Hobble Creek Review
| Brian Simoneau |
Dust
Before I’d ever read a poem
I traced my name in dust
wherever it settled, traced
it over and over—in pollen
on a windowsill, grime
on dad’s workbench—letters
overlapping, tangled knots
of naming. Lost in the loop
of language, I’d imagine
myself walking the roads
I’d laid down, canyon walls
of dust looming above me.
In an Oregon classroom
it sprawled across the table
like the early pages of a poem.
Books with cracked spines
rested on cluttered shelves, walls
pasted over with faded flyers.
I’d shake off raindrops and take
my place. We grew to know
each other’s imperfections
as our own, young poets
with sheaves of empty paper
we felt the need to fill. Later
I’d hold my poems close
to my body and emerge
into sinking sunlight.
Every shaft filtered the dust
that descends and settles
in every crevice of this life,
innumerable comets of grief
to be ciphered into new
existences, every line worked
into knowable shapes until
something like a soul stretches
across every turning day.
Crossing Wyoming
Thousands of miles behind me,
prairies roll away from the road,
plains in withered shades, patches
of dust packed hard by summer sun.
The wire stretched between posts is
less obvious than where I started:
picket fences and stone walls
weave past cemetery churches
at the edge of town; empty fields
waste in shadows of textile mills
along a dirty river’s banks,
the Merrimack’s murky canals
splitting the city up, keeping
Irish there and Southeast Asians
there, the rich up in the hills.
My neighborhood’s around the church:
housefuls of cousins who still pray
to Ste. Jeanne d’Arc, grandmothers
who used to work the looms, fathers
fixing cars six days a week.
It’s where I come from, the end
foretold by city limits, lives
passing in shadows of fortunes
falling in the river. What else
to claim but what I watched unfold
around me? The failing, falling, weight
of history walling me in.
Until now, just outside Cheyenne,
I never knew the rightness
of undulate—subtle roll, tongue
around the l. Undulating,
swallowing, engulfing. I try
to figure out where one rise falls
and another climbs, undulates:
slow swell of land toward horizons,
rising, falling ocean of brown
and green—everything could be
possible here, nothing held back.
I wouldn’t know, if I broke down
those wire fences, where the land
begins or ends. There’d be nothing
to keep my eyes on the road—
boundaries, not for cattle seeking
fresh pasture, they keep me out
of places I’d never return from.
Before I’d ever read a poem
I traced my name in dust
wherever it settled, traced
it over and over—in pollen
on a windowsill, grime
on dad’s workbench—letters
overlapping, tangled knots
of naming. Lost in the loop
of language, I’d imagine
myself walking the roads
I’d laid down, canyon walls
of dust looming above me.
In an Oregon classroom
it sprawled across the table
like the early pages of a poem.
Books with cracked spines
rested on cluttered shelves, walls
pasted over with faded flyers.
I’d shake off raindrops and take
my place. We grew to know
each other’s imperfections
as our own, young poets
with sheaves of empty paper
we felt the need to fill. Later
I’d hold my poems close
to my body and emerge
into sinking sunlight.
Every shaft filtered the dust
that descends and settles
in every crevice of this life,
innumerable comets of grief
to be ciphered into new
existences, every line worked
into knowable shapes until
something like a soul stretches
across every turning day.
Crossing Wyoming
Thousands of miles behind me,
prairies roll away from the road,
plains in withered shades, patches
of dust packed hard by summer sun.
The wire stretched between posts is
less obvious than where I started:
picket fences and stone walls
weave past cemetery churches
at the edge of town; empty fields
waste in shadows of textile mills
along a dirty river’s banks,
the Merrimack’s murky canals
splitting the city up, keeping
Irish there and Southeast Asians
there, the rich up in the hills.
My neighborhood’s around the church:
housefuls of cousins who still pray
to Ste. Jeanne d’Arc, grandmothers
who used to work the looms, fathers
fixing cars six days a week.
It’s where I come from, the end
foretold by city limits, lives
passing in shadows of fortunes
falling in the river. What else
to claim but what I watched unfold
around me? The failing, falling, weight
of history walling me in.
Until now, just outside Cheyenne,
I never knew the rightness
of undulate—subtle roll, tongue
around the l. Undulating,
swallowing, engulfing. I try
to figure out where one rise falls
and another climbs, undulates:
slow swell of land toward horizons,
rising, falling ocean of brown
and green—everything could be
possible here, nothing held back.
I wouldn’t know, if I broke down
those wire fences, where the land
begins or ends. There’d be nothing
to keep my eyes on the road—
boundaries, not for cattle seeking
fresh pasture, they keep me out
of places I’d never return from.
Brian Simoneau grew up in Lowell, Massachusetts and now lives in
Boston with his wife and daughter. He holds an MA in American Literature
from Boston University and an MFA from the University of Oregon. His
poetry has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Boxcar Poetry Review,
Smartish Pace, and Natural Bridge.
Boston with his wife and daughter. He holds an MA in American Literature
from Boston University and an MFA from the University of Oregon. His
poetry has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Boxcar Poetry Review,
Smartish Pace, and Natural Bridge.
| Home / About / Masthead / Submissions / Contact / Current Issue / News / Archives |
