Six Poems
by Jack Mackey
Lilies, Lilacs, Lavender and Still My Mother Dances in Luberon
The house smells amazingly purple, a single vase of violet
lilies from our garden, planted by you, you cut and arranged.
Who’d’ve guessed how much such scents quicken to my frontal
lobe, spaces where my mother lies waiting in the crevices––
memories of her blinking, like blitzy neon, typically supplanted
by fresher recollections, like a kid’s broken leg, a day in divorce court,
a guardrail I’d like to forget forever. Today behind
these old eyes are lilacs fixed in the front of my childhood home,
blooms sparse from my negligent watering, except one she planted around
the side, near the dripping outdoor faucet. As if it knew its special role,
that bush bloomed a wand of blue stars. On balmy days, she’d finish
folding wind-dried washing, take clippings and place them in glass
milk bottles, set them around the house. Last summer, a bicycle
through the south of France, the whole mountainside ablaze in blue
and even the lavender-infused food and the sachet (now in my closet)
never smelled as alive as her lilacs that wander through my head,
carefree over those fields planted deeply, deeply in the faults,
the sweet cracks where my mother never looked so beautiful.
Don Bachardy Turns 90
On the beach at eighteen where
Isherwood found him, already
a chest like chiseled granite. The dirty,
dirty old writer took him home and he never left, slept
in the old guy’s bed, later sketched him naked in a wheelchair,
in the bath as his craggy body caved in on itself, and stayed
with him. Stayed in the house another fifty years,
drawing the gathering of LA stars, racking up
the accolades, aging alone. Love over-
lapped like the pyramids
and mammoths––
out-living one
another.
Yesterday you wouldn’t let me
help you lift the chaise lounge onto the patio,
a spring ritual for ten years now, saying No so loud I worried
the neighbors would hear us (me crying I’m not feeble yet)
and they might believe I am. I was pledging a frat when you
were putting a tooth under a pillow. I catch you
watching me when I get up from the couch,
as I chop peppers for the salad,
stick a bloody finger
under the faucet.
I yell to you
write your novel,
get good at
something––
for later.
Searching for Godliness in the Mission
My sister and I scurry about this house
we borrowed so our still-unrooted baby brother
has a place to die. Assorted people I’ve never
met before have shown up for a week,
to hug him, sip herbal tea, tell stories.
Then last night he slipped away in sleep
as if he tried to spare us all. He was the only one
ready. Two strangers come in a van, tattoos
every visible inch, & whisper we’re sorry,
call us family as in, Family, is it OK
to go out the double doors? and I am struck
how the collective noun sounds now.
Dying has disordered this old Victorian.
My sister’s on her knees in a bathroom,
and I take charge of laundry.
I think how his forehead felt
on my lips when I kissed him
yesterday. And of our mother,
who needed one of us to stay, made him
pancakes until he was 28,
watched the door for years after he left.
I pull the sheets from his bed, a tattered
gray shroud, worn spots,
the odd body mark. I remove my clean shirt,
roll up dank bedding in my arms,
dump a healthy cup of Clorox into the machine.
Now we get ready to go, listen
for the dryer to buzz, like how you know
a screen door will always slam,
and brace for it. I remake the bed
& call out to my sister, “The stains are
gone.”
As we lock up the house, it starts to
sink in, starts to drizzle.
Our taxi approaches, its wipers smearing
the windshield––a distant bell
from the church, a few streets over,
the Angelus rings through the fog.
Onions
Today I’m trying to watch
a YouTube interview with a poet
I admire, but my eyes keep wandering
across the laptop screen
to the other shows. Before I made coq au vin
again last Sunday, I reviewed
Ina’s demonstration. She mispronounces
coq, says, “cock.” I guess she
knows her audience. Ina shares a secret
of frozen pearl onions, no one needs
to peel, no one needs to know.
It’s my favorite thing you make, you say.
The leftovers are still
in the fridge, but I have a need
even now––is there a better way
to make it, am I missing some
ingredient? Would you love it more?
Now Martha’s video lures me away
from the poet, so I click Pause on him
and fire up her demo.
She doubles-down on lardon, splashes vinegar
on her onions before chopping.
I make a note then go back and finish
the interview with the poet,
his discussion of his divorce, the lyrics
leading up, what he wants now.
Later this afternoon I’ll try to
write about this, I’ll use onions
in a metaphor, a tied handkerchief
shielding my eyes.
Father-Son Tournament
On the next tee he says, Let’s work
on your swing a little. His arms wrap
around me from the back, he presses
into me a little, places
a foot & taps my sneakers
into place. He is trying,
I can feel it, to connect, fix
something he fears maybe he broke.
Wheezing in my ear,
exhaling tobacco, he lowers
his hands on my hands, aligns
his arms with mine. It’s awkward
to be this close, for both of us.
He needs something but I have
no idea what it is.
Heads together, we face down,
our arms in parallel. He is silent
as I raise the club, my guided stroke
lifts back, lifts up, stops for an instant
in the air above, then whoosh!
His strength, his twisting forces
my stiffened torso into one smooth spin
and together we launch the ball,
watch it float over a sand trap &
slice into the morning mist, drop on the green.
For years I thought he wanted to change
me, but today I realize
I was wrong––as I drop my son at soccer
practice––and he gives me a hug
spontaneously, without my asking.
Stealing Jones Beach
I am eight. The trunk is lined with a threadbare
baby blanket, satin trim fraying, us four kids
squished in the back seat where we await our mother.
Last to arrive she commands the neighbors’
attention. Casual but carefully done up in her A-line
and her clip-on earrings––thin mother-of-pearl
discs outlined in rhinestones––she reaches across
the painted steel dashboard & adjusts the plastic
Madonna with quiet superstition. South along
the Meadowbrook Parkway, a nippy Sunday in April,
an air of expectation blows through open windows
extending the scent of my father’s tobacco, we glide
towards the beach and coast along sail-shaped dunes
that hide the breakers we can hear pounding. A mound
of white sand stands up suddenly, immaculate as a newborn
cloud , and my father abruptly pulls off the road.
I watch as he presses the parking brake,
turns to my mother and pats the back of her hand.
Her expression droops around the edges.
With motor still running he walks around
and pops the trunk, calls to me to join him,
hands me a shovel and whispers, Quick.
I copy his rhythm as we stab
our shovels into the sand and empty them
into the trunk, ignoring my mother’s protests––
Walter, it’s illegal––trying to load as much
as we can before a cop arrives. All the way
home they argue over my father’s
decision to “save a few measly bucks” on
a backyard sandbox for my sisters. It’s obvious
to me they are angry at more than this pilfering,
but I know better than to ask.
BIO: Jack Mackey grew up in New York and earned his M.A. in English from the University of Maryland. His first book of poems Up, Out & Over (Kelsay Books, 2024) won first prize from the Delaware Press Association. Jack was awarded a fellowship in poetry by the Delaware Division of the Arts and was selected for the Disquiet International literary program in Lisbon, Portugal. Individual poems have appeared in Gargoyle, Third Wednesday, Broadkill Review, Impostor, Anti-Heroine Chic, Mobius, and other literary publications. Jack lives in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware and Wilton Manors, Florida.