Jab Drill

You hit it with all you had, which wasn’t much.

Your brother still insisted, “Jab, Shirlee, Jab.”

And you humored him because he humored you,

listened to your vision of Grandmother

behind the antlered gate. It wasn’t the vision,

but you he believed, while the others laughed

“Your stories…” they said as they shut you down.

And so you hit the bag until your arms were floating

He held it still, so you wouldn’t hurt yourself.

He always did and you wondered how he got so strong

when he didn’t have many years on you. 

He had strength without their cruelty, you thought, 

although later you learned, that it wasn’t gone, 

just changed by what he didn’t want to be. 

Keep going, Shirlee. Another jab…He said, 

when you stopped for a breath.

You got to be tough. I won’t be around forever.

and he wasn’t, but you didn’t believe him then.

You jabbed and thought of the grandfather,

who never seemed your grandfather, laughing 

like a shaking paper bag filled with gravel and bile.

You thought of your father, who never seemed

your father, dumb puppet of his own old man,

screaming after your mother, of the cutting

that would happen, if she ever came back,

loud enough for ranch hands to hear him,

a warning for the soon to be disappeared.

Grandfather, father, their guns so loud, 

to keep their hate from sleeping.

And you jabbed your little jabs, knowing

it wasn’t enough, not enough to hurt anyone,

not enough to make anyone stop or listen.

You were too slow, too small, to be violent well

that way. You knew it and so did your brother

The bag didn’t matter, the jabs didn’t matter,

just the metaphor he wanted you to feel. 

Jab, Shirlee. I won’t be around forever.

50 years later, you tell it like yesterday,

but still won’t believe it all. 

“He’s always close.” you say, 

“looking out for me even now.”

Arthritis makes your hands ache, 

You remember the punching bag,

and rub your knuckles.

You’re strong enough to bear it now,

that and so many other things.

In the vision he smiles with Grandmother,

that there you are, still going, 

in the quiet that came after they were gone.

-Brent Allard

The Last Word

The argument was over,

The one they couldn't exit,

although it had all been said.

He couldn't budge if he’d wanted to

couldn't hold forgiveness in his hand,

or pull peace from betrayal.

They were young and in love,

They were fierce and mean about it,

and it was too much for either, finally.

Over now, the buzzing that kept them

repeating, kept them from sleeping,

from feeling like going home.

They hoped it would break, the undertow,

break into waves and let them float

there, still, and take a breath.

She wanted to call out, but didn't.

She wanted to touch him, as if just this once

she could be Christ to his Lazarus,

but she knew that was only a story

and only then, what a terrible story.

His voice had turned to weight.

-Brent Allard

Golden

Your brother had his throat cut,

one night in Hardin, Kentucky.

No one was surprised, except

that it took so long. It was

practically natural causes, although

they couldn’t write that down.

He built hatred, your brother,

every day that he’d been alive.

You were there for most of it,

and had to pay that freight.

What he brought out in you,

nearly killed you, like William,

that night he “fell” out of the car,

Only your drunkenness kept them

from calling it murder. “Manslaughter,”

they ruled, as if a kinder word.

You served the time together and no one ever knew

what really happened. It stayed in the car. The truth

sending out a whispered story to take its place, always

the next thing mentioned after the loud razor fights,

that sent your kids scurrying under the beds.

Was it the night he left you on the train tracks

and you were only saved by being passed out

cold and loose, when the train bumped you off?

Maybe it was all these things, and others

you never told, just knowing what he was

as only a bastard’s brother ever could,

or knowing what you were. Standing next to him,

lit that ember bright, the one you tried to dim.

You distanced yourself, fixed your lawnmowers,

carved figures out of peach pits, embraced

the sweeter part of your disposition,

that part that always knew how lost you were.

Maybe the drinking saved you, cooling that glow

for those decades, or maybe it finally killed you.

Maybe there’s less difference than I’d like.

-Brent Allard

For a Captive Audience

The loss of one man is another man’s family, 

they never said directly. The party said it for them.

New church friends exclaimed with cheese and crackers.

God, they were loud and so happy, that gathering

of the holy. For a moment, they focused on me. "Say church."
they insisted, until I said, "chowch." not getting yet

how the accent I carried made it all so entertaining.
They watched the Capuchin monkey, dancing tuneless,
and unpaid, and laughed a long time before chatter resumed.

“You’re lucky he’s so young...” said hushed voice Ethel,

“He won't remember what happened."
My mother agreed, and went over the details again.

