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

Reclamation

*


Don't mind the ashes.
We aren't the first
to kick through ruins.
When the roof collapsed,
the light improved--
Shouldn't we use it?
Find one thing unscathed
hold it in hand, smell it, study,
until it's burned into your eyes.
When you're sure you'll never
forget the shape, leave it.
You won't return.
Someday it will be
the only thing that matters.

An Approximate Answer

*




At eight the train pulls through, announced by its brutal horn.

The trail behind grows louder, the rumbling of the cars

against their tracks, a rough release of mourning.



I can’t ignore it where I am. I hear the alarm

as if it were on my nightstand. Soon it will fade

and I will go back to myself. I don’t deny that it’s hard



to say what that is. Nevertheless, we burn through days

as if there will always be more. Only, tonight I doubt

the number. I question the stars and even the haze



between us. My life must make that sound

I think, a train pulled over tracks, not by any grace

but rather force and fear of leaving something out.



So how do I answer you, how do I speak to evening’s face,

You ask where I go when my eyes elude you.

What can I say, when I don’t have a name for that place



that makes nowhere and here, at once, both true.

And why do I answer now, why, when you’re not even here?

Because the question wasn’t asked or meant strictly for you.



I was there and involved in the asking, so need to hear

where it goes. And now, because I am a part of everything,

I hear the church clock chime the hour and disappear



so cars in the street can be heard. And then he sings,

some drunk, up to a shuttered window, and the closing of doors

behind people coming home. But what do I bring



with my listening? Why have I not answered you before.

Where do I go? Where. Listen, a song is playing in the distance,

building to the clouds and crashing to the floor.



I get caught in it’s travels, turns, the interludes, the twists

and sometimes I truly believe that it won’t end,

because I am too beaten to even raise my fist.



I have had enough of mourning, and so pretend

that it doesn’t touch me. I watch where this is heading

as if it were the second act of a play I watch again.



Because it is. Still, I want to be surprised, instead

of always knowing how much will be lost

in between the sounds and what is said.

 
 
                                 
 
                                               -Brent Allard

Habit

*


You remembered cigarettes

after the names for things were gone,

you still had the two fingered gesture,

although you couldn’t light it or lift it to your mouth.

The hospital let it go, in certain cases.



You clung like an injured mountain climber

gripping a ledge halfway down the face,

too weak to scale your way back up,

and nothing to ease you down.

No help coming,

couldn’t reach you if it was,

although everyone said

“Expect miracles.”

and they paraphrased

that bible verse about

the faith of a mustard seed

moving mountains.

And I thought, move it all you like,


it’s still the same mountain.

But looking at you,

a painted skeleton, minus teeth

I did expect a miracle.

I asked whatever it is that listens

to prayers and pleadings

that you would notice your fingers

still clutching the shelf out of habit,

and tell them this once to let go.


                                         -Brent Allard

Just Before the Sky Fell Down

*





She twirled in the Santa Ana winds

like a satellite finding its orbit in the driveway.

The Eagles Greatest Hits played for the fifth time in a row

because letting it play was easier than finding another album

that everyone drinking could tolerate.

She really liked singing along to Desperado.

You felt indestructible, even knowing that when reality

returned, the woman you watched would be someone else’s wife.

But it could wait. Let it wait. Let it hang there like the moon.

No need to even mention it.



You couldn’t blame the alcohol, because you drank

yourself sober long before, and can’t pretend

you didn’t know what was coming, when she stepped back

inside, the wind still whispering around her, remarked that

the stars had brought you here, and then looked in your eyes,

and said oh so seriously, that infidelity isn’t a problem

but a symptom of a problem,

and you, of course, agreed.

 
              
                              -Brent Allard

Miles Between Exits

*




Tom Joad carries a five gallon gas can,

towards the dropping orange sun.

Jesus looks to Tom and says “I’ll take it for awhile.“



They walk along the shoulder,

framed by shadowy finger clouds.

Sirens blare threats in the distance.



Tom hands the can to Jesus,

and nods a thank you,

his arm already feeling light enough to float.



Jesus feels the strain,

in his purpled eye, cheekbone

still stinging from the billy-club.



Wincing, Jesus says,

“It's like we never stop walking”

Tom replies, “I know, but we’re almost there.”



and wonders how best to tell Jesus

that the gas gauge in his Chevy

doesn’t work.

