3 Poems
By John Dorroh. Published on March 24, 2023.
Swimming with My Father at Officer’s Lake
At times there was an army between us
his hairy belly and my hard head
the lake we swam in an ocean to me.
Sand so hot that sandals were useless
and he never wore them anyway because
he’d fought in two wars. Nothing to it
he said. He told me to swim in front
of him out to the floating island half-way
across the ocean. It could have been France
for all it mattered. You go ahead. I’ll be right
behind you. I won’t let you drown. I didn’t
want to disappoint. What do we do when
we get there? I wanted to know. We rest
and look at the girls, then swim to the beach.
I never knew that war had an intermission.
I dove too deep, bobbed up like a fishing cork,
turned around to see him standing on the plat-
form, arms akimbo, his khaki swim trunks
blending in with the tree trunks. A hell of an oak,
calm in the storm, powerful limbs that could
scoop me up and toss me gently onto dry land.
A Saturday Night in January at the Farmhouse
1.
I like it best when you stream soft jazz
and dance like a spider monkey in the kitchen.
I write note cards at the table and wait
for winter to pound on the back door. There’s a stew
simmering in the Dutch oven and a round of sour dough
in the oven. This is entertainment.
2.
I poisoned myself on July 4th with a bottle
of bourbon and felt like shit for a week. Not worth it
so I almost quit. Looking at space for my new skin.
Watching the geese fly over with outstretched necks.
Honking is ritual. They know where they’re going.
3.
I can’t hike the trails near my house in the summer.
Too many snakes. One snake is enough. I wait until
the first frost.
4.
Leaves pile up on the deck. I wait for all of them to fall.
It might be in March.
5.
I got a new storm window for my bedroom. No longer
do I hear the drone from the interstate three miles away.
No longer do I hear the geese honking or the kid next door
beating a cardboard box with a baseball bat.
6.
There are few secrets in this house. The dog is sad
with his cone. The cat runs away from him. You play
music from the 70s and I drop the scissors on my foot.
The stew is too hot to eat. The bread tastes better with butter.
We watch “Kiss of the Spiderwoman” and I go to bed
with clean sheets.
Elon
There is no cookie dough
on the moon, no pop tarts
or spaghetti bolognese.
There are pocks & pits
in a sub-freezing vacuum.
Some sand & grainy
minerals, the lips of ancient
craters & facsimiles
of mountains.
There is no love on the moon,
nor will band-aids stick to
any surface. There are no girls
named Paula or Ella Jean,
no men at all. No babies
or coffee or coyote scat.
No swimming pools or bottles
of wine. No turkey carcasses
or hard dinner rolls, no nuclear
devices or guns, no Vlasic
pickles or thumbtacks to display
your daughter’s art on cork board.
Why is your heart set on flying
into cold space? Something is
missing.
John Dorroh (he/him) may have taught high school science for several decades. Whether he did is still being discussed. Three of his poems were nominated for Best of the Net. Hundreds more have appeared in journals such as Feral, River Heron, North Dakota Quarterly, Loch Raven Review, and Selcouth Station. He had two chapbooks published in 2022 – Swim at Your Risk and Personal Ad Poetry. He is a Southerner living in the Midwest.
