Three Poems
by Jack Wagner
HER BROTHER
Tonight I am her brother,
not her son, and she thinks we’re in
the basement of her father’s house,
rinsing bottles for his still.
Do you remember? she asks me,
nostalgia tinged with sadness.
I do, I say, to humor her.
We shouldn’t have done that,
she says, admonishing me
as much as herself.
When nothing else in her mind
makes sense, this moral faculty,
as sharp as ever, haunts me.
I take her reprimand, as a brother
and a son, and relish it,
basking in our newfound
fellowship of guilt.
HIS PHANTOM LOVER RETURNS
Out of the lingering mist
Of a hot July monsoon,
The apparition reappears,
Slyly as a hidden lover,
With wild and flaring cheeks,
Red hair gleaming,
Wet wisps tangled
Across her snowmelt eyes,
And the trinket at her throat,
A crystal in the drizzle
Of the moonlight,
Is an icicle that drips
Like frozen tears.
She descends the mountain
On bloody feet, over sage
And mottled underbrush,
Stepping on the cool veranda
Of his rugged stone retreat,
Where portals wide
With wonderment now part
In stupefied amazement.
She heads straight toward
A table at the rear,
Inside a cavernous room,
Where the statue
Of a man is seated,
Stolid in his heart and soul,
At a meal still succulent
And sizzling on his plate.
A mug of tortured glass,
Cloudy with absinthe,
Burns like a candle
In the stone man’s hand,
Reflecting to his eye,
Cold in its detachment,
Her presence there behind him,
As now it sees her rip
The icy dagger
From her breast
And plunge it like a bolt
Of lightning into his heart,
Which beats, at last alive.
NO MEMENTO
I drink my morning apple juice
From a tiny silver cup
Where his name is etched,
Along with the date of his birth,
And five days later, his death,
All barely legible now, tarnished
By the seven years he’s gone.
I do not polish the cup
Or put it on display.
No keepsake, no memento
Will it be, just a tiny cup
From the cupboard
I take out every morning
To drink with him at breakfast.
BIO: John Wagner’s work has been published in The Lyric, Blue Collar Review, Long Island Quarterly, Long Islander, O:JA&L; Open: Journal of Arts & Letters, Open Ceilings Magazine, The Phoenix, and The Round Magazine. He holds a PhD (ABD) in creative writing from University of Denver and has been a teacher at Providence College and a development director for a wide variety of organizations, including Loyola Marymount University, the Denver Symphony and Boulder Community Health. John enjoys golf, traveling, and fundraising for a variety of nonprofit organizations.