Austin Robert Smith

Campanology

 

I've been thinking about bells. Temple bells,
Prayers inscribed around their circumferences.
The bells in church towers, their heavy tongues.
The bells of campuses a lone student,
Late leaving the library, is stopped by,
Ringing all that reading she did deeper.
Wedding bells, bright and clamorous. The bells
Of funerals, slow, languorous. After
All, what's the rush? Cowbells in the pasture,
The bells of sheep in high meadows, the bell
That warns the bird just as the cat pounces.
The doorbell the boys ring and run away
From, the old man who woke to the ringing
Standing there confusedly in the dark.
The bells on the jester's hat, foolish bells,
A kind of anti-crown, and the bells on
His shoes, as if he's always kicking cans.
The dinner bell they used to ring to bring
The threshers in, still swaying as they walked
Past it. The harness bells my grandfather
Would dress the draft horses in at Christmas.
Bluebells in the cemetery because
She loved them. The bells they used to bolt to
Headstones, passing the rope down through a hole
In the coffin lid, so that, if the dead
Had been buried alive, the living could
Hear and come running. Bells in paintings, bells
In old photographs, bells in novels, bells
In poems. Diving bells, not bells exactly.
School bells, more likely to be a buzzer
Now. The bell you ring in hotel lobbies
That brings the smiling concierge over.
The silver bell to call the butler back.
Who even has a butler anymore?
Who even has silver, much less silver
In the shape of a bell? Who really rings
Bells these days? Does this poem even ring one?

The Dollar Tree
 
After the run on the banks, a poor family stored
Their last dollars in a hollow tree. That spring, the tree
Put on bills instead of leaves. Ones and fives and tens.
The family picked them off the lowest branches,
But couldn't wait until autumn for the highest to fall,
Nor were they certain that, if the bills changed
From green to red, they'd still be considered legal tender.
So they asked their daughter to climb the dollar tree.
The higher she climbed, the higher the bills became.
She started to find twenties, fifties, even hundreds,
Letting them flutter down to her parents and brother,
Their hands outstretched to catch them. She began
To think of herself as being the fall. And then she fell.

The Corn Crib
 
Always the thought then of the corn asleep.
The grin of yellow kernels through the husks
Like the teeth of children spent from playing
 
Glowing through parted lips. But if sleeping,
Who sang it to sleep? Whose foot rocked the crib?
Who kissed its forehead? Who looked in on it
 
In the dead of night? And when the corn is
In the dark ground, who will it fall to to
Figure out what should be done with the crib?

The Tracery

 

The ice traces the trees

Like a boy on his knees

Tracing a picture in a book.

 

When he asks his father to look

He sighs and puts on his glasses.

How soon his enthusiasm passes.

 

Father and son bend their necks

To a book of pictures, a book of checks.

Winters and winters hence

 

A man leaves the house he rents

And walks across the yard.

Life has grown too hard.

 

But his death shakes the ice from the tree,

Revealing the real beneath the tracery.

Want
 
The garden spider wants
To catch the fly, and, if you
Take a broad enough view,
You could say,
In some kind of way,
The fly wants to be caught too.
 
These seedy weeds want
To cling to my sweater as I
Brush by, and my sweater
Seems to want to do more
Than just warm me,
Wants to bear their future.
 
Seen a certain way, it is not
Such a tragedy when,
In the hour after
The hay has been mown,
The hawk that has flown
Over all morning
 
Suddenly descends
And takes the shelterless
Field mouse in the act
Of praying. Maybe
The mouse was praying
To be winged.

Coming Off an SSRI
 
As bad as I feel, it feels good
To feel again. This dead oak I would
 
Have walked by before without giving it
A second thought, I must go up to it
 
Now and run my hand along its dead gray
Face, which looks in all directions, and say
 
A prayer for it. Standing under its limbs,
I understand it. I had no autumn
 
Sorrow myself, no spring joy. Everything
Seemed the same. I was through putting on rings
 
Too. In the leafless branches of my brain
Perched whole flocks of chemicals, but none sang.
 
As bad as I feel, it feels good
To feel. My prayer: that this oak, dead, could.

