Three Poems by Joan Colby
The Meat Men
From Lincolnshire where he’d a taste
For roast beef, the heritage of Englishmen, he sailed
For that new country where cattled roamed
The weatern plains, long-horned and lean.
Landed at the center of things where hogs and steers
Shipped in from Kansas. The stockyards stinking
Of blood and shit, boys driving the fattening bodies
Into pens. The killing floors shone like money,
Glistening torsos hanging in the cold rooms
Where sharpened knives ruled
Like the old Shakespearian kings.
He ate his fill and died
At thirty, his heart enlarged with rich
Crusted ribs and shanks.
His son in the office toting up profits. The Sunday dinner
Sacrosanct as a shorthorn’s ivory fat
Sizzling to gold on on the heavy platter.
Like the Lord of the Manor, he carved with dexterity
And died young, his heart pounding like the herds
That marched from Texas on the Goodnight trail.
His son, your dad, in suit and fedora
Rode the train to the yards where men
Prodded reluctant beasts into the stunning parlors to become
Sirloins, fillets, briskets, T-bones, eye of round,
The roasts: crown and standing rib. Saved from draft by
An army’s appetite, he brought home beef
In a rationed era. You ate hearty like earls, like
Englishmen. He died at fifty, his heart
Seizing and softening. All those carcasses
Hung like the shields of yeomen.
A legacy of early demise is what they handed on, those men
Who stood at the dinner table brandishing knives
Over the stained hunk oozing its redness
To water the mouth, strain the heart.
Their bellies hard and thrusting.
From Lincolnshire where he’d a taste
For roast beef, the heritage of Englishmen, he sailed
For that new country where cattled roamed
The weatern plains, long-horned and lean.
Landed at the center of things where hogs and steers
Shipped in from Kansas. The stockyards stinking
Of blood and shit, boys driving the fattening bodies
Into pens. The killing floors shone like money,
Glistening torsos hanging in the cold rooms
Where sharpened knives ruled
Like the old Shakespearian kings.
He ate his fill and died
At thirty, his heart enlarged with rich
Crusted ribs and shanks.
His son in the office toting up profits. The Sunday dinner
Sacrosanct as a shorthorn’s ivory fat
Sizzling to gold on on the heavy platter.
Like the Lord of the Manor, he carved with dexterity
And died young, his heart pounding like the herds
That marched from Texas on the Goodnight trail.
His son, your dad, in suit and fedora
Rode the train to the yards where men
Prodded reluctant beasts into the stunning parlors to become
Sirloins, fillets, briskets, T-bones, eye of round,
The roasts: crown and standing rib. Saved from draft by
An army’s appetite, he brought home beef
In a rationed era. You ate hearty like earls, like
Englishmen. He died at fifty, his heart
Seizing and softening. All those carcasses
Hung like the shields of yeomen.
A legacy of early demise is what they handed on, those men
Who stood at the dinner table brandishing knives
Over the stained hunk oozing its redness
To water the mouth, strain the heart.
Their bellies hard and thrusting.
All the Fractures
Why would anyone care to know
How I broke my femur
Ten years ago in an ice storm.
Why I was outside wearing
Only a robe and snowboots
Before dawn.
How long it took me
To crawl from the barn to the house
In the freezing sleet
Wondering how long it takes to freeze.
Why would anyone care that I screamed.
No one could hear me.
My leg dragging like a log
Skidded from the forest.
Hauling with my arms
Along an icy track,
Body flat as a sled,
Leg somehow detached
Simply an impediment.
Why relate this—no one cares
To hear another’s misery
As dull and indecipherable
As someone else’s dreams.
Crawl, Rest. Crawl.
That’s what a life becomes.
Everything depends on will.
That’s what you believe.
You learn how wrong this is,
It’s chance that matters.
The house stands white on white
Contrasted with the darkness
Half-snow half-ice. The soaking
Memory still aches.
Who wants to hear this account
Of woe and stupidity
Like a woman who went hiking
As the storm brewed,
Forgetting to tell anyone
Where she was going.
We think if we’ve survived this long
We must be invincible.
In the house, sleepers stretch and turn beneath
Their downy comforters.
We are hapless souls.
