Sample Poems by Eric Schwerer
The Saint
of Withdrawal
It bats four times, soars,
changes courseãscrapes black on the milkish air
joined by three more.
Ascending over the trees the other side of Monro Muffler Brake,
hurled claws,
sooty tissues tossed in the dirty white.
These are not
those birds youêve seen in the moving distance
inside a daydream, slightly rising left to right,
inspiring your real eye with real flight. No. These
four have been in the dark, wet woods all night
perched in a rotten pine, standing on needles,
wings outstretched, lifted like
stooped old men in overcoats who frighten
pigeons from the park. In the weak light
two tiny dots slide on the ice of the western sky
while down on the floor these guys begin to walk,
sway and stalk, throwing forth one claw, criminal,
yoked, lurching in the quiet cold to gawk
or cock a head, moving where nothing else does
in the fog.
When Waste Managementês fleet shudders
over the township blacktop, one takes flight.
It takes it
like the sick take
time, taking all the air it can
each flap, coasting until it needs again, making
dashes, strikes on the sky, hooks,
burnt matches, whatever canêt be taken back.
Seaside Boy
1
I told him he should write a story
about driving to the beach
with his family. How his father
played War on the radio.
And how there they would be
Saturday morning, early,
unpacking the back of the wagon into the cottage.
I told him
people would be interested
in the pictures his mother paintedã
his sister and his father and himself
walking below the slight shelf
the tide made at night and now
licked again as if
sand were the glass it could become.
If he awoke early enough
it was just the skittish sandpipers and ethnic grandfathers
fishing, his sister and his father
walking. His mother in a sweatshirt
making pictures. A kite
tugging his thin arms, the string
taut and disappearing up in the dusk.
2
I said, remember the seaês
shells? Fragments,
echoes, he said. No,
I said, remember the jelly fish?
The sting, he said,
was worse than pissing after sex.
But the boardwalk, adolescence, I persisted,
were not these at least things
the night held safely? The pinballês ring,
donuts toasting into the salt air,
a seagullês wing, sun-stroked
boards smooth as the nailsê mooned heads,
bumper cars sparking against the steel ceiling,
the marquee glazing your motherês eye?
3
When it rained, he said, the sand made a crust.
The ocean became self-conscious and jealous,
stopped its affectionate lapping,
held back and grew into a bitter stew.
The palm trees fussed like tourists
and the dune grass whipped up sharp.
I was wearing a black t-shirt, he said,
that was melting into my heart.
Beneath our cottage porch
strips of sand dimpled
like drip marks eaten into rock
while the sand directly beneath the boards
stayed soft. Did you play under there
after it stopped raining, I asked,
to not complicate anything?
4
Dear Mister Misty, how much for it,
how much for all that is misty?
The nails floated out
of the shrinking boardwalkês grip. Oh
it rained every other day and faggot!
a smart-ass screeched.
I did not think that I was gay, he said,
but it made me suddenly flee
the noisy arcade.
In the Sand Shop,
he told me, there was a picture
hanging above the post-card rack. A figure
yellow and slick in a jacket
walking the rainy beach alone.
The waves white with foam.
The rain diagonal, steady.
The picture changed colors
when the soft pretzel oven opened.
He was quite far away,
his bare feet a wet flash like two wings
beating a reflection above the sand.