Delivery

I ran out of the house shirtless, yelling
for the dog not to get hit on the road.
Only after I opened the package
did I think of how the UPS guy,
who I like, but who I assume maybe
isn't the world's biggest reader of
Appalachian short fiction, had driven
for miles in silence in the presence
of this book I had ordered on the life
of Breece D'J Pancake, including heart
breaking letters he wrote to his parents
and a suicide note he sent to John
Casey, his teacher, who I had dinner
with one night in Charlottesville, telling him
about the time, driving through the mountains
of West Virginia, I took the exit
for Milton on a whim, remembering
reading the name in the very same book
the UPS guy delivered to me
today, then drove aimlessly around town
until I found the cemetery, where
I turned here and there at random down lanes
so narrow that my tires straddled them,
until I felt an urge to stop and said
to myself, "When I turn my head I'll see
Breece's grave." And sure enough, there it was,
the name PANCAKE on a big stone that marked
the family plot, and, getting out, his grave
set level with the grass someone was paid
to cut, likely not even knowing that
they were spewing clippings onto the head
stone of one of the best story writers
America has ever produced, and
that was when John stopped me, saying, "Austin,
I buried him with these hands," showing me.

Tending Tomatoes
 
I.
Laden, they can't stand on their own.
What you need to do is sink a post
Every six feet or so, then run wire
Between them to tie the stems to
With lengths of twine shaped
Like the symbol for infinity.
 
II.
Suckers take energy from the parent stem,
Like sons who should have been
Cut off long ago. If allowed to grow
Too long, they can shear off,
And, in the long wounds they leave
As if out of spite, rot can take root.
 
III.
The time to take a tomato is when
It seems not quite fully ripe.
If you leave them on the vine
Too long, they'll grow full of themselves
And start to split, like the grinning
Dead in photographs.

Paying Down the Principle
 
The lapidary quality of debt.
How, just when we think
We're nearing the surface,
Another wave breaks
Over our heads,
And another,
And what we hoped
Would be a breath of
Air is not air at all
But more saltwater,
Two lungs full.

Belling the Cat

 
To give the birds a flying chance, I'll hang
A bell around his neck, so that what wants
To kill them will warn them, the way an illness
Warns us through pain. The closer the birds are
To dying, the louder the bell will be,
Until there's no denying anymore
Who it's ringing for – it's ringing for them.

Thinning Carrots

 

So this is what 

The gods feel: 

Nothing.

 

I'm not even picking 

Which to leave

And which to pull, 

 

Just pinching

Every inch or so,

The largest as well

 

As the smallest.

Kind of like how,

In the human garden,

 

Even as

We're being thinned above

We're growing below.

Drying Garlic
 
I pulled the heads when the internet said to –
The two lowest leaves dead, a third
Beginning to die, like the first loss
Of feeling that heralds the stroke.
 
They came up easy, like they'd been waiting
For me, through with dirt and darkness.
The cloves we planted in late fall were turning
Into bulbs while everything you know
 
Happened this winter and spring was happening
And they didn't once cross my mind.
Today I tied them in bunches of five
And hung them from the beams
 
In the garden shed. They hang there now
As I write this, drying in the night air,
Beginning to put on their thin skins.
I want to know everything
 
They learned in the dark.
A few weeks and I'll be smashing them
With the flat of a knife.
Maybe I'll taste it.

Along Timber Coulee Creek
 
I want to be the daughter of this place,
a dairy along Timber Coulee Creek.
On any day, but this day especially.
July eighteenth. And at any time of day,
but mostly this time. Early morning.
Thunder to the west. A storm coming.
I want to wake to my mother crying
for me to help her close windows,
then brush past a brother in the kitchen,
burning bacon again, the kind of thing
the living remember about the dead
with such fondness. I want my father
in the barnyard scattering mineral,
having put his faith in the unlikelihood
he'll be struck by lightning, thinking
of what men who love him but
would never say they do would say.
Just like him to go that way, in his boots.
I want all this so much more than
I want the trout I know is in this hole
to rise to my fly and strike. I'd rather
be the daughter of this place, closing
her window against rain, than who I am -

the guy she can see through it,

standing up to his waist in her creek.

Deathsleep

 

Squirrel in the road.

Running one way,
no visible sign.

Could of been
asleep, or a girl's
stuffed animal fallen.

But running back
the other, there
it was, the blood-halo,
proving what

I already knew

to be true
to be true.

 

Death a girl
done playing around.

Guidance

 

The best guidance is given obliquely.
Today, trying to remember which screen
Belonged in which window, I noticed
Codes scrawled on the mildewed frames -
E4, N2, W3, corresponding to the sides
Of the house and numbered clockwise,

Each window a quarter hour.

