The Big Deal
If the big deal is only ninety-seven cents why are we looking at the ceiling? Why do ranks of fluorescents lead the eye to a vanishing point that doesn’t vanish? The ceiling fan regrets its errors. The big deal doesn’t include it, but does include several rectangles of ceiling tile: cheap beaverboard of filthy cream. When this sad place burns to the ground the lamplight, what’s left of it, will flutter like departed spirits and settle in the cracks in the sky.
At the Colony
In this damp old cabin, moss
spangles the walls and spiders
romp across the ceiling. Often
while sleeping here I’ve dreamt
of star-fire roasting treeless hills
and ape-armed women strangling
babies in their cribs. Today
as I scrub in the icy shower
a gaggle of tourists enters,
giggling because I’m naked
and a book lies open to reveal
a passage on the fall of Satan.
I chase them away by screaming
in several primary colors.
Already they’ve sent photos
by Instagram featuring me
glossy as a side of beef. Dusk
falls grazing in yellow weeds.
The cabin lacks electric power,
so with an LED lantern
I prowl through the cupboards
for a can of tomato soup.
Heat it on a propane stove.
Pour three fingers of bourbon
to wash down the briny slop.
The tourists won’t return tonight,
but tomorrow another busload
will trample through the colony,
surprising my neighbors at work
or making love, drinking, reading,
painting huge abstractions no one
will buy, writing sheaves of music
no orchestra would ever embrace.
My unfinished novel languishes
in longhand scrawls illegible
even to the author. Every day
I rethink the plot. The darkest night
in the history of humanity
presses deadweight at the window,
urging me to confess my crimes
against art and life and allow
the moss to grow right over me
so I’ll never be naked again.
William Doreski lives in Peterborough, New Hampshire, and teaches at Keene State College. His most recent book of poetry is The Suburbs of Atlantis (2013). He has published three critical studies, including Robert Lowell’s Shifting Colors. His essays, poetry, fiction, and reviews have appeared in many journals, including Massachusetts Review, Atlanta Review, Notre Dame Review, The Alembic, New England Quarterly, Worcester Review, Harvard Review, Modern Philology, Antioch Review, and Natural Bridge