GOING TO SAY NOTHING
when I call him at midnight. “You know,” I say, “I’ve written a poem where you lose your job.” Nothing. “Then you look out your window and at that moment there is no one more alone.”
“Oh,” he says, “clever. I was just thinking
of calling you.”
When I was sixteen we were driving and I told him how frustrated I was. Genocide and Coke-a-Cola. I told him there was no god to fix our mess. I told him six billion people were too damn many and nothing could change that. He was quiet.
I remember him shouting at me to shut up when I had a sleep over in third grade. But he turned silent a few moths later the day my brother died. My mom would wake me up at night shouting at him. All I heard back was the door shutting as he went to work six hours early.
When she called me into the living room he only cried. Mom explained “Dad’s moving. Just for a while. We need time apart to sort things out.”
“Hey, you listening to me?” he asks. What was he saying? “Well, anyway, you know it’s true,
your poem. Me and everyone
in your poems we’re tired
of feeling so alone.”
2 responses so far ↓
1 Natalie // Mar 13, 2009 at 6:36 am
Hey Mac
this poem got to me the most for some reason. i really like the opening and the closing stanzas. the only part that was kind of jarring was #3. for some reason, i want some clue of what he looks like as he’s sitting there taking shit from yr mom. or else, a description of the room could set the mood. in general, it seems like dialogue and the contrast between quiet/people screaming at each other is the main focus of the poem, but i think a few extra images here and there would help give me a view of the world these people inhabit. when you guys were driving in the car when you were 16, was it a truck? i imagine a a blue truck for some reason.
yr pomes make me happy.
oh and thanks for yr help too. it was fun reading yr version. i could really hear your voice. natalie’s world according to mackenzie. like the gospels.
2 mackenzie // Apr 13, 2009 at 4:15 pm
GOES TO THE PHONE
He says nothing when he answers. “You know,” I say, “I’ve written a poem where you lose your job.” Silence. “Then you look out your window lost in the dull grey-blue of the sky and at that moment there is no one more alone.”
“Oh,” he says, “clever. I was just thinking
of calling you.”
When I was sixteen we were driving and I told him how frustrated I was. Genocide and Coke-a-Cola. I told him there was no god to fix our mess. I told him six billion people were too damn many and nothing could change that. He sat there silent, picking at the steering wheel
of his old blue Jeep, looking out
into the darkness hanging over the water
of the ponds where he’d parked to listen.
I remember him shouting at me to shut up when I had a sleep over in third grade. But he turned silent a few months later, after my brother died. My mom would wake me up at night screaming at him in the kitchen. All I heard back was the door shutting as he’d walk out
to the Jeep, the cranking of the starter
as he’d go to work five hours early, the first light
swallowing him up.
When mom called me from my room he sat at the dining room table with the afternoon flooding in through the big sliding doors to the porch. The sky was all blue, the mountains a deep purple, the day somehow gorgeous
as he cried. She told me “Dad’s moving. Just for a while. We need time to ourselves, some quiet
to sort things out.”
“Hey, you listening to me?” he asks. What was he saying? “Well, anyway, you know it’s true,
your poem. Me and everyone
in your poems we’re tired
of feeling so alone.”
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