The Apostrophe Blog
Photo by Neil Theasby
In December 2018, Halfway Down the Stairs published two of my poems in the “Coming of Age” issue of their quarterly magazine: “A Woman on the Verge of Menopause Looks Back on a Too-Skinny Girl Also on the Verge” and “The Wisdom is Hindsight.”
Halfway Down the Stairs is a visually inviting literary magazine that was, according to their website, “established in 2005 to publish cutting-edge fiction, poetry, and nonfiction by talented writers.” Their latest issue’s theme is “Resistance”; upcoming themes are “Body & Soul” and “Winter.”
The subject of my first poem is explained by its overly long title. The second’s epigraph tells its raison d’être. That poem is reproduced below.
The Wisdom Is Hindsight
advice I would give my young writer self
Settle into a chair,
reclining, poised.
Find the cradle,
the thrown-away river,
mud & crabgrass stitched from
a swimming-pool lawn.
Remember to be the sling
back, there are often seats—
leatherette banquettes
from a jettisoned car beached
beside a dishwasher sideboard,
a chest freezer overturned.
The tension is between
hanging or fallen, apart.
There will always be angles.
The words will insist on
wandering
their scrap-yard paths.
Past rejected
sinks & vanities & tubs,
crooked as a mouth of teeth,
where monster-toothed machines
ache the inexplicable
into depth.
Hellish, yet enchanting
once unearthed.
A ravine forever
echoing what’s said.
Both photos accompanying this post—the first of the National Metals Junkyard and the second of a 1940s Victory Program scrapyard—are in the public domain.
Interests: Reading, writing, not arithmetic. The art and craft of poetry. Photography. Vegetable and flower gardening especially heirloom bulbs and dahlias. Movies in real theatres. Theatre on real stages. Art in real galleries. Crossword puzzles and, of course, Wordle. Singer-songwriters like Aimee Mann and Patti Griffin. All kinds of music especially 1930s jazz. Venice, Italy! The Dude abides.
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