Genealogy
I didn’t think of them much
when she was alive.
Her parents were mythical figures,
hazy and undefined,
from a remote, foreign past.
Now that parts of her march
into that same opaque mist,
I wish to know them.
My ears pine for their voices.
To hear their first words.
To sit with them in the autumn foliage
of dusty, rural towns. To recite
the poetry of their past and dig
to the center of their persons.
I look at the world behind their poses
and smiles that hang still on my wall.
I try to read joy into their eyes, to resist
intuiting them only in the context of tragedy.
I listen, most of all, for echoes of her—
for things both forgotten and never revealed.
Concentration
It’s the time of day
when the neighborhood children
are out to play.
Just off the school bus,
they make haste for the park
around the corner. The dogs bark,
welcoming them home.
A few miles away, teenagers
lean in for their first kiss.
A husband charts the topography
of his wife’s thighs, exploring
territory familiar and inviting.
It’s their anniversary—
or so I can’t help but imagine—
they both called in sick today.
Their children are grown
and out of the house.
I strive to remember my first time
with my wife, struggling to capture
her face, transfixed instead
by her gasp, which lingered
for a few moments on the hot air.
Concentration is elusive.
I don’t know why I thought
now a good time
to write her obituary—
not that there’s a good time,
but I’ve been putting it off
for weeks. I must try
to finish, though,
with the light of afternoon
and sounds of the children’s play.
The fall of evening
brings with it her shadows,
when putting pen to paper
becomes impossible.
Jerrod Laber is an Appalachian poet and writer. His work has been published in Door is a Jar Magazine, the Oxford Review of Books, and Crab Creek Review, and elsewhere. He lives in Virginia with his wife and their dog.