Neighbor’s Yard Sale


Relatives of Richard and Amy, my deceased
neighbors, have been scouring their house
across the street for weeks, making many runs
to the dump, selling Richard’s car—and today
there’s this traffic-stopping weekend bazaar.
(Jesus warned them not to build bigger barns.)

I survey my tons of classical Compact Discs,
(“Dad, when do you ever have time to listen?”)
piles of unpublished poems, Collected Works
of just about every genius no longer living.
My daughter shakes her head when she visits:
she can envision yard sales, trips to the dump.

As business slows, unsold exercise apparatus
sits near the sidewalk with a paper label: Free.
Joan from up the street arrives—the leftover
just fits in her van. She must exercise in place:
it lacks wheels to facilitate escape, when dark
angels appear to collect Joan’s Balance Due.




In 1975


As I turned twenty-eight my build was buff,
and buff it remained, despite repeated trips
to Baskin-Robbins, accumulating scoops.

My CD returned a sweet fifteen percent:
summer’s own harvest, FDIC guaranteed.
I didn’t even know my doctor’s name.

Relationships with girls were mostly ventures
into the squeeze of hyperventilating cleavage,
intrusions past waistbands, bold bushwhacks.

Then, one girl lifted me firmly by the chin:
“Look in my eyes, Mister, something else
I have two of.” I was forced to stare at her

blue auguries, in which I divined the year
two thousand-fifty, as if with binoculars:
guys had hi-tech electronics up their ears,

while groping tattooed girls in solar cars.
Our President combed her ultraviolet hair.
The sky glowed infrared. I wasn’t there.


Russell Rowland is from new Hampshire's Lakes Region. A past recipient of Descant's Baskerville Publishers Award, he is the 2010 winner of Old Red Kimono's Parish Lake Poetry Contest. His chapbook, "Train of All Cabooses", will be published this year by Finishing Line Press.