-Brent Allard

Legend

In 1967, I hadn’t happened yet. He drove the Wisconsin highway

as it was. It didn’t have as many branches;

traffic then, a fraction of now. Although, underneath it maps

the same. Driving through, he passed so many exits

without thought, until the gas gauge, hunger, or a sign

nudged him, get there sooner. He wondered if it’s worse to be tired

or late. Yet, each number matters to someone, so much that they get tired

of noticing. Driving home the same way every day, it’s not the highway

anymore but a stretch of routine. Low on fuel, I look for a sign

and there it is, a simplified pump, an arrow where the road branches.

If I lived here I’d know where to go. I don’t. I rely on marked exits

and routes I’ve already planned. I plot the future with maps,

which are less paper now than a voice in my ear. I know that the map

is not the road, but accept a representation. I wonder where he got tired,

driving to a conference hall, a sales meeting, a waste of time, the exits

more appealing than the speaker. He wished to be back on the highway

but not to be home. They spoke of elevator speeches, a no as a branch

that leads to a yes. Get the yes. Always get the yes. Get them to sign.

They’re all green now, on the side of the highway, the same signs

that were white for him. I compare, thinking that the father is a map

for the son, no matter the shape it’s in, and the son is the branch;

that replaces the tree entirely. I’d ask him how he got so tired

but don’t we all, some days? It’s only a road, this highway,

a name for specific miles, the stretch between entrance and exit

I’ve stared at the photograph so many times, considering his exit.

He pulled onto the shoulder, as if he could interrogate the sign

with a look, and make it change its story. Back then, the highway

was limbo, no cell phone internet. Just you, Hank Williams, a map

on the seat, and whatever thoughts were spinning around like tires

in your head. Until you pick one, every single branch

ahead seems possible. Is that the story, that the branches

collapsed behind you, leaving only the thought of exit?

I’m on the Wisconsin highway, 45 years later, both tired

of and resigned to investigation, as if every gesture was a sign.

But, I hadn’t been thought of yet. You read your own map,

humming the tune to your own lost highway

I drive past another branch, and decide that this sign

is irrelevant. His exit, my entrance, spinning wheels; a map

I drew when I was tired and feeling small against the highway.

Relic

His tarnished metal belt buckle;

bucking horse, rodeo version,

kicking state letters off its back.

It means something now,

but not what it meant

when it still held up his pants.

He knew about horses, fed them,

rode them, broke them, named them,

remembered the names, every name.

He kept the buckle long after that,

when horses were memory and offices

had his attention. Was it important,

to him, or just kept, because it reminded

her, when the box of his things was made,

and utility turned to symbolism.

If he was a horse, the letters were where he lived.

But that’s only me arranging, throwing meaning

at metal as if it could correct me. A man with a son

has all the metaphor he needs; what he was

and wasn’t, what he wanted and did not want,

what he kept and what he threw away.

                             -Brent Allard

Place Holder

*

Yours is an answer that lets you sleep.

Mine is a question, so I stay awake.

You have a book you don’t understand

but quote like a word a day calendar.

I have a black and white picture,

packed in a box I won’t open soon.

You need a friend. I need a metaphor.

That’s fine. We had different fathers.

Our gods wouldn’t need to match,

if we could put them aside for a moment,

let them entertain each other if they must,

and talk as if it was only me and you,

as if words in this conversation matter,

as if something could happen here, and now.

                    -Brent Allard

Accidental Collision

*

Even a little is too much, if it’s blood,

if it covers your son, in the front seat

of the truck, driven too fast, accidentally,

into the side of a bus. Now, in your lap,

he doesn’t move and you can’t bring

yourself to prod him, although every stinging

nerve wants you to try. What if he doesn’t?

You’re paralyzed by what you can’t think.

Mother was what you grasped, but now…

Your thoughts spill out over each other, bills,

Southern Comfort, his death, they still whisper.

They blame you because you’re the one left.

The boy moves. He laughs, and you can’t breathe.

You hadn’t even pleaded yet. Later, you’ll know

that a lip can bleed a lot, from even a small

piece torn out. This will be a close call story;

a reprieve, with laughter disguised significance, the one

you recall when someone cries about hitting bottom.

You’ll remember that you lost him in that moment

and have never been convinced you got him back.

-Brent Allard

High Noon

The noonday train will bring Frank Miller.
If I’m a man I must be brave
And I must face that deadly killer
Or lie a coward, a craven coward,
Or lie a coward in my grave.

-Do Not Forsake Me [The Ballad of High Noon]  by Ned Washington

We weren’t exactly friends, I’ve said.

