Ramshackle Review

Jennifer Blair:

Three Poems

Pied

And then there was the student who sat

front row, right in the center. A teardrop

tattooed at one eye’s edge, he never 

stopped asking questions and so, over 

time, I started to believe in Ecclesiastes--

equating sorrow with an unquenchable 

thirst for knowledge. Some students 

resented him. Others simply stopped 

paying attention as I attempted to 

give him answers. Eventually, I had 

to apologize for sometimes ignoring his

eager face as I looked out past him.

He didn’t seem to mind. He got that 

a lot, he said. Near the end of the semester,

after an hour of Hopkins, a poet 

of deprivation, guilt, and praise 

few seemed to care for, he stayed 

behind while everyone else hurried out.

He wanted to tell me about his

grandmother—the first old person

he’d ever met. At first, he was really

frightened by her red watery eyes

and bumped up purple veins

but then, as he continued to watch

her blotched hands wildly waving out

a magical tale, he suddenly realized 

how interesting and wonderful she was,

so the poem we’d discussed that day

always made him think of her and

that’s why it spoke to him, which he

thought he’d let me know. I thanked

him, and after he took his bag and left,

I stood in front of the green chalkboard,

white stubs nestled in a dusty heap

like so many extinguished cigarettes

while a new room appeared in my mind.

Neighbors

Each year, more of the garden

turns to grass as their backs bend

down and arthritis claims their

hands. Yet they are industrious

as ever, rolling out wheelbarrow,

hoe, and rake early each morning

this spring. They work in flannel

shirts and wide brimmed hats

which smother the face in shade,

laboring side by side and apart,

doing what they can manage.

Yesterday afternoon I saw them

with a new bush, its roots still

wrapped in burlap. When they

finally decided just where to

place it, one dug with a

shovel while the other rested.

The spade kept passing, back

and forth, back and forth,

back and forth—til there was

eventually enough space

for a living thing to breathe.

Ravens

again, in the preacher’s yard across the street.

He takes one day off a week, given that the

day of rest, for him, is not. He uses it to

shoot hoops half-heartedly, wash the car,

set the ladder against the house to adjust

the drain which almost unhooked itself

from the eave during the last big storm.

Ravens who peck absentmindedly, going

to and fro, leaving no marks in the grass.

I know I have questioned the whereabouts

of things, the goodness of things, not liked

the ooze flowing out of the pie crust.

The Irises, ragged, have singed tips and

summer is gone. More lines around my

eyes. But it’s not a story anymore. The dust

rolling in behind the closet door, the

way tree branches crowd out the sky.

Jennifer Blair has published in Copper Nickel, New South, Tulane Review, Rattle, and the James Dickey Review among others.  She teaches at the University of Georgia.