5 Poems

By William Doreski. Published on April 15, 2023.

Lampman

The horror we call Lampman 

prowls along a gravel road

where last spring’s anemones failed.

Forest crowds the dark. Houses

spaced a quarter mile apart

close as tightly as oysters

against his gray phosphorescence.

We’re not certain that he’s dead

but his fitful glow suggests

at least the notion of decay.

He walks this road every night

and no one challenges him.

As we pass in our car we imagine

he waves, but his glow occludes

his vestigial form and gestures.

He isn’t much. Hardly a presence.

But we mustn’t stop to talk.

We might become pillars of salt

the rain would erode and erase.

Lampman creeps from point to point,

never returning along this road.

Where does he go in daylight?

Is he present but unseen because

his glow is too vague to compete

with the honest November sun?

People blame him for the deaths

that frequent the nearby houses,

but cancer and old age apply.

No murders, no violent accidents,

no screams from vacant bedrooms,

no skulls grinning after midnight.

Lampman shuffles along the road

in his self-sparked illumination,                                 

an idea of a person rather

than a soul on its own. When

we see him, we feel depleted

although he has never troubled us

except by exposing to starlight

a dream life we’d rather hide.

Plain November Mordancy 

Despite the ravenous chill

babies bob up everywhere,

tucked into strollers, bouncing

in slings, chortling like sparrows.

The local population boom

amuses you, but I worry

that the planet crumbles beneath

tiny feet that’ve yet to touch

naked and unrepentant earth.

In the park, babies communicate 

telepathically. We suspect them

of unionizing, frowned upon

here in this “right to work” state.

We suspect they suspect us,

the large people, of selling

their birthright for digital malaise

wiping the world from the slate.

Yet they’ll soon embrace that ill,

pressing smart phones to every

part of their bodies, recording

fifteen minutes of fame over

and over again. The cold

of November imposes gestures

no one could mistake for human.

The park offers skeins of oak leaves

brown and tough as sad old shoes.

These babies won’t wear leather,

cotton, wool. Only plastic: blue

or pink: wrapped like their mothers

in layers flimsy as pages.

You doubt that anyone reads

deeply enough to care that the wind

from the northwest repeats itself

without grammar or syntax,

slashing the landscape into shards

small enough for babies to swallow. 

Our Usual Holiday Plans

We’re breaking down with our cars—

gear and tooth, fuel pump, liver.

We should go electric and plug

our vehicles and ourselves

into one dedicated outlet. 

Late autumn promises gifts

not only through pagan holidays

but from the acutely angled light

flattering with long, tall shadows

we inhabit with childish glee.

Yes, the Christmas season flops

at our front door and implores us.

But we don’t sing carols, don’t ignite

an indoor tree with chrome décor,

don’t reap presents shipped from China,

don’t mingle with distant relatives

with breath like sweaty wool socks.

Instead we roam the rackety woods,

wearing orange in case of rifles.

We refuse to read Charles Dickens

either aloud or to ourselves.

We brush our teeth and hair more

vigorously than usual.

We’ll stay sober on New Year/s Eve

in case the neighbors catch fire

and need us to extinguish them.

Our cars may or may not start today.

Their expressions, bland as toads’,

offer no clues. Driving to town

isn’t a definitive act 

but rather a dress rehearsal 

for a winter of plaintive moments

when snowfall panics the landscape

and town plows growl with thick men

sipping coffee at the wheel.

Then driving becomes adventure

and our depleted bodies will knot

into muscle tough as vinyl,

bracing us against collision

with the freshly empurpled sky.

Cold Copulars

Our friend spilled a thundering pot

of cheese soup that scorched to bone.

That’s why her hand is bandaged.

We worry that infection will douse

her manual vigor, but smiling

off the danger she proceeds.

The day looks sick with ice and sleet.

Predictable, predicted, the mess

smirks on every utile surface.

We sit outdoors under the eaves

and savor village geometry

from a safe if chilly outlook.

The rapture that blinds with snow

has yet to arrive. The winter blue

that soothes with gendered strokes

withholds until Christmas has done

its pagan pageantry in suburbs

discolored by repeated beatings.

Vestigial limbs are flailing

to no avail. Our bandaged friend

drives away in her Chevy truck

with her gaze affixed to asphalt

where evolution publicly stalls.

North or south, magnetic fields

whimper with miniature frights.

We could abandon our shelter

and walk abroad in a shower

but we’d lose our credibility.

Let’s stop reading politics

as weather. No point distorting

vanishing-point perspective

to explain the third-degree burn

waving goodbye in the distance.

A Little Cab Ride

Although we don’t have taxis

in the woods of New Hampshire

one stops and the driver gestures

for me to get in. “No money,”

I say, and try to keep walking

but my legs won’t work. I freeze

with my entire body agape.

“You don’t need money,” the driver

tells me. “You only need faith.”

“No faith,” I answer. He laughs

in shades of pink and vermillion

like a flimsy midwinter sky.

He guns the engine. I’m doubtful

but get in, slamming the door

so hard the windows clatter.

The cab lurches forward. The woods

in their seasonal gray dissolve

and we’re in midtown Manhattan

snarled in traffic. Pedestrians

sneer at my old flannel shirt.

Fifth Avenue. Tiffany’s

and Trump Tower. The illusion

lingers for a few moments.

Then we’re back in the forest 

half a mile from home. The cab

creeps along the primitive road

to the trout pond, where it parks.

The driver lets me out. I’m standing

in Rockefeller Center facing

the skating rink where couples

skitter brightly to Muzak.

“Don’t you wish you could join them?”

the driver says with a gritty smile.

Massive buff-colored buildings

brace me against my delusion

until the scene shifts and the glint

of the trout pond, fringed by pines,

centers me back in my daily world.

The cab has gone. Its fresh tire tracks

prove that I didn’t dream it,

and the last laugh of its driver

still ripples in the vacancy

between acute and obtuse angles,

a distance I’m unable to cross.

William Doreski lives in Peterborough, New Hampshire. He has taught at several colleges and universities. His most recent book of poetry is Dogs Don’t Care (2022). His essays, poetry, fiction, and reviews have appeared in various journals. williamdoreski.blogspot.com.