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Tim Poland
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Invitation to Haunt
for SRC
you’re long overdue, it seems, close to
three
years gone now, and you’ve yet to appear
for a single decent face-to-face haunting
you know the sort, something cinematic
and flashy, full of gasps, with a menacing
soundtrack—consider this an invitation to
materialize in the passenger seat beside me,
sending the car into a nearly irreparable
tailspin across the wet pavement, or
rock noisily in the chair beside the bed and
remain there long enough for me to tell you
one of the thousand things I have to tell,
or
appear behind me suddenly as I wipe
a hole in the steamed bathroom mirror
and set the steel blade to my throat, or
drift before me, face grinning around that
pipe
clamped tight in your teeth, floating on the
braids of smoke winding from my cigarette,
or
rise like a trout from the waters of this
river
that has run through our veins like blood,
this river where your ashes paint the stones
these few photographs inadequate, the
ring of your laughter reverberating in my
ears every goddamn day, not enough
come on now, what’s keeping you?
Earth Science
…but the earth abideth for ever.
(Ecclesiastes 1:4)
so we’ve been told, but
I’m no longer convinced
1000 miles per hour—speed at which the earth
turns on its axis
so of course the dog ran east that time to
lap
up full advantage of the speed of the
spinning
67,000 miles per hour—speed at which the
earth orbits the sun
flung at such a reckless pace, it’s no
surprise to find
a few bugs lodged in my teeth at the end of
the year
761 miles per hour—speed at which sound
travels
but faster at higher temperatures, so we
closed the
windows, stoked the fire, and listened
carefully
9.8 meters per second—speed at which an
object falls
acorns the squirrels drop on us from the red
oak obey the
theorem while sibling leaves resist the
physics of falling
186,287 miles per second—speed at which
light travels
yet still not fast enough to catch the
warning in the
momentary arch of your eyebrow before it’s
too late
29.5 days—length of a lunar cycle
impossible, in such a short time, for us to
recover
from one full moon before the next one
appears
3-15 centimeters per year—speeds at which
the tectonic plates that
form the earth’s crust shift and move
so finally I learn that the slide of the
North American plate
where our house sits is the cause of that
crack in the driveway
how can anything abideth when riven by
such a fracus of velocities? how to hold
ourselves in place when the ground slithers
beneath us? how to begin when time is
a spasm and the earth is a pot of split-pea
soup still simmering on the flame and our
histories quiver like splinters in the thin,
green skin forming on the surface, apt to
bubble loose into the vapor at any moment?
4,550,000,000 years—age of this earth and
this solar system—give or take a few
years, depending on religious affiliation
73 years—average life span of an American
male—a white one like me, that is
so, if you come home one day and can’t find
me,
don’t panic, darling, but hurry—keep
searching
look a few centimeters to the right or left
of where you left me and I’ll be there,
clinging to the North American plate,
waiting for you, holding on for dear life
Dreaming Other Options in a House Full of
Dogs
in one dream there’s only one dog living
with us in this house
and his name is, no, her name, is something
like Milly and
she’s a pedigreed border collie, sometimes a
golden retriever,
and she fetches my slippers and my newspaper
and sits faithfully
at my feet and never poops on the floor and
never barks unless
someone in a ski mask with a hunting knife
tucked into his boot
is lurking outside in the dark spaces around
the garbage cans
in another dream there are no dogs, not one,
we don’t even like
dogs, we only have a cat, just one, and he
doesn’t have a name
and doesn’t care a lick about us, except
that we provide food,
so we’re free to do what we choose, when we
choose, and every
weekend we set out an extra bowl of food,
leave the house to the
nameless cat, and take a trip to someplace
new and interesting,
someplace that involves a brochure and a
guided tour
in another dream dogs are prey, and we hunt
and kill them, without
passion, with skill and precision, using
weapons we’ve fashioned
ourselves—then we eat them, turn their
skinned bodies on a spit
over an open fire, gnaw roasted flesh from
their bones, make rude
necklaces from their teeth, and wear
dog-skin hats—you look
particularly fetching with the pelt of a
wild Pomeranian draped about
your face, its dried, stuffed head mounted
on yours like a tiara
in another dream, you lie sleeping in the
grass, just like you are right
now, and one of these many mongrel dogs we
share this house with
sleeps next to you, curled into your side,
between breast and hip,
exactly my favorite spot on your body,
exactly where I would curl
into you if I were the dog sleeping beside
you in the grass right now,
exactly the spot I would wish to be if I
were that blind dog with the
bum leg snoring next to you in the grass
behind this house
Tim Poland lives and works in the New River
Valley near the Blue Ridge Mountains in
southwestern Virginia where he is a
professor of English at Radford University.
He is the author of Escapee (America House,
2001), a collection of short fiction. His
work has been published in various literary
magazines, such as The Beloit Fiction
Journal, Timber Creek Review, Literal Latté,
The Furnace Review, Rattle, Main Street Rag,
Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, Appalachian
Journal, Appalachian Heritage, and others.
He is the recipient of a Plattner/Appalachian
Heritage Award, and his work has been
nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
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