The War at Home
Did the neighbors hear it, two sharp pops
that cracked the dawn’s smooth glass?
I looked out front and saw a figure
pacing slowly past the house,
a standard–issue pistol lengthening
his white right hand.
I knew the day would come
when armed invaders would put
the whole town under law:
its grocery store and horses,
its small–time orchards and its backyard farms.
They dressed in black wool pants and t–shirts,
red bandannas knotted at their necks,
their hair cropped Mormon–short.
They carried hand guns, hunting knives,
and battle–ready 5G radios,
and raised electrified perimeters
to keep us safe (their word) inside.
I’ve seen their observation blinds,
prepped and fully kitted out, between
the Red Delicious rows at Shelburne Farm.
We only want what’s best for you,
they said, as true believers often do.
They promised endless visitations
of their lambent god, a sort of dawn god
pale and glimmering in the atmosphere
above the conservation pines.
They made us watch the eastern sky,
because the war would come from that direction,
so they told us, from the east.
so they told us, from the east.
But this was not that day. The cop
strode past the cooling deer corpse,
curled up in the roadside sand
like a sleeping child, and climbed
into his cruiser, slamming the door.
Maybe that was just the way they do it:
two bullets to a downed deer’s head,
execution–style, then rumble off
to leave the bright, dead envelope behind.
The war dragged on. Rockets arced
across the sky, falling on the station
and apartment blocks without a warning.
All the precinct’s children huddled
in the theatre. The screens stayed dark
throughout the shelling—no reports
except the sounds of shouts and gunfire
in the street, running feet and small
unrecogized explosions. On stage
an old man ranged the kids in rows
and told them stories, taught them how
to sing some half–remembered songs.
The dawn god, high and wakeful
in his eastern palace, kept refining his campaign.
The gunfire stopped, an elderly survivor said,
so out we came. I don’t know how to say it.
There were limbs and fingers everywhere,
and clothes and bodies strewn about.
The deer lay in the roadside sand unclaimed.
Family Resemblances
[ 1 ]
At the abandoned harbor
sun raked down the rusted sides of container ships
listing by the gantry cranes long disused
At the abandoned harbor
sun raked down the rusted sides of container ships
listing by the gantry cranes long disused
My brother squatted by a pool of oil
rainbowed drab and gray
That boy
could liberate a sparrow from a mess of old tires
I mean the virtue nested in his eyes
and sparrowed out of his eyes like rays
and he was kinged by it
small king the necessary air would touch
attempting to be gentle
[ 2 ]
That’s good my mother said That’s good
and I said What’s good
and she said June
No one ventured on the water any longer
but the water sometimes ventured over us
in the dark
with no wheel to redirect it
and the foreshore on the mornings after
reeked of tar and shone like mica in the sun
[ 3 ]
In a raglan coat the color of a crow
my sister looked out over drifts of waves
going every way those days
a child’s disorder
disrespecting all the known laws of physics
My sister as a raglan crow looked out
diminishing and diminishing
a human horizon I was veering away from
but it was just her way
to disassociate
the named thing from the namer
late deconstructionist
and her skull filled up with darkness
like a lesson
[ 4 ]
My father had already departed for the moon
and I mean that literally
None of us were sure what happened after
not the old philosopher
not the one–armed general with his useless weapon
My father climbed up into his happy smile and departed
years before he died
I feel him sometimes in the wind
a jaune door swinging in the wind but never slamming
Some day he may come pouring from the sky
with all his insubstantial cormorants around him
the surface of the bay in frenzy
reflecting the frenzy in the clouds
Image: photo by Jeffrey Hamilton on Unsplash, licensed under CC 2.0.
Jonathan Weinert is the author of the poetry collections A Slow Green Sleep, winner of the Saturnalia Books Editors' Prize, In the Mode of Disappearance, winner of the Nightboat Poetry Prize, and Thirteen Small Apostrophes, a chapbook. He is co-editor of Until Everything Is Continuous Again: American Poets on the Recent Work of W.S. Merwin, a book of essays. You can find his recent poems and prose in Harvard Review, Blackbird, and Good River Review, and forthcoming in On the Seawall. Jonathan lives in Stow, Massachusetts.
Latest posts by Jonathan Weinert (see all)
- Two Poems - November 17, 2023
- Poem Beginning in the Body and Ending in a Landscape - April 23, 2017
- The Truth of Low-Hanging Clouds - July 27, 2015