II have published three collections
of poems, Tornado Weather
(Mellen Press) 1993,?Flying over
Tasmania (Fithian Press) 1997,
and Blue Damsels (Peter Randall
Press) 2005. My work has
appeared in dozens of magazines
including: California Quarterly,
Northeast Journal, Ploughshares,
South Dakota Review, The
Aurorean, Larcom Review, and
Sierra Nevada College Review.
of poems, Tornado Weather
(Mellen Press) 1993,?Flying over
Tasmania (Fithian Press) 1997,
and Blue Damsels (Peter Randall
Press) 2005. My work has
appeared in dozens of magazines
including: California Quarterly,
Northeast Journal, Ploughshares,
South Dakota Review, The
Aurorean, Larcom Review, and
Sierra Nevada College Review.
Transference/Countertransference
I wonder is it true, your father
is aspic, eyes grey as worn slate, mouth
twitching for a cigarette? When you come
he stands mostly on one foot, looks at his
black work boots, his Crescent Farms uniform,
khaki saturated with milk and egg.
He never talks, sits in the brown velour
barcalounger, sleeps during Jeopardy.
You tell me all about him, and I am
speechless, what to say about these evenings
silent as snow? You think maybe I am
preoccupied, depressed, because of you?
I wonder are you right and ask what you think.
I remember the boy I was under
the crab apple tree by the garden,
an acrid smell of pine tar on my baseball,
my grip tight as a wrench, the crunch of bat
on apple, those long lonely, angry days.
Capillary Life
Somewhere in the tropics
oranges and grapefruits
drop from trees.
In certain deltas
soft mouthed hippos loll
on the river of consolation,
smell their own shortcomings.
Yours is a capillary life,
thin walls breathe through
bones and appear as shadows
brown as coffee, solitary
as cold granite. You meant to be
a movie star but are a bubble
on the doily waters of your work,
dormant as a tulip bulb,
air in the surveyor’s level,
when you were hoping for
a flight of swans.
Home After Three Nights On Call
Before sleep your wife asks you to kill
that spider walking on the ceiling
above your bed and because you are
used to this you get up and go
in the bathroom, look at yourself
in the mirror, at the aerosols,
the pills in the cabinet. You find
the instrument, the top
of the shaving cream,
and the queen of spades
from the bedside table
where she’s been playing
solitaire, climb up on the bed,
trap it on the first try
dismembering one languid leg,
slip the card, between the top and
the ceiling, get down as cautious
as carrying a specimen to the lab,
punch the window open with the meat
of your hand breaking the ice.
What chance does that daddy
Longlegs have missing one leg
in the wind and snow?
I wonder is it true, your father
is aspic, eyes grey as worn slate, mouth
twitching for a cigarette? When you come
he stands mostly on one foot, looks at his
black work boots, his Crescent Farms uniform,
khaki saturated with milk and egg.
He never talks, sits in the brown velour
barcalounger, sleeps during Jeopardy.
You tell me all about him, and I am
speechless, what to say about these evenings
silent as snow? You think maybe I am
preoccupied, depressed, because of you?
I wonder are you right and ask what you think.
I remember the boy I was under
the crab apple tree by the garden,
an acrid smell of pine tar on my baseball,
my grip tight as a wrench, the crunch of bat
on apple, those long lonely, angry days.
Capillary Life
Somewhere in the tropics
oranges and grapefruits
drop from trees.
In certain deltas
soft mouthed hippos loll
on the river of consolation,
smell their own shortcomings.
Yours is a capillary life,
thin walls breathe through
bones and appear as shadows
brown as coffee, solitary
as cold granite. You meant to be
a movie star but are a bubble
on the doily waters of your work,
dormant as a tulip bulb,
air in the surveyor’s level,
when you were hoping for
a flight of swans.
Home After Three Nights On Call
Before sleep your wife asks you to kill
that spider walking on the ceiling
above your bed and because you are
used to this you get up and go
in the bathroom, look at yourself
in the mirror, at the aerosols,
the pills in the cabinet. You find
the instrument, the top
of the shaving cream,
and the queen of spades
from the bedside table
where she’s been playing
solitaire, climb up on the bed,
trap it on the first try
dismembering one languid leg,
slip the card, between the top and
the ceiling, get down as cautious
as carrying a specimen to the lab,
punch the window open with the meat
of your hand breaking the ice.
What chance does that daddy
Longlegs have missing one leg
in the wind and snow?
Steven Ablon