Poem of the Week, by Benjamin S. Grossberg
*My new poems podcast, Words by Winter, can be found here.
A couple of years ago my publisher emailed the cover art for a new novel. I thought it was beautiful – the rich color, the design, the way the title spread itself across the image– so I showed it to the Painter and our painter friend next door.
They studied it, turned the image this way and that, then looked at each other in a silent exchange of information. They were seeing things I didn’t, but what?
They pointed here, pointed there, tried to explain how the typography was clumsy, too many fonts, and the kerning was off. And what did I think of the palette, was there too much cyan, was there enough contrast to read the spine copy? I tried to understand, but that would have required me to have different eyes. I thought of how hard reading can be for me, the books others rave about that I don’t, how sometimes I gnash my teeth and hunch my shoulders, mourning at how many sentences, including my own, could have been built so much more elegantly.
The Finish Carpenter, by Benjamin S. Grossberg
Half million, and what? Cardboard subfloors—
crap, but all right. Vinyl-sided chimney.
Looks like shit, but can’t be seen indoors,
that’s something. But, Jesus, what you can see:
door frames, wall openings, kitchen pass through—
no moldings. Nothing. It’s like a face
without eyebrows. Or ears. And we’re talking new
construction, nice street. There’s window casing,
I guess we should be grateful. But they’re my folks—
pop was an architect—and I say, look, dad,
I’ll bring my god-damned miter saw. He walks
away from me, shaking his head. Glad
to do it, I say. Take me a day. He shrugs,
I see his shoulders move, his hand sweep down
in front of his face like he’s clearing bugs
or a smell. Why not, dad? Just a little crown
in the den, some chair rail. He’s seventy.
What happens—shit ceases to matter
at that age? Come on, I say. No filigree,
just finishing. You still have that step ladder,
right? He’s on the couch now, remote in hand,
surfing. I don’t get it. I don’t. Fine
corners, cornice, some detail, a few planned
correspondences. Why not? Some lines
to guide the space, hold it together. It frames
the parts. Gives shape. An order. Some wood.
That’s all I want for him. No games,
just shape, a little grace. He’s my blood;
I want him to have it nice. Mirrors and smoke,
he says, not looking up. He’s been saying it
to me twenty years, since I went broke
fixing my first place. Prewar, Sears kit
with nothing plumb, and me wild on the phone
raving about warped floor joists and plaster.
Smoke and mirrors, he said. And that’s it. Done.
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Twice in my life I’ve started down a road and kept going, even when the road narrowed and turned into thorns, brambles, impenetrable darkness. A symbol of my refusal to accept that I had made the wrong choice in the very beginning. Years later, when I read about the theory of “sunk profits,” which describes a past investment that shouldn’t but still affects your decisions about the future, I knew it was what I had done in those situations. Kept going, because with so much invested, it felt impossible to let go, even though that
The area around Cup Foods in Minneapolis has become a memorial, and I walked there yesterday from my house, past a smiling man holding up a cardboard sign at 36th and Stevens. 
Do you ever semi-wake up and not know where you are, how old you are, who is next to you (or not), what it is you are meant to do, who it is you are meant to be? As I typed that question just now, the words fugue state drifted into my mind. What exactly fugue state means I didn’t know until a second ago, when I looked it up, but it fits the feeling of those half-asleep wakings. 
Yesterday I had a hitch installed on the back of my car. The U-Haul installation place was off a busy frontage road, its entrance blocked by men who came running up to my car, masks askew, shouting at me in Spanish, a language I (still) don’t speak, holding up fingers —one? two? and pushing each other: Me! Me! No, me! 
When my kids were little and nothing else worked I used to resort to the dreaded counting threat. I’m going to count to ten. One. Two. Three. Why this worked I don’t really know, but I never had to count past three. 
On a moonless night a long time ago, just off the highway, I leaned against a cinder block wall with a payphone pressed to my ear. The only light came from passing cars and a bug-stained fluorescent bulb mounted above the phone. The voice on the other end was bored, disinterested. Across the miles I felt the connection diminishing, no, diminished, no, gone. 
Yesterday I sat at the table all day and labored through every paragraph of every page of a forthcoming novel, trying for the many-eth time to get the timeline perfect, and then I got up this morning and did it again. If Micah disappears on Wednesday night and Sesame starts looking for him on Thursday morning and winter break is a week from Friday and the weekends don’t count then how many days will it take for blah blah blah blah blah. Scratch paper and pen to my right, calendar to my left, stuck in the middle with my own inadequacy. 
One of my daughters had a friend when she was little, a friend the rest of us couldn’t see. He had a strange name which we all loved. Sometimes we would check in on him. “He’s asleep,” was the most common answer. Sometimes “He’s visiting his grandma,” or even “He went away.” Once, disturbingly, “he died.”
Alison McGhee 