Joy McDowell September 2024
Man on the Street
Grandma said she remembered a time
when no adult man was ever seen
walking around the streets of her town
during daylight on a weekday
unless he was a preacher in a black suit
or a milkman in a white uniform,
maybe a garbage man rattling your trash.
Men worked, Grandma claimed. None
of this disability and welfare money
now handed out to lazy bums
without ambition. We had shame,
she said. You didn’t put a black mark
on your family name, you know,
embarrass your mother by being
an aimless fool. Grandma looked
the lot of us over, checking to be
sure we all got the message.
Slackers were never welcome
in our family. Owen shifted
off his crippled leg, but we
all knew he was the smartest
grandkid and could already
do algebra in second grade.
Bad Moon Rising
Creedence Clearwater circles the spindle,
repeats, marking forever this 1972 moment
in a small house with my husband’s
logger buddies, people I cannot relate to,
Sleep. My body craves sleep.
I have outgrown my party creature.
I want to go home and slip into my soft clean bed.
The drinkers need a crowd to keep the binge going.
A woman barfs in the yard. Lit men leer.
This alcohol-fueled life is why I escaped
my small logging town, why I attended
college, imagined a better life. I’m no fun.
Oddball at twenty-five.
I dream of paying the sitter,
then kneeling beside my child’s bed.
Life holds surprises. It’s over quickly.
My son is dead and from an unlit window
I watch the moon rising after midnight.
I recall the soft silky touch, the salty
and sweet aroma of my sleeping son’s hair.
Joy McDowell is an Oregon poet. Her work has appeared in Verseweavers, Encore, Gobshite Quarterly, PIF and Willawaw. She is a University of Oregon graduate and lives on Sky Mountain. She has been evacuated from her home twice, once due to an ice storm and once because of a forest fire.
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