   

            -Brent Allard

Single Serving

*after Edward Hopper's Automat

It's not such a terrible thing
to be alone, except for those
nights when the coffee is lousy,
but you drink anyway, because
no one would hear you complain.

This is a night of wearing down,
of ticking, of erosion becoming visible.
Call it a blue table night of the soul.
Even if someone occupied
the chair across from you,
What would you tell him; that
you've dreamed a life of circles
and lived one in squares?

He would say; "look into your
cup. Rest your head on the
table. The lights will keep you
safe, and when you wake
it will all be true."


         -Brent Allard

“CHEAP,” I SAID, “AND IT NEEDS TO GET ME 3,000 MILES.”

*




It got me across the country. In fact I’m still driving it. I’ve already got more than my $800.00 worth. It’s ugly, brown and loud, but I don’t mind. There’s every sort of car out here, rusted out orange Pintos, and new Mercedes Benz’s. They make the movies here, so they’ve got to have all kinds. Some people even walk, like this guy I met yesterday playing country songs on his guitar, next to Jimmy Stewart’s star in the sidewalk. I would’ve given him a buck, if he’d known some Johnny Cash.

But here in the January sunshine, where even the migrant workers smile at nothing all day, what I’m thinking of, is you glancing out the window as the snow falls over Beacon St. You’re curled up in a blanket, watching 80’s movies, letting the telephone ring itself out, though not for Emilio Estevez or Molly Ringwald’s sake, you just can’t break the warm isolation of cable television. You’re not thinking of me.

I didn’t know I was leaving you, until I was on the road at three in the morning with only speeding eighteen wheeler’s to keep me company. I thought, some people do this every day and then head home again. But they must wonder, What if, this time I don’t turn around? They must, because it happens every day. I won’t turn around, and I’ll probably never think of you again like this. I’m just a face you saw a few times, had a few beers with, made polite conversation.

It’s not like I’m sending this to you. I just wondered for a minute, what it would be like to wake up in your bed as you were putting on your make-up to head out the door. Could I have lived there for the rest of my life, or was I always headed here, to this sunny ending, alone in my car at the In and Out Burger drive-thru?



 
-Brent Allard
 
previously published in Slipstream

Nothing Stays Open Late

*




You can’t do what you should,

so you’re sitting in a diner by yourself

at sometime like 2 in the morning,

wondering where it went;

what you had just yesterday,

that life you knew was just about to suit you,

but you couldn’t convince to happen.



You and your pride are the last one’s out,

into a night that feels like a second chance.

Only the stars see you smiling.

Everyone else has gone to bed,

and that’s good, you think,

because you couldn’t breathe in

these hours with an audience.

You couldn’t start again

because they know you.



These stars are out for you alone.

The moon makes even your sadness glow.

This time it’s gonna be different

and everything is really gonna work.



You roll down your windows

and sing out loud to the radio

The air you breathe is telling you

that you are still alive,

lucky to be alive.



The highway and the stars must be in love

and you’re catching how they feel.

It’s all for you tonight.



You wonder how far you could go,

if you pointed your car to the moon,

and kept on driving.

Finally you’d be something beautiful

a guy and his car that vanished in the night

and left a shining.

 
                     -Brent Allard

May Break Our Bones

*





Down all these streets, in all these cars,

we’re safe enough from sticks and stones.

Although none of it feels like it’s really ours,

just so much steel and skin and bones



I’ve wandered through a city,

where streetlights have eclipsed the stars.

Nothing I touch connects with me,

just empty streets and passing cars



Children draw their futures bright.

on plastic tables, soon outgrown.

the use for hope not yet in sight,

still content with sticks and stones.



We never became what we wanted to be.

We stopped too long, comparing scars.

We never saw what we needed to see,

just had a dream, that wasn’t ours.



Tomorrow, all the lights will change

and we’ll repeat what we’ve always known.

But tonight the world is large and strange

A maze of steel and skin and bones



                             Brent Allard

Two Stories

*


There's a story


of a dark road where a man got lost

so badly he forgot where he was going.

There's another of a bright road

where a woman, also lost

took the wrong directions out.

These are the stories that raised me,

both the same story,

and my best explanation for urgency.

You have your own. I know you do.

But listen; there are only two stories,

Look out your window.

Tell me what they are.


