Two Poems: Gabriel Costello
dishwater sky drains itself into morning I want permission to sleep. Itemizing my regrets is boring so I settle on everything. The historical marker covered with a black garbage bag. The weeks between seasons trees remain leafless and the cigarette filters are carried down storm drains. This is a chorus of sorts gone mute during construction, scaffolding left to rust. Let’s hold the same note for a moment. Let’s downsize our hearts so that they’re harder to disappoint. On the tax form I listed all my lovers as dependents. The lot attendant was an aging hemophiliac. We waited to be stamped an obvious red to continue towards the end of the block where the burned out trailer was somewhere between demolition and repair. Used car lot economics. The house is playing with my money. Expectant, waiting for the headlights to turn the forested corner. When the car does not birth itself through the guard rail, I am surprised each time because I assume the worst. At the meeting of local apologists we all agreed that the train sounds
94
T WO P OE M S
were enough of a warning. The crossing signal would not be repaired. The collision was preventable. I am trying to get rid of my anger, one of the only things my father left me. In protest I write small letters on the backs of parking tickets and start a correspondence this way. It’s a one way street. Like talking to God, maybe the saying is enough. In the B-Plot a man teaches his son how to translate the landscape through a rifle site. Hunkered in the blind they pass the time by carving obscenities into the wood. They bond over the timing of the shot and later, under a different sky, the boy peels back deer flesh for the first time. The infrastructural maintenance plan had called for a survey of the decaying overpass. That Monday in late October the surveyor dreamed of his lover while looking through the viewfinder. His partner stood in the foreground assuring that the distance was correct. The leaves were the same color as rust. Lucy’s 24-hour slots has a perpetual help wanted sign. Feeding quarters into a dream of being someone else somewhere else. One town over people are doing the same inside another Lucy’s 24hour slots. In the B-Plot the man and his son stockpile ammunition in acknowledgement
G A BR I E L C O S T E L L O
95
that God will leave them behind in the event of the rapture. The boy imagines heaven as windowless, no way to look down on the people left below. The procurement manager had not truly been in love since the 20th century. He spent his days rectifying errors in the shipping manifest and dreaming of his younger self, waiting for the mirror to prove him wrong. The morning light coming into the parking lot a space at a time we could measure the days with these lines soft white fading over a few winters’ worth of salt. I wander around most days. Shiftless, past the reservoir north of town the truck stop’s beeps are distant and ongoing. I have had enough of the present tense, of saying anything to anyone. I walk back a ways from the road. Inside the branches, that are in between winter and spring, so that from a moving car I might be indecipherable. I make it my job to notice the length of the horizon and how it is changing. Past the faceless warehouses and their air conditioner songs, I find the handle into Salvation Army had been turned so many times it held no reflection.
96
T WO P OE M S
Before I was shiftless, I stocked the shelves I knew which fruit was a loss leader how to tell if the bruising was severe enough to discard. I want to remain in the past tense. Where, everything is already known and after the drive-in closed the holes in the screen show the same thing again and again: sky. Between the truck stop towns you can see the stars clearly. Rain water coagulating in the public ashtray ready to take what I leave behind.
G A BR I E L C O S T E L L O
97
Exit Strategy There is no leisure with dignity in an unfinished world. —David Berman
I. The exit sign damaged and the man in the corduroy suit talking about how rain water collects in the cistern. I got a sense out the bus window that we were approaching the outskirts of the city. The car dealers’ faces on the billboards started to look familiar At the time clock factory the workers dream in alarm sounds. An impediment to remembering. The official scorer’s retirement party was sparsely attended because it was a game night. Waiting on the weather to change, looking at time’s relief map I got bored waiting for a fissure to appear in the tree line. Bored at notating difference within the landscape. Off hand, how many days are enough? Last year’s calendar left hanging on the wall through spring the whole time, the seasons have their own ends to meet.
98
T WO P OE M S
Mercenary blue sky always moving out the window above the kitchen sink. The old weather vane on top of the garage with the sagging roof had lost the letters that spoke to direction. After I dislocated my knee the leaves rotted in black plastic garbage bags behind the garage. Tall grass grew in the median of the alley between gravel. II. We parked behind the cinder block sub shop, the back lot also served as parking for the modular home showroom. Which was not a room but a gravel lot next to the river that divided Ohio from West Virginia. This division meant that the water itself had a line through it. Or, at least appeared that way on the map. They lit black smoke through the chimney through one of the trailers to signify that the grievances had been aired. Thermal outerwear on sale at the close of the season. Which arrived earlier each year. Different camouflages depending on the month.
G A BR I E L C O S T E L L O
99
III. My father was a long time signifier and his father before him. A cloud burst was first preserved on film by accident. Our only real family tradition was leaving our children. An exodus over a few dozen exit ramps. The motel flashed its vacancy. He looked up to find her asleep, mouth agape, at his telling of how no one gave him his due. The renovations on the archive lasted through the seven consecutive summers. The heat index broke records each year and the reportage became less prominent. The rarer documents had been moved below the flood plain. In anticipation of some weather. The committee to reform the processes of decay met biweekly until their advanced ages meant that asynchronous meetings were necessary. Steve Zoomed in from purgatory and said the food was tasteless but they ate. When the man in the corduroy suit’s car finally broke down one night in late July he set off down the shoulder of the interstate. Looking for a phone to speak into so someone would come retrieve him.
* The first line of this poem is an interpolation of lyrics from the Silver Jews song “Black and Brown Blues” written by David Berman