Through those penciled coordinates

The man who sprayed the haze
Out of these screens in summers past
Was guiding me, but obliquely,
Like the farmer in that haiku of Issa's
Who, asked for directions, points
The way with a radish.

The Plane

 

At recess certain of us would walk by
The swing set and the slide, to the far side
Of the playground where a sort of mirror (call
It a plane) stood, reflecting whatever
Weather we were under, along with trees
That seemed to reach their leaves into its frame
Like soldiers straining to get their faces
Into the picture. The glare of it drew
Us to it too, along with the challenge
Of climbing it. See, it was pitched at such
An angle (I'd guess seventy degrees),
And made of such purchaseless stuff, that it
Was just hard enough to climb to keep us
Interested. You had to have dry hands
(but not too dry) and the right soles, and you
Had to really want to climb it, or else
It was impossible to get even
Halfway up. It helped if you ran at it,
Catching it at its slothful habit of
Gazing up at clouds, so that, by the time
It noticed you, you'd gotten high enough
To grab the bar that ran along the top,
Hanging there for a moment in triumph
Before sliding back down to earth, smearing
The fingerprints of the more tentative.
I think whoever designed it must have
Been acquainted with failure and wanted
To teach us perseverance. Instead, what
They taught us was that there are faces that
Prefer us cautious, that we must surprise.

The Swing

 

With no one around to push you,

you started slowly pumping your legs,

pulling hard against the chains 

on the backswing to fling yourself forward,

staring up the links to the bar 

it was rumored you could swing over 

if you got going high enough, though 

no one told you what happened then. 

That feeling in your belly, 

you'd felt it once before, 

the time you caught Tina Nguyen 

showing Shawn Bradbury, who got 

shot dead in a bar last year, the hot pink 

shoulder strap of her undershirt.

You were seeing the same thing 

he was seeing, the difference being 

he was being shown it. 

When you felt that feeling

you knew it was time to jump off, 

falling to your hands and knees 

in the grass, the chains twisting 

and untwisting, twisting 

and untwisting, 

twisting and untwisting.

Sowing Sulfur

 

I'm scattering pelletized sulfur

with the same gesture I

would make were I sowing rye,

cupping roughly the same measure

 

in hand and aiming only vaguely for

the furrows Quill is making.

He takes more care than I am taking

in straightly steering the tractor.

 

We keep passing one another, 

he leaning over to keep the tire

in its track, as if an invisible wire

ran from one end of the field to the other,

 

while I, less exact, am sowing

a crop that will never sprout

but that the potatoes can't live without.

What I'm doing will get them growing.

 

I am as pelletized sulfur is to seed,

here only to disappear

and help something green appear,

something people actually need.

 

 

 

 

 

Also the mountains

wear masks of mist, nod at one

another, and pass. 

 

*

 

The poppies : brimming
cupfuls of sun, like children
running from sparklers.

 

*

 

Koan : consider
how a dog wears no clothes but
pants and pants and pants.

 

*

 

On Mt. Barnabee :
bumblebees in the blossoms,
barns in the valleys.

 

*

 

All of these days we've
spent in quarantine have gone
to form one pearl.

 

*

 

As for the mountain
itself, it keeps on climbing
via its flowers.

 

*

 

Inspired by the
butterflies, the butter flies
into the cat's mouth.

 

*

 

On Mt. Barnabee,
amongst the grasses I am
just another head.

 

*

 

If I would have known
it would be this beautiful,
I'd have brought more beer.

 

*

 

Along with a few
million gallons of water
the reservoir holds
the idea of a lake.

 

*

 

If the clouds are wool
there must be some awfully
big sheep in heaven.

 

A Bathroom of One's Own
 
If I felt sorry for her then (I don't
Remember if I did), I feel sorrier
For her now. The only female
In our family, she had to share a bathroom
With a dairy farmer husband and three sons.
No matter how often she asked us to
Be more careful, the only constant thing
About our aim was its errancy. Had
We tried half as hard to hit the toilet
As we tried hitting the basketball hoop,
She wouldn't have had to clean up
After us before sitting down, not to
Mention the blue, snaillike globs of Crest
On the sink edge, the damp towels we tossed
Onto the floor, the shower curtain clouded
With lime. At least the bar of green soap
Was impossible to sully because, cleaning
A body covered in milk and manure and sweat,
It itself remained clean. She must have taken
The time to wipe our spittle off the mirror
Before brushing her teeth and her hair.
She must have opened the one window
So the curtains blew into the room,
The breeze carrying upon it the scent
Of the pines it had blown through
And the odor of the herbs in her garden.
There was always at least one fresh towel,
Still warm from the drier, and the sharpness
Of the blades that never grew dull
Scratching my father's face, the razors
Kept in a special drawer we knew not
To open. I realize now I was wrong to say
She had to share a bathroom with us.
Years before we built a second bathroom
Just for her at the top of the stairs,
She had a bathroom of her own.
A pureness amidst the desecration,
Like a park in the heart of a city,
More beautiful for the dust on the leaves.