But, that isn't exactly right or wasn't always.

We were once. The dislike we grew into

was only possible through some knowledge

and sometimes, even then, it changed.

I still don’t know all the reasons, motivations,

how much was you or me, how much just routine.

The things you said, weren’t all untrue, but still,

I know they felt like truth, for you,

so wrapped up in your scheming,

you couldn’t help but convolute a line.

I couldn’t help but call you on it,

when you sat with the kitchen lights out,

drinking black coffee, sighing out storm clouds

until I couldn’t help but hear you.

You were angry at being confronted.

But what else was there to do?

High Noon, you said later, called me Will Kane

to your Frank Miller. You said, “There’s nothing

noble about saving those who don’t deserve it.”

But let’s go to the clock on the wall again,

the train coming closer. You meet it,

or trail what you didn’t do behind you.

I thought someday we’d patch things up,

laugh about Marshals, trains and villains,

because nothing is ever as easy as that.

But the clock on the wall kept ticking

life kept going, and so easily, you were a part

of the past. A couple more ticks and you were gone.

I wish it were more like a movie,

the unresolved wrapped up by the end,

but it’s never as easy as that. You were

your own Will Kane, your own Frank Miller.

You had your train, your clock. There's little I could add,

except to say that I'd side with John Wayne if I could,

this time, and have your Sheriff be the one from Rio Bravo.

                           

                                  -Brent Allard

The Lost Son

*

He was a  footnote in the stories, mentioned 

as if such things were as common for the times,

as moonshine, fighting, or chewing tobacco.

His laugh was remembered, "His little laugh."

otherwise, a space in family portraits,

a pause in my grandfather’s speech,

“Got my two girls and, well, … I had a boy...”

I heard it as a flat and bloodless story,

sepia toned and reconciled by distance,

until  years later, Grandfather gone,

 my Mother talked history over photos,

her parents, how their marriage splintered,

and everything changed.  His drinking,

swept through everything, a river 

the dam had let go. “After Timmy?”

I asked, finally piecing together,

the sweetly broken way he passed his life,

and the pause, that never lost its place.

                                

                                                  -Brent Allard

Our Story

*

I wasn’t asked either. It was passed down;

my father’s story, which I’ve not deciphered.

He used to take me for drives in the car.

I haven’t solved the questions he left

though every one has changed. Some

are so polished they feel like answers.

Blood is still the greatest mystery.

We create from our own crumbling ruins.

When I couldn’t sleep, he’d sing.

You have me, there in your veins.

So what am I telling you, knowing

you’ll see through platitudes?

You have your own questions,

and you'll construct the memories that stick.

What you need, you’ll look for until you find it.

I was 2 years old in his brown pick up truck,

radio playing Hank Williams. When I couldn’t sleep,

he sang along. I shut my eyes. He drove us home.

                                 
                                           -Brent Allard

After Your Last Appointment

*




At the corner of Essex and Main

in a cold winter month

you hold signed papers in your hands,

and stand beneath the two street signs.

Cars rush by like separated pieces of a train,

almost pulling you after them,

this way, that way, this way

like everything always has,

everything on the way here,

until this job, this girl, this place, this time.

You’re seeing how wide the street is,

how much it can hold in one place,

all the lives that pass and disappear

in the minutes where you wait

until there is nothing between you

and where you parked.

                                    

                                -Brent Allard

Driving Back From Hollywood

*

Traffic was crawling.

I knew we’d be stuck for hours,

gaining inches at a time.

You asked me what I thought.

I said, “Different, than I expected.”

 

The stars on the street didn’t shine.

The musicians played for change,

and the town didn’t seem to know

that it leaves you dirty.

My thoughts were broken up,

sighting a traffic obstruction;

A truck had spilled a load of lemons,

covering the road with yellow skin,

crushed by many tires into something like steam

that flooded the nostrils of everyone driving through,

like a hanging air freshener magnified

thousands of strengths.

As much as we hated traffic,

nobody honked their horn

or cursed for quite some time.

The scent was too strong to focus

on anything other than lemon pulp

and yellow peels as far as we could see,

crushed against the highway,

sour and broken and clean.

                                -Brent Allard

Sure It Will Come to Me Later

*



The litter of our dreams

congests these narrow streets,

makes it hard to get by

without kicking papers around.

We pass through

the blown refuse

and I turn to ask you something

I forget before I find the words

and you want to know what it was-

I meant to say.

