!―delicious.
Adam Houle is the author of Stray (Lithic Press, 2017). His poems have appeared in AGNI, Shenandoah, Guernica, and elsewhere. He lives in South Carolina. For more information and a picture of a dust storm, please visit http://www.adamhoule.com/.
Return to September 2017 Edition