Palm Sunday

 

No need for social distancing then. When

Christ came riding into Jerusalem

 

On a donkey, his bare feet nearly

Brushing the roadside rye, he was

 

At once vaccine and cure, his breath

Their ventilator. Death's dominion had come

 

Under his sway. All the throng could think

To do was to lay palm fronds down

 

Before him to calm the dust the way,

In 1918, they'd spray the unpaved roads

 

Of Middle Western towns from tanks on trucks

Driven by men whose faces were lost

 

Even to their children under the masks,

Worn not for the dust (which they were

 

Darkening as if with anointing water),

But for the air.

The Orchard
 
Someone, fucking done with birds,
Took the time to cover the branches
Of the orchard trees in metal ducting,
 
Like the arms of young waiters asked
To cover up their sleeve tattoos.
When they wing close, the crows scare
 
Themselves away, which means more
Fruit for the couple who own the orchard
To step on and regret not picking.
 
The trees are the first boys with glasses,
The first girls with noticeable breasts.
They're mad to have to stand here
 
Like this, waiting for the photographer to
Take the damn picture
Already, blinking in the flash.

The Farmer Suicide Conference

 

It was held somewhere in Andhra Pradesh,

  On a campus that felt abandoned, the fig trees

White with dust, the green buildings seeming 

 

To tremble in the sun, as if they hadn't decided

  Yet whether to be. But we entered them as if

They were real and went up the stairs

 

To classrooms in which papers were presented,

  The oscillating fans making the pages flutter

In the hands of professors of statistics

 

And microeconomics and political science,

  Lithe, mustachioed men who could sit on their heels

For hours. At night, we gathered on the porch

 

Of a house that might have been 

  A farmhouse had it been out in the country,

Drinking big bottles of Kingfisher beer.

 

By way of explanation as to why I was there,

  I must have told them about my father who,

Right then, was waking up on the other side 

 

Of the earth to milk a hundred Holsteins, 

  And they must have known that, if I was there,

There was no danger of him killing himself.

 

I loved those professors who, when they agreed, 

  Would rock their heads from side to side,

Ear to shoulder, as if trying to clear them of water

 

So as to better hear each other, and who'd spend 

  Their whole careers toiling in the fields

Of forlorn Indian universities. I recognized them

 

As the bookish sons who'd left the farm but who

  Kept going back through math or poetry

Because even while we were drinking beer

 

A man was struggling to lift a plastic drum

  Over his head in order to pour the viscous red

Poison down his throat, committing suicide

 

By drinking pesticide, not to protest Monsanto,

  But because it was the deadliest thing

He had at hand. I think now of how when

 

His son turned him over, he must have

  Looked like those old women who smiled at me

In the street, their teeth stained red with betel leaf.

Heat Lightning
 
Comes loping across the land sans thunder
And you're the boy it's coming towards
Sitting in the porch swing the chains groaning
In the eyehooks twisted deep into the boards
By your grandfather years before even your
Father was born your grandmother saying
"I'm worried they won't hold Bob" and your
Grandfather joking "They'll hold Bob
And Mary too" and she sighing and sitting
Down beside him wincing at their weight
Then beginning to trust it beginning to
Swing her pale smooth legs and he saying
"See?" and she looking up and smiling

Cow Magnet
 
When a cow wouldn't eat
They'd make her
 
Swallow this big magnet
Shaped like a vitamin capsule
 
Checking first to see whether
She already had one inside her
 
By passing a compass
Under her belly
 
We picked them off the side
Of the metal filing cabinet
 
They were stuck to in order
To hold something cold and heavy
 
They were brand new
But they seemed corrupted
 
By where they were going
To be going soon
 
But they were proven
To save lives
 
The length of rusted wire
Or the roofing nail
 
That would have pierced
The wall of her heart
 
Would be drawn to
The magnet instead
 
That would happen
In the dark
 
Of an actual body
But we only really believed it
 
When the vet let us
Hold the compass

Social Distancing in Retrospect
 
It has been determined it isn't enough
To isolate oneself now 
And in the foreseeable future
But is becoming increasingly necessary 
To isolate oneself in the past as well.
 