How long till dawn, I wonder.
I am headed east
Toward the stand of hickories
Shaggy as old horses.
The ragged bridal wreath
Blooms with clots of snow.
What an irony to die
A hundred yards from a doorknob
Too high to reach.
Why would anyone care to know
How I broke my femur
Ten years ago in an ice storm.
Why I was outside wearing
Only a robe and snowboots
Before dawn.
How long it took me
To crawl from the barn to the house
In the freezing sleet
Wondering how long it takes to freeze.
Why would anyone care that I screamed.
No one could hear me.
My leg dragging like a log
Skidded from the forest.
Hauling with my arms
Along an icy track,
Body flat as a sled,
Leg somehow detached
Simply an impediment.
Why relate this—no one cares
To hear another’s misery
As dull and indecipherable
As someone else’s dreams.
Crawl, Rest. Crawl.
That’s what a life becomes.
Everything depends on will.
That’s what you believe.
You learn how wrong this is,
It’s chance that matters.
The house stands white on white
Contrasted with the darkness
Half-snow half-ice. The soaking
Memory still aches.
Who wants to hear this account
Of woe and stupidity
Like a woman who went hiking
As the storm brewed,
Forgetting to tell anyone
Where she was going.
We think if we’ve survived this long
We must be invincible.
In the house, sleepers stretch and turn beneath
Their downy comforters.
We are hapless souls.
How long till dawn, I wonder.
I am headed east
Toward the stand of hickories
Shaggy as old horses.
The ragged bridal wreath
Blooms with clots of snow.
What an irony to die
A hundred yards from a doorknob
Too high to reach.
What He Told Me
He’d married into an alien culture.
Latin missals, priests, novenas, penance.
I was his child infused with his
Southern heritage so I’d see
Who we really were. The colonies:
A Virginia magistrate, a planter,
Kings Mountain, Chancellorsville.
Kentucky horsemen, Carolina women.
Brer Rabbit in the bramble bush
Little Black Sambo and Jeannie
With the Light Brown Hair. I knew that
Southern family I’d met
Infrequently or never
They visited. They wrote letters
Aligned with him to hold me.
When a nun insisted I pray
For my father’s conversion, I threw
The catechism into the dry well
Of disbelief. We’d go to hell
Together.
No angels shared my desk.
Jesus was a myth like Osiris.
A vegetation metaphor.
More confidante than daughter
I heeded what he taught me.
Avoid the tyranny of the weak.
Marry someone you can talk to.
He’d married into an alien culture.
Latin missals, priests, novenas, penance.
I was his child infused with his
Southern heritage so I’d see
Who we really were. The colonies:
A Virginia magistrate, a planter,
Kings Mountain, Chancellorsville.
Kentucky horsemen, Carolina women.
Brer Rabbit in the bramble bush
Little Black Sambo and Jeannie
With the Light Brown Hair. I knew that
Southern family I’d met
Infrequently or never
They visited. They wrote letters
Aligned with him to hold me.
When a nun insisted I pray
For my father’s conversion, I threw
The catechism into the dry well
Of disbelief. We’d go to hell
Together.
No angels shared my desk.
Jesus was a myth like Osiris.
A vegetation metaphor.
More confidante than daughter
I heeded what he taught me.
Avoid the tyranny of the weak.
Marry someone you can talk to.
Joan Colby has published widely in journals such as Poetry, Atlanta Review, South Dakota Review, Gargoyle, Pinyon, Little Patuxent Review, Spillway, Midwestern Gothic and others. Awards include two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Literature. She has published 20 books including Selected Poems from FutureCycle Press which received the 2013 FutureCycle Prize and Ribcage from Glass Lyre Press which has been awarded the 2015 Kithara Book Prize. Three of her poems have been featured on Verse Daily and another is among the winners of the 2016 Atlanta Review International Poetry Contest. Her newest books are Carnival from FutureCycle Press, The Seven Heavenly Virtues from Kelsay Books and Her Heartsongs just out from Presa Press.. Colby is a senior editor of FutureCycle Press and an associate editor of Good Works Review. Website: www.joancolby.com. Facebook: Joan Colby. Twitter: poetjm.