                -Brent Allard

Nothing on the Radio Tonight

*
Nothing on the Radio Tonight






Maybe I’m just a tired man who, unable to sleep,

pulls at the night, twisting it over as if it could cover him.

I try to hum louder than what I can’t help but hear;

the F# staccato of my nerve strings in revolt

the dull C of my arteries and veins,

murmuring their mutinies through my heart.

When this doesn’t work (it never has)



what’s left but to turn outside,

where sirens shatter modesty into fear,

(could they break my question open?)

a pair of sidewalk wanderers call out to nothing,

especially not each other. I believe

they would speak if they could.

Don’t blame the whiskey fog around them.

What they say is what you would say if you were

that lost with no ride coming.



Am I as lost? (No one is coming.)

If the sky were a drum that hammers could tap

out of time, it would sound like this, exactly like this.

And the train scrapes by like a rake pulling glass through gravel.

You’ve heard it before. It’s comfortable now.

The night birds shriek the hardest consonants they can find.

I trip over the K’s, as they drop to the sidewalk.

and the letters remind me of silence.



If you can hear me, sing;

even the smallest song that you can manage,

even if you barely believe it,

if you suspect that someday you might believe it,

even if you lie and laugh about it later, I don’t care.

I will believe whatever comes through your voice.

I have heard my own for too long to feel what it says.



-Brent Allard

Another April

*



Another April: Sestina





April arrived as if opening the wrong door. She, deciding

not to leave, made her way to the back of the room. Settling

into conversation, she ordered a drink or two, acting casual

as if her invitation was delayed in the mail, not forgotten

altogether. I didn’t mention it. It wasn’t my place.

I’ve never had any control over hour or days or months.



I haven’t thought of you for so long it seems like months.

I have not once questioned, (I claim) my decision.

because everything that begins, must return to the place

it started. Everything disturbed will eventually settle.

If there was a choice, I didn’t see it, or else I’ve forgotten

what it was. But, don’t think I did it casually.



Nothing that was between us could ever be casual,

not in all the years of us, the years, the weeks and months

of the life I wanted. (did I tell you that?) How can I forget

the mornings I’d find you fast asleep, and almost decide

not to wake you from the rest that finally settled

over you, as you tried to put the laundry in its place.



And I wonder, how a man is changed by places

in his life. Does he carry them all inside him, casually

moving from one into the other until the present settles

into his bones and keeps him there, as pages of months

fly off the calendar. Is there ever a real decision,

or do we only try our best and then count on forgetting



what we couldn’t fix. Christ, how I wish I could forget

even one little piece of who I’ve been, even one time, one place.

I’m tired of carrying all of this, every conversation, decision

introduction and goodbye, every step and misstep, each casual

gesture and ultimatory look. Yet I know that if you sleep a month

you’ll always feel the need to compensate, to settle



the account. When you can’t have what you want, you settle

for what there is. Jesus forgot to say “Blessed are the forgetful,

for they won’t feels as cheated as the rest.” This is the month

I’m stuck with, this is the day, the hour, the time and place

You know it as well as I do. We are all of us, only the casualties

of a million past collisions. But let’s pretend that we can decide



instead, whether to settle, to take (say they are) our own places.

Let’s say we had a dream we’ll soon forget. Smile and walk casually

as if life will wait however many months for this decision.



-Brent Allard

If God is a Company, The Devil Sells Product

*


Since prayer isn’t feasible, he sings to himself,

of the road and where it leads, of the dust that

kicks up into windshields, of the brake lights

that multiply instantly, and the crosses

off the shoulder. Every night is somewhere new

yet he’s seen it all before. knowing better than anyone,

that there are only twenty people in the world.

And whether or not you believe it, he’s tired,

and wants to take a break.



This is how he pays for what he’s done. He opens,

his magic sample case and shows you what you need,

Sometimes it’s brushes, knives that never need sharpening,

prime steaks, vacuum cleaners, non-stick cookware,

sets of encyclopedias, elixirs or lightning rods.

He doesn’t even know, until he clasps your hand.



and sees by your grip and the look in your eye.

that your kids don’t respect you,

that your wife thinks she settled,

that they took your milk money all those years ago,

and you cried in the dirt by the monkey bars.

You open the door of course.



