This poem takes the title of Jack Gilbert's latest book, Refusing Heaven, as a starting point and jumps off from there. It was a great exercise, but his title poem kicks ass, so please check it out when you get a chance.
Refusing Heaven
after Jack Gilbert
The man at the turnstile is taking tickets.
I search my pockets and find none–
I’m wearing a hospital gown.
He shakes his head with the practiced
half-smile of a bureaucrat, as if to say
what did you expect?
Even God has to make a living.
Over twenty years of working the gates
and still no raise. So much for the union.
His former life forgotten: taxi driver
steering white collar drunks home on Friday nights,
women with plastic hips to the airport.
The seated weight of his daughter
on his shoulders, heels knocking his chest,
gone the way of twelve-hour shifts.
It’s not our time I say, wishing I had remembered
to scoop the kitty litter before I left.
Poor cat. We do the best we can.
Someone else will have to wash the sheets
in our absence. Let’s go for a drink I say.
Put up a sign that says back in thirty minutes.
But he doesn’t move, just squints at the stadium lights.
By now he realizes it’s all fiber optics, special effects,
but just once, he’d like to be invited backstage.
1 comment:
Hey Bren,
I'm really liking how tied to place/setting these poems are...I'm also liking how you strew perfect little details throughout.
Like: "women with plastic hips to the airport."
Like: "The seated weight of his daughter
on his shoulders, heels knocking his chest,
gone the way of twelve-hour shifts. "
Like: "but just once, he’d like to be invited backstage."
I wonder, though, if the 6th stanza is a little too perfect, a little too pat...
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