ISSUE 7

 

Adam Houle​

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Early November on the Television

 

Before the deer can find the cracked skulls

of pumpkins at the subdivision’s ragged edge,

candy canes march across the TV screen.

 

The well qualified enjoy zero percent interest.

Cars loom in metallic wrap on long stone driveways.

The snow is light and slow and no nuisance. Couples

 

draped in so much love that only jewelry will do

have flown somewhere balmy and expensive

to present each other more keepsakes.

 

The waitstaff waits, tucked beside a bird

of paradise. As viewers, we’re led to believe

table service is purpose. Our TV hums,  

 

and we work hard to smile, to burst

the thought balloons leaking from our heads.

 

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The Car Lines

 

Whole swaths of crops

gone, cultivars become lore

for our children.

So long, the experts say,

 

to strawberries, bananas, corn,

beans, and stone fruits:

your plums, your peaches,

your cherries in cute pairs

 

joined where two stems end

in a woody little clot.

Maybe they’ll know cherries

at least by the slot machines

 

on spaceships, spinning dials past

sevens, gold bars, dice, and whatever

other ciphers meaning

nothing much to them.

 

What inscrutable world stirs

in schools pick-up lines,

the idle behemoths nudging them

now toward the exit.

 

 

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Fable of New Weather

 

So confused were the bees,

frantic as the pressure sank

and snow hissed as it fell.

Nearly sleet, thick and fast,

it filled the open-mouthed flowers,

drifted at woody stems,

shaped the smooth contours

of established well-mulched beds.

 

So confused were the bees,                      

they went on working 

regardless. What was faded pollen

gone cold to them? They packed

snow into their buckets, lugging it                          

hiveward, emptied them and left again.

                           

So confused were the bees

in various warehouses they grumbled

and sorted and packed the cells.

                           

So confused were the bees

by the silence of the queen.

Accountants checked columns.

Thick-haired ministers called this a portent

and suffered for it, were killed

or run off. Revelation, some bees argued,

will come but has not yet arrived.

Calamity cannot lead to change

not that this is a calamity of course

—look, just look at the bounty,

look how clear how pure it runs when

you hold it. So confused were the bees

they went like hell back to work

and grew selfish and small and kept

their own counsel and were faithless

at last even to that. The problem, pal,

is that you think there’s a problem.

Some might call this winter.

For others, it’s just the end of fall.

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Weeding Casually to Keep Up the Appearance

 

Losing interest

we let the beds go wild

 

with sprite mimosa trees

and pecans, squirrel hid

 

and bursting up green life,

Florida Betony, clover,

 

ragweed and bind, smilax,

ivies covering ivies covering

 

once-stately shrubbery

because, love, we are stately

 

ourselves only sometimes,

only by accident or in defense,

 

and only when someone

else is watching. With you

 

I am the manikin that comes alive,

electric to feel these limbs

 

as they work the yard

to trick the wild into shape

 

and hide what’s come unmade.

What providence blooms

 

and what new bird is this

that praises us daily?

 

Who cares what he’s called

when we know what he means.

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