Three Poems by Eric Anderson

Eric Anderson is an adjunct teacher living near Cleveland, Ohio. His first book of poetry, The Parable of the Room Spinning, is forthcoming from Kattywompus Press. He has also published a novella, Isn’t That Just Like You?, and a chapbook, Confederate Season. On weekends, he plays guitar for The Black Valentines.The following poems are from his upcoming book of poetry.

Forecast for the New Night Tides

	I’m remembering the many paper plates I’ve held on my lap
at family picnics and barbeques.  My mother kept a stack the size
of a doric column smuggled from Greece in her cupboard,
	doling them out like forewarnings
		to people like me who couldn’t be trusted with glasswares.  

  	Neither waste nor want; I forgive those who pulped the trees,
just as I forgive those who pollute fresh water with dish soap, forgiveness
	being the only choice in a world where everything relentlessly matters.  

Just let me have my plates.

					What about the children
	who need paper plates so they can make masks, paint cheeks
	and chins, glue yarn hair, rubberbands worn tight around their ears?
It’s important to have a face that isn’t your own,
				at least once in a while—in fourth grade
						when Mrs. Wilcox screamed at us
for using too much glitter and glue, I hid behind my cheetah’s snarl and felt
its teeth over my mouth even after she ripped the plate away and slapped my cheek.

		You’d think I’d hate paper plates after something like that,
									but I don’t.

		I keep looking for chances to love them even more
and the world obliges—
				just the other day my children brought home plates
		cut into the crescent phases of the moon.  They left one whole
and now it hangs above me, so full
	the seas pull up their skirts so the waves can dance.

Uncle

	Glenn, how could I have forgotten you,
the only sober soul in all of drunken upstate New York?
	Thank god for this picture of you sitting by the grill,
your shirt unbuttoned
	(as if I wore them I remember those shirts),
						white belly
				like some great boulder
			bleached by the waves of Gennesse-soaked
			laughter my aunts and uncles washed you with.
		Your wife called you a tea-totaler, Mr. Goody
							Two Shoes

		and your expression in the photo feels like my face, too,
			this wanting to belong, longing to withstand,
	but I only have my ordinary sadness

while you had your state trooper days, and that story,
		I had to pull her out of the ditch, the mother
		was there, screaming and
		crying, and the child so small, pinned	

	and the backyard went silent except for Lynyrd Skynyrd,
			Gimme Two Steps,
	until my mother said, “Way to bring us all down,
					Glenda, Good Witch of the North.”
		You old lady, they said.  Time for bed, they said,

and you just took it.
	Some things go away forever then suddenly come back.
I don’t know if you’re alive or dead, Uncle
Glenn, there is no fairness in the world.

Barack Obama

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. Pay no attention to the man in front of the curtain. Pay no attention to the curtain, the gold tassle edges sweeping dust from the stage. Pay no attention to the theater, abandoned seats like red velvet patrons, the house lights gone dim.
	Pay no attention to the girl and her companions: the beast, the machine, the empty inside. Pay no attention to the witch’s curled toes, curled feet. Pay no attention to the sky; it’s only a backdrop. Pay no attention to the city’s two dimensions.
	Pay no yellow, no brick, no road.
	Pay some attention to the monkeys. Pay some attention to the little voices. Pay some attention to the girl after all, lonely, longing for home.
	Pay attention to the parts in black and white. Everyone is someone else.
	A tension as the curtain rises: a stage set. An office, oval. On the wall, a peace prize is framed. The frame is crooked. Pay no attention; it’s only paper, only words. Pay no attention to the promises. Somewhere over.
	Is the girl clicking her heels or having a seizure?
	Pay attention.
	The dog whirls into a small black funnel of fur and fang. Pay attention.
	Blue birds
		fall in a flock. Confetti from the celebration of a moment
		we almost believed.
	We’re off
		to see the rainbow, the rainbow,
	and still, there’s no place.

You can contact Eric Anderson through Facebook.

David Blaine

is just another bush league poet, pressing the virtual flesh and hoping to become internationally famous one day.

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