Therefore, all citizens are hereby asked 
To close their eyes and remember 
All crowds of ten or more people 
One has ever found oneself in
And by an act of pure imagination 
 
Push those around you away 
To a distance of at least six feet
(Think of a grave's depth turned 
On its side and balanced between
Your shoulders and the shoulders 
 
Of those who surround you). 
All citizens are encouraged to please
Cooperate and follow best practices
When it comes to how
You used to live. In short, it is
 
Vitally important to never have been 
As close to one another as we were. 
Examples of social distancing
In retrospect include: Sitting alone
In the basketball bleachers.
 
Dancing by yourself at your brother's wedding.
Finding the emptiest car in that train
You took that summer from Venice
To Trieste. Refraining from reaching
For the stained-glass-stained hand
 
Your grandfather offered you that
Sunday morning at Mass. Give him instead
The sign of peace. It goes without saying
That, in the past, as now, try not to
Touch your face.

She lived from cigarette

To cigarette. They looped
Bluely through her lungs
On break. She knew
The menu by heart
Like some she served
Knew the Gospel.
There weren't any specials.
If you asked if there were
You weren't from around there,
But then she knew that already.
She couldn't be rushed.
She suffered bad tips
Like a horse suffers flies.
She couldn't care less
What you left her.
She lived back of the diner
In a trailer a long-dead cook
Had pulled back under the pines.
It hadn't moved in so long

Everyone had forgotten it

Could. The years had taken
Aim at the tires,
Closed one eye,
Shot them out.
No one knew whether
She'd ever loved a man
Or been loved by one,
But she had a thing
For drunks and farmers.
She kept the dark
Little hearts
Of their coffees warm.
When she died
They named their first
Special after her
To give men a reason
To keep saying Carolyn.

Relics

 

He chose to keep his baseball mitt.
He hung it from a nail in the garage
Where he knew he wouldn't see it
Often. An anaphylactic hand, it was
Hideous, but it comforted him.

 

She chose to keep his favorite shirt.
It had runs in it like old shirts get.
She kept it folded in a bottom drawer.
Once a season she washed it
And hung it on the line with theirs.

 

Sometimes he would see the shirt.
Sometimes she would see the mitt.
But neither said anything
To the other about it.

A tree like one of those

Old cane wheelchairs

With a wind in it like a man

Crippled by polio as a boy

Dreaming of walking.

 

What am I saying? 

There was no wheelchair, 

No crippled man, no polio,

No dreamt boy walking,

Just a tree and the wind.

 

 

 

Over a breakfast of salt

Pork and hard tack

She asks him is he going

To die today 

He tells her yeah but not 

Until the very end because 

He gets to carry the flag

In the final charge

At the door she asks him

Does he have everything

He needs - ramrod bayonet

Capbox canteen -

He checks himself

As if checking

For a wound

Some days he leaves

 

Doesn't die comes home

Other days he leaves

Dies comes home

Like any war

Wears a wristwatch that's missing its hands.
Wears a white suit stained ochre at the cuffs.
Collects wheat-back pennies in thin blue books.
Loves the shadows of the blossoms more than the blossoms themselves.
Practices tossing softballs through a noose.
Never sleeps just blinks once or twice a day.
Owns an old motorcycle he'd like to tune up sometime.
Stuffs his ears with milkweed when he wants some damn quiet.
Reads the Bhagavad Gita on the toilet.
Writes at a school desk too small for him on which are scrawled cocks and names.
Climbs a bell rope for exercise.
Dreams of retiring to Italy to grow tomatoes and write opera reviews.
Is a virgin.
Reads poetry.
Has been known to steal a car and return it gleaming clean.
Wears shades that make him look like a real dick.
Buys the winning lottery ticket it so no one can win, never turns it in.
Sings hymns while splitting kindling, woefully off-key.
Picks up the phone sometimes and dials ten numbers just to hear someone say hello.
Enjoys long walks through cemeteries.
Had a dog once but then patted him on the head.
Smokes Lucky Strikes hence the ochre cuffs.
Keeps his checkbook balanced.
Took a cooking class once but started a grease fire.
Likes to go dancing but is a total klutz.
Drinks way too much.
Interested in a long-term relationship.