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UNDERGROUND VOICES: POETRY
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NOEL SLOBODA
Features of Yesterday Unsteady in morning, you rely on touch to compose a face, to find the parts: eyes, nose and mouth thrown off in the dark, like inhibitions after the fifth beer of happy hour. Inky coffee is wanted before starting, but fingers first must stumble blindly, overturning dead flowers, uncapped pill bottles, find a way in, make a red slash across the bottom half of what was unmasked last night. No nose as constellation over the lower region makes it impossible to fix a smile; it’s hard enough to open up the portal, no way to sense once it’s unlatched what will come out. Dream Bunker Always was easy smashing my head on the bottom rack of my bunk. By design narrow and tight its metal support bars hung low. They kept heavy upper tenants--who never visited my room--from sagging. I connected if suddenly I started and even at six had to slide sideways into bed. Like a tomb sometimes the bottom bunk felt and I liked lying inside it then. Chipped and dinged the bunk had been cast off from a training center for stewardesses. Restless at night I dreamt of planes and connections between open skies and tight spaces. I grew ever more aware of the emptiness above waiting for me even though I couldn’t touch it. I filled the space myself with a lost brother discovered or a friend sleeping over. No one ever really was there but fantasies made me feel a little bit better. Not as much after I cracked my skull rising from nightmares. I asked my parents why for an only child buy a two-tiered bed and they explained. It was just ten bucks at auction. Besides you never know when extra space might come in handy. Subsequent years left me lonely yet proved the truth of what they said. I piled treasures above from classics in tattered blue covers to a crossbow with its string snapped. I had army knives rusty and nicked signs stolen from up on Lovejoy Street. Loaded with all I’d collected my roof sank low when the lights went off. I wanted to reach through the sky feel not just above but beyond. Sometimes I thought there might be a third bunk above me maybe a fourth. Under the weight of it all bedsprings might snap and bars which hurt upon waking might save me. Noel is a writer currently living in Pennsylvania, where he teaches at Penn State York and serves as dramaturg for the Harrisburg Shakespeare Festival. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in a number of places, including Studies in the Humanities, FRiGG, remark, RE:AL, ShatterColors Literary Review, Waterways, Ghoti, Triptych Haiku, and Boston Literary Magazine. |
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© 2007 Underground Voices |
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