Anders Carlson Wee – Page 2 – Novus Literary and Arts Journal

Gathering Firewood on Tinpan

Written by Anders Carlson-Wee. Posted in Poetry.

I bundle them against my chest, not sure

if they’re dry enough. Gauging how long

they’ll keep me warm by the thickness.

I step around carefully, looking for

the deadest, searching the low places

for something small and old that will catch.

I pick up the dander loosened

as my father folds his hands, lowers his head.

The rolling thunder on the surface of a nail.

I pick up the cross that seesaws his chest

with each step. The day I lost my faith.

The night my dog ran away and came back sick.

The battery-pump of her final breath.

Still wondering if she left alone,

or if my father walked her out of this world.

Still wondering what he used for a leash.

I go further into the trees and find

more fuel. My friends faded on oxy

and percocet. My cousin Josh

buried young in the floodplain.

My brother and the ways I burden him.

Living it over and over each night.

My father walking into every dream.

My fire not bright enough to reveal anything.

Not even his face. Not even the leash.

County 19

Written by Anders Carlson-Wee. Posted in Poetry.

I twist in my seat beside the woman who picked me up

on County 19, reaching back to help her son

eat his Happy Meal. I fly a french fry through the air,

thinking how weird it is to hitch a ride on the road

I’ve driven so many times with my dad––

the route between our house and the old folks home

where Grandma lasted alone for fourteen years.

Each time we visited: the veins wider, bluer,

the ankles thinner, the distances between bedsores

diminished, the cheer my dad convinced himself to feel

as he repeated the litany: I am your son.

This is your grandson. We’re so happy to see you.

The woman asks me where I’m going

and I say as far as you can take me,

but as we pass the old folks home I tell her to pull over.

The boy is finished with his Happy Meal and now

he points at the bruise on his elbow and says Ouch.

His mom nods at him in the rearview as I get out.

That’s right, she says. Ouch. There is the low roofline,

the sign with a bible quote in changeable letters,

my grandma’s old window as blank as it was

when she lived here, some earth dug up

in the bordering cornfield for construction

of a new wing. I think about barging through the doors

and demanding to see Elizabeth Wee, making

some kind of scene. I think about setting up camp

in the hole in the cornfield and refusing to leave.

But instead I wander the grounds for awhile.

I lie in the parking lot’s grass island and watch

the cornstalks feather the road with lank shadows,

the sunlight dipping down into the tassels.

I want speed. I want new people. To ditch

this slow sanitary drain of golden light,

my pastor parents and their immovable faith,

this town’s brown river exhausting its banks.

Elizabeth is underground. So is my cousin.

Stones like polished teeth in the family plot.

In the twilight I walk back to the shoulder

and catch a ride from a farmer hauling a trailer

stacked with hay bales three-high. When he asks me

where I’m going I say as far as you can take me.

Tag: Anders Carlson Wee

Gathering Firewood on Tinpan

County 19

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