Donald Illich
four poems
**
Acting
At the casting call you say “human.”
The man with the purple feather boa
shakes a wing at you.
“Cockroach.”
Crumbs under the fridge, water in the toilet,
a hotel with vacancies, your own.
Why can’t you have anything like love,
even a substitute, like a baby doll?
Is that all you wanted for Christmas?
You had something like acting teachers,
in a stinking classroom they smiled.
You pulled back sour lips to try.
Maybe Vaseline on the teeth and lips,
or electric shocks will help
this animal get it right.
**
A Wagon Full of Rocks
I drive past a yard of wood chips
and a set of steps to my apartments,
which block a hungry, dinner plate moon.
Dishrag clouds wring a creepy glow
from the windows. My fingers grip
the wheel they held loosely before.
By the building’s familiar stoop
stands a red wagon, full of rocks.
The white sidewalk’s coated
in dead bugs and broken twigs.
I step out, a pack on my shoulder.
A breeze makes me shiver. I recall
my old lives, pink duplexes bound
with roses, dorms with cell-like
columns. They unpeel in my memory,
but I can’t eat this fruit. I ride
to the next street, fearing it’ll
only be a city planner’s sketch,
and I won’t be able to fill
the space between the lines.
**
The Blank Corners
Right now my hands are so soft
girlfriends are amazed my palms
are less calloused than theirs, but
later they won’t be mine at all,
shriveled into claws that roughly tap
against a door that’ll never open.
Currently, my head is so huge my brothers
remind me of doors I’ve pulled wrong,
easy words I’ve mispronounced, but
in the future it’ll be a shrunken souvenir
click-clacking against some teenager’s door.
My body is a dumb little boy racing
Matchbox cars, building action figure
armies across the living room carpet.
Soon the doors will close, lights will suddenly
blink out, and his voice will rise, until
his “mommies” fill every blank corner,
the ceiling melting away like gas.
**
Holiday
Maybe the vacations line up
inside giant gladiolas
that overwhelm the living
with the scent of beaches
and fried skin, cocoa
butter and the last fruity drink
that sent them into their
temporary lover’s arms.
A shooting gallery’s set up
for tired workers to kill ducks
named Jamaica and Florida,
except the game is rigged,
a ping means a bulls eye
is taken away before their
eyes, replaced by a spy camera
that sees where they go,
every cubical targeted by
the big white hunter’s
quest for efficiency.
The lucky few who breathe
in the scent of days off,
opening like new blossoms
on a warm day, keep the
perfume to themselves.
In bottles on their cabinets
they count the drops, cry
like hell if the red line
shows any liquid’s missing.
The brand is more expensive
every year and it takes a
lot of shoveling shit to
smell so damn good.
**
return to sawbuck 1.1
**
Donald Illich has published poetry in The Iowa Review, Fourteen Hills, Roanoke Review, and New Zoo Poetry Review. His work will be included in future issues of Passages North, Nimrod, LIT, and The Sulphur River Literary Review. He received a Prairie Schooner scholarship to the 2006 Nebraska Summer Writer’s Conference.
**
Acting
At the casting call you say “human.”
The man with the purple feather boa
shakes a wing at you.
“Cockroach.”
Crumbs under the fridge, water in the toilet,
a hotel with vacancies, your own.
Why can’t you have anything like love,
even a substitute, like a baby doll?
Is that all you wanted for Christmas?
You had something like acting teachers,
in a stinking classroom they smiled.
You pulled back sour lips to try.
Maybe Vaseline on the teeth and lips,
or electric shocks will help
this animal get it right.
**
A Wagon Full of Rocks
I drive past a yard of wood chips
and a set of steps to my apartments,
which block a hungry, dinner plate moon.
Dishrag clouds wring a creepy glow
from the windows. My fingers grip
the wheel they held loosely before.
By the building’s familiar stoop
stands a red wagon, full of rocks.
The white sidewalk’s coated
in dead bugs and broken twigs.
I step out, a pack on my shoulder.
A breeze makes me shiver. I recall
my old lives, pink duplexes bound
with roses, dorms with cell-like
columns. They unpeel in my memory,
but I can’t eat this fruit. I ride
to the next street, fearing it’ll
only be a city planner’s sketch,
and I won’t be able to fill
the space between the lines.
**
The Blank Corners
Right now my hands are so soft
girlfriends are amazed my palms
are less calloused than theirs, but
later they won’t be mine at all,
shriveled into claws that roughly tap
against a door that’ll never open.
Currently, my head is so huge my brothers
remind me of doors I’ve pulled wrong,
easy words I’ve mispronounced, but
in the future it’ll be a shrunken souvenir
click-clacking against some teenager’s door.
My body is a dumb little boy racing
Matchbox cars, building action figure
armies across the living room carpet.
Soon the doors will close, lights will suddenly
blink out, and his voice will rise, until
his “mommies” fill every blank corner,
the ceiling melting away like gas.
**
Holiday
Maybe the vacations line up
inside giant gladiolas
that overwhelm the living
with the scent of beaches
and fried skin, cocoa
butter and the last fruity drink
that sent them into their
temporary lover’s arms.
A shooting gallery’s set up
for tired workers to kill ducks
named Jamaica and Florida,
except the game is rigged,
a ping means a bulls eye
is taken away before their
eyes, replaced by a spy camera
that sees where they go,
every cubical targeted by
the big white hunter’s
quest for efficiency.
The lucky few who breathe
in the scent of days off,
opening like new blossoms
on a warm day, keep the
perfume to themselves.
In bottles on their cabinets
they count the drops, cry
like hell if the red line
shows any liquid’s missing.
The brand is more expensive
every year and it takes a
lot of shoveling shit to
smell so damn good.
**
return to sawbuck 1.1
**
Donald Illich has published poetry in The Iowa Review, Fourteen Hills, Roanoke Review, and New Zoo Poetry Review. His work will be included in future issues of Passages North, Nimrod, LIT, and The Sulphur River Literary Review. He received a Prairie Schooner scholarship to the 2006 Nebraska Summer Writer’s Conference.
