William Faller
Ohio turnpike
Throwback Ohio doldrums
in yellow November fields
Where time goes to do long division
stack old newspapers and
erect personalized water
towers that throw shadows
over the scars of irrigation ditches
Dwellings spaced out so far
that two souls caught in a
single frame form a blessed union
Peeling black retread rubber
smoke filled dog bone cavities
along the elongated ribbon
cinched across the muffin
topped midsection of
America this afternoon
until I wonder where they go
home to for Thanksgiving
because it can’t be Toledo
~
my mother boiled hot dogs
my mother boiled hot dogs
for supper while my father
chopped wood behind the
house and later when they
were sure I was asleep one
night I pushed through the
cigarette smoke that folded
onto itself in blue curtains
thinning down until I was
invisible and crawled under
the table where the grown-ups
sat drinking and playing
cards and talked in their
real voices at last
born when people were
forged from cast iron
my grandmother’s voice
was breaking concrete
she once told me not to
bother brushing my teeth
they’d twist them out like
bottle caps and give me dentures
I’d be able to eat corn again
now when I think back
through all that smoke
to my choice of vantage
points under the table
obscured in the totality
of the oblong eclipse
I can’t see their faces at all
and it hurts so bad that
I consider boiling hot dogs
but I don’t
William is a Navy veteran from Pennsylvania living in Perry County along the Appalachian Trail. His poems have appeared in various journals and are forthcoming in Rawhead and Schuylkill Valley Journal. Trail name, Wilhelm Fink.