Giving my silence a look, as if

I’d committed a crime

and I can only answer,

“I don’t know really-

something, I think-

about time.”

your look turns back

to satisfied,

for now.

-Brent Allard

Answering

*

I stand outside this evening,

watching light pull from the street

like a dress across the floor.

The leaves have started browning,

although some color sticks, and some

slight percentage hasn’t thought to turn.

October is gone, as it always is.

Find me here and ask me where I’ve

come from. Ask me why my whole life

has led to this crack in the sidewalk.

I will tell you everything.

Ask me what should be forgiven,

and what I hold in my left hand. Ask me who I

abandoned and where and when. Ask me if I will

finally confess that secret.

The lamppost will be my witness.

The rain will listen too,

though casually, without comment.

If you can’t stop, then turn your head and notice

before you drive off and forget,

that it’s hard to stand long in one place.

and feel this certain piece of earth beneath your feet,

because when you are this still, all that you were is with you,

Find me here, leaning against the Elm tree.

Ask me what I wanted, what I accomplished.

Ask me about the dream I wanted to have.

And I will tell you what you wanted and

What you never had. I will answer everything

that you already know.

                          -Brent Allard

Your God Answers

*

He spoke with you this morning about

finding another job. He was snuffing out stars

while you talked, taking someone’s baby home

and helping to track down terrorists.

He told you to start selling real estate

and you laughed because for a second,

you thought he was serious.

When you reminded him that

you’re no salesman. He laughed

that you almost fell for it.

Then he opened up your Bible

to the page where he watches sparrows.

As he flipped the pages, he was

sending an earthquake to level 

low income housing, trying to get Pluto

removed from the list of planets,

planting an addendum to the Book of Revelations

in a cave near the Dead Sea,

and other things, he wouldn’t specify.

You sighed in relief that he

could be so many places at once.

                             -Brent Allard

Calling

*

I will stand here and call you

until the wall behind me crumbles.

I know that you will hear me,

because there is a word

that I put inside your name

every time it leaves my mouth;

a word that is nothing on it’s own

and yet so powerful that it

can break and heal

in the same instant.

It doesn’t care about syllables

or distance. It will find you

across the universe,

hidden in a city or a dream.

to deliver your name in my voice.

My cigarette smoke tells this future;

it draws your true face in the air.

Look through my eyes in the moment

that I’ve just kissed you.

There you are love, fearless and whole.

Now Playing

*



Life was the grandest movie.

We sat in our ragged seats

and waited for the future to unfold

this movie, called America,

where nobody has to be poor,

nobody has to stay lonely.

Sure, when the lights came on,

We went back to one check away,

the kids wouldn’t listen, and the car

broke down in the mornings.

Sure, I knew that you never forgave me,

for losing that job with the state, but you

stopped taking your pills. I told you

we couldn’t afford another kid.

Sure, we screamed at each other,

with the kids on my nerves all the time,

(and you never taking my side.)

But, why should we talk about that?

Remember our America,

where nothing gets too bad

and if it does then it’s not for long.

I’ve got this idea for an invention;

a fuel pump that runs your car on dreams. 

I’m going to show it to General Motors.

They’ll give me five million dollars

just to keep it from getting made.

I’ll buy this place then, and you can

fly out to see your mother anytime.

We’ll never go through all this shit again.

The neighbors will watch us come and go.

They’ll say we stepped out of the movies.

                                 

                                        -Brent Allard

Absolution

*

Because,

no one accepts easily,

that the potential

they spoke of,

as if a mark on your forehead,

or a color of hair,

can be like a good cup of coffee

gone cold on the table.

No coffee pot,

no microwave oven,

no milk or sugar added in,

will ever make it taste like it did.

like it could’ve,

like it should've,

Duane.

               

                                 -Brent Allard

Living Room Scene

after Room in New York, by Edward Hopper

 

We are not together,

although we insist on this room.

You are there,

plinking keys behind me,

tuneless, just distraction.

You say that you don’t understand,

why this two feet between us happened.

You think I’ve forgotten, but I have not.

I wish I didn’t know where we’re going,

but I do, and because of that I will admit

(although not yet) that I know

why you hate this newspaper

(and need to talk about that dress.)

If I were being fair, I would be urgent

to answer. If some word, some glance,

some touch would return us.

Once, I could’ve lived on the taste

of your lipstick.

But, we’ve worked at this too,

at this distance.

I know exactly how far it is.

Another man, sitting where I am,

could reach out his hand.

He could put down this paper, and you

could play something beautiful.  

                 


                            -Brent Allard