He can’t read your mind, but why would he have to,

Soon you’re telling stories, He listens, feeds them back.

and now he’s your long lost brother, your kindred spirit

You’ll miss him when he leaves, as you remove

his water glass from the table



You’ll remember the clicks as his case opened up.

and his serious look, as if trusting you, and only you,

with the greatest of secrets; the elusive answer,

what you always wanted but didn’t know you’d missed,

the cure for loneliness, what you should’ve been,

if the mirrors hadn’t been backwards all along.

And, although it’s a shame to give it a price, what you’ve

got in your pocket will do, tonight, and only tonight.



Tomorrow he’ll be shaking hands with someone else,

They’ll open the door, and he’ll sell it again.

because it’s never cost, but value.

the thrill you never had, the friend that won't betray,

the antidote for the thoughts you have when everyone else is asleep.



It’s new, improved, state of the art, and 100% guaranteed,

delivered promptly, completely and discreetly,

balance bill to follow in another thirty days.

He’ll do this forever or until someone doesn’t need it,

whichever comes first.



He sings driving off, a song of forgetting how to get home,

of pulling off to close your eyes for just a minute,

of everything you want being one sale away,

one sale away again…

      

-Brent Allard

Limited Offer

*


You are not her anymore, the girl in the bedroom


strumming chords, singing words that still mean something

to her, that still have power to reach across anything

to find that boy and make him worthy.



But I hope that sometimes, your husband wonders where you are

when he’s unable to pierce your clouded look,

and that you can’t tell him you loved someone hopeless

until you could only abandon his shadow.



I hope you tell stories with my name in them

quickly brushing it aside, as if I was a stranger that stopped

at your doorstep with encyclopedias under his arm.



I’m not proud that I promised you everything,

even at the moment of leaving. Nor do I apologize,

as I meant every word, as much as any unbeliever can.

If you were here I’d promise it all again



and leave you on your porch swing waiting.

A better man would wish you well and happy, but I only

want you reasonably well, provided for, yet occasionally

disconsolate, watching from your window for



that stranger to appear in the long dirt road, on his way

to bust your whole life open, ready to leave the kids

hungry at the table wondering where their mother went,

with no explanation ever coming close.

Once Upon a Time

*

You stood in the doorway

with your turquoise necklace,

like a talisman protecting you.

I almost believed that nothing

in the world was strong enough

to hurt you,

I believed you'd never said

the word that changed the whole equation,

and that we were still beginning a story

not wrapping up the ending.



Then, you said,

"We should run away and never come back."

and I knew this time you meant it

as you had every other time,

only this time you didn't laugh

to let me off the hook.



What could I say, but,

"I wish we could. I really wish we could."

You cried as if nothing in this world

could ever turn out well, standing in the doorway

with your turquoise necklace

only a necklace again.



-Brent Allard

The Dark Half of the Year

*

Lately your face has darkened.
I’ve watched you leave the room
like Persephone must have left,
on the flaming black horse of the dead.

They say that every year,
Persephone escapes the underworld,
Demeter relents from frigidity,
and the Earth has some consolation.

But what if remembered sunlight
caused her no pang of desire,
and the realm of the shadowy dead
began to feel like a home?
Would she dread her next look at the sky
as a prelude to another time forsaken?

Hades would need no deceptions then.
Persephone would count herself lost,
rather than lose the world again.
She would settle in her chair,
take another pomegranate seed
and chew it slowly.

I couldn’t dispel this thought,
so I kept this photograph
to remind me,
that when Persephone is cold,
from her seasons with the dead,
she can’t forget entirely,
that the sun is still traveling the sky
waiting to warm the Earth
once she emerges.


-Brent Allard

Another Greasy Spoon

*

It's easy to believe that nothing is changing

outside the breakfast all night restaurant,

where you tap a cigarette in a square glass ashtray.



You wish for a waitress to ask what you want,

to bring you dark coffee that you can make light.

What you get is a waitress that wants to be gone



and coffee that you can still see through at night.

But, it's here, so it's fine. You drink it and smoke.

You try to forget that outside is your life,



and it hasn't paused, at all like you'd hoped.

Since it first turned bad, it hasn't turned around.

A booth for four, tonight, is only for you and your ghost.



Your waitress sets the plate. You hear the sound

but don't really notice. She freshens your coffee up

and now you look normal, behind bacon, eggs and hash browns.



You stay until the endless cup of coffee is too much

and there's no choice left, but to walk into November,

wondering why this is always what comes after love.



-Brent Allard