Allison Eir

Allison Eir was Featured Poet in PoetryMagazine.com in January
of 1997.

Grandpa

Grandma put me in nightgowns
and blow-dried my hair. Grandpa bought doughnuts.
We took rides later than anyone else.

He listened to the police radio for fires
and we’d find them like movies.

Grandma sang about birds at an animal fair
and big baboons by the light of the moon.

Grandpa didn’t know the words,
but he’d hum them.

When grandma was dying her brain
was dazed and she was calling my name
mixed with others as I stood in her doorway.

Grandpa sat in the basement with her pictures
around him and most of him was gone.

Each year made him more of himself.
She was him, too. Even their faces formed
into each other’s.

He kept her dresses in the closet
with ties he’d never wear again.
And he began to die faster than we are dying.

I know grandpa is somewhere singing
on the moon about baboons

and grandma is humming along.
The Little Red School House

We drew pictures in the window's breath
driving where they made us go.
Her heavy eyes of sky
saw freckles near the moon;
Now stars are stars.

New cracks in the wall of my sister
who slept in the same piece of skin
as I did for just as long.

She is still young in my eyes
though her soul is a glacier.

Every nail I punch into the wall
to hang a pretty new painting;
I wish I was nailing her back
to when she didn't know

dad would leave and mom
would go crazy.

How can I be happy
knowing of her dark blood and
scattered head.
I want to wrap her eyes
with bandaids,

erase her backwards
to the front door of the
little red schoolhouse

when we all walked her
to the front door and
kissed the quiet skin
on her forehead.

A LEAK IN THE ROOF

Perched on the kitchen counter reading,
conscious of where her children are in the yard.
At six her husband comes home, goes upstairs
to his study, turns up the music louder than his
own voice.

The only light are three lamps by the mirror.
He wipes dust off the wine bottle,
grips the glass rough, drinks it lazy,
files his day in the bureau and locks it.

Folding tablecloths she
seals the air with her laugh.
Laughing at nothing
but a child’s slippery cartwheel
through the frost of the window.

Laughing at herself and at the tub
of chili on the stove,
she puts an extra fist of salt in.
Will he hear her this time?
Will they talk about it in front
of the children?

Will they talk at all today
about why she cut her hair herself?
Will he taste the salt?
Does he feel his own tongue?

One day she hid his only pair of shoes
to see if he’d leave without them.

He left barefoot with a hole in his raincoat.

Allison Eir Jenks

TOO FAR IN


In the unlit earth you never want to mix
dreams among the soil.

You never want to be too tired
that color falls out of your eyes.

You don’t want to look over
those low clouds on the side
or speak too much at the waves.

It’s okay to throw stones too far in
or miss completely and sit on
the deck in your underwear
talking about things you don’t
really believe in

Until the earth opens bright
and your dreams run your days,
the dirt sprouts gardens, your eyes lift up.
Low clouds cast off and the waves delay.

You can’t find a stone
so you just sit on the deck in a gown
as someone’s about to take you somewhere

Now you believe in things you
never thought you would.