FRED SHAW

The Communicants

Here, Tuesday stumbling
towards midnight, we’re stuck

with that lone couple lingering
over a last swallow of Pinot,

their plates cleared, water-glasses
emptied, check unsettled.

They don’t care
that the closing cook has swept

and mopped his now-dark kitchen
where the dish machine cools

among bottles of bleach,
or that last-call was given long ago.

Instead, they lean-in and whisper
while we sip water

and try not to stare, soaking-up
the flicker of a muted TV,

feeling forgotten
like those doggie-bags we pack

but get left behind.  And if work
can be worship, it finds us

supplicant and waiting
for the chirp of chairs pushing

back from their table, followed
by heels clicking on hardwood,

a recessional marking
the end of service, the front door

closing like a prayer,
quiet on its hinges.

 

 

At the Antibalas Afro-beat Concert:
Byham Theatre, Pittsburgh

 

On a Wednesday night, all it takes
to make latecomers scurry

is a twelve-piece rumbling
to life, bouncing notes all over
 
this polished wood palace decked
in marble stairs and brass rails,

where grooves begin as thrum
beneath dimming house lights

and an oldster sits
front-row, sporting the faded jeans

and white sneakers
worn in Elks Clubs everywhere.

He nods along, ball-capped
and cirrus-haired, fist-pumping

to bass-lines with blue-eyed delight
in a hall full of toes tapping.

When the band strikes first chords
in its song about greed

he’s the only one who stands, rocking
to the beat on stiff bowed legs

right hand held aloft, winding
his way up polyrhythm’s river

until an usher cups
her palms to his ear, asks him

to be seated. Instead, he draws
sawbucks from his pocket,

wads them with joy, each toss
delivered toward stage
 
graceful and arcing
as an eephus.

 

 

On the Margins

 

With sunlight shouldering its way
through the locust’s leaves at dawn,

I watch
from the bathroom window

as a chestnut doe and her three
spotted fawns nibble a patch

of poison ivy before pawing
through our compost heap,

where yesterday, I’d buried
egg-shells, juiced limes

and tooth-marked melon rinds,
not far from where they bed--

another narrow tree-line
where backyards touch.
 
Last night, I fell asleep troubled
over a student squatting

in a vacant North Side house.
As I dozed,

a squirrel chewed
through a kitchen screen,

left a Honeycrisp peeled
to its core,

while a white-tail topped
an oxheart

and a groundhog mowed
my Brussels down to bitter stems,

needing bark and brassica
to keep his teeth from growing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back to Top
Review Home