^,^
At the waist, swell, and come heaving around
To slam at his seatback, making the screws groan
And squawk down half the row as it went tilting
Under my mother and me, under whoever
Was out of luck on the other side of him.
Like a boxer slipping punches, he’d lift his elbows
To flail and jerk, and his wide-open mouth
Would boom out four deep haaa’s to the end of his breath.
He was laughing at Burns and Allen or Jack Benny
In person or at his limitless engagement
With Groucho, Chico, and Harpo. While my mother
Sat there between us, gazing at the stage
And chuckling placidly, I watched with amazement
The spectacle of a helpless father, unmanned,
Disarmed by laughter. The tears would dribble
From under his bifocals, as real as sweat.
He would gape and gag, go limp, and spring back to life.
I would laugh too, but partly at him, afraid
Of becoming him. He could scowl anywhere,
Be solemn or blank in church or going to work,
Turn grim with a cold chisel, or he could smile
At babies or football games, but he only laughed
There in that theater. And up the aisle
And through the lobby to the parking lot
And all the way home, I’d see the glow on his cheeks
Fade to the usual hectic steelmill sunburn.
"My Father Laughing in the Chicago Theater" by David Wagoner from Traveling Light. © University of Illinois Press, 1999
^,^
Farm
Auction
by Amy Fleury
Contrails scrawl the sky under which
sawhorse-and-lumber tables offer
up
the hoard and store of fifty years.
Neighbors have come to scour
house
and barn and implement shed.
Yes, we’ve come to haul it all
away-
their nests of pillows and quilts
and feather ticks, the glazed
plates
and bread crocks, a washtub rimed
with bluing, the saltcellar and
gravy boat,
her cross-stitch sampler and figurines,
canning jars, seals,
lids. And spools
of baling wire, seed drills, spades,
coffee cans of bolts
and bent nails,
a burlap-wrapped schnapps bottle
he kept back of the
barn’s fuse box and all
his spare fuses. An aerial photo of their
farm.
And even the rusted harrow in the ditch.
The auctioneer works to disperse
all their worldly goods, singing
hey
somebody give me twenty now, twenty
as his wife hands over
odd boxes
of cribbage boards and crucifixes
to the ladies fanning
themselves
with sale bills by the tilting lilacs.
From the porch the 4-H
club sells
plates of peach pie and waxy cups of pop.
Inside, the smell of
silage still clings
to his chambray shirt hung
on the backdoor peg after
choring.
How, in stocking feet, he loved to step
on the warm place where
the dog had lain,
where dilapidated hips collapsed her
in a sleeping,
yellow heap.
Now all is echo where once they sat
together with the ledger, adding
columns
of crop yields and prices per bushel,
or thumbing rosaries like
they shelled peas-
dutiful, dutiful to the ceaseless seasons,
to their
tillage and cattle and kin.
Through the window screen comes little
gusts
and the sound of the gavel coming down.
"Farm Auction" by Amy
Fleury from Sympathetic Magic. © Southern Illinois University Press,
2013.
^,^
Rememberng Charles Laughton
   Charles Laughton
1899 - 1962
^,^
 GIVEN TO PAM THE WAUKESHA DAVE'S WAITRESS
A FEW YEARS AGO
A Day Of the Dead figurine
purhased long ago at the Market Place
on Milw. East Side
converted to an item for the faithful waitress
by painting one of the breasts red.
 <3> http://youtu.be/_yoD-7QpcqI "That's what makes us see" Thanks to Rev/Dr. Bentz of New Jersey |
