Phenomenal
Setting a bedroom window,
my brother tells me a bullet
traveling through a home
can do phenomenal damage,
just phenomenal, he says,
can shatter studs and split
sheet rock the entire length
of a hallway before lodging
in something at the other end--
the sleep, for example,
of an elder couple he knows,
their home riddled
when drive-by shooters
targeted the wrong house.
Tore it up so badly, he says,
they never slept in their
bed again, only the floor
‘til the remodel was done,
traumatized them both,
wife barely spoke after that.
Sold it for a loss, he adds,
patting the frame, then just
disappeared. Phenomenal.
Ancestry
for Lena
The ancients warned to speak
the name of the dead was to make
them live again, but what about to read it,
to see your cursive signature looping
from seventy years ago across
the certificate of your husband’s death,
to trace the thread of your name through
census reports from a century past
to learn you were born in Germany,
in Pittsburgh, and finally at sea,
to witness you emerge from memory
as more than maternal root beer maker,
pinochle player, breakfast smuggler
of ice cream in corn flakes,
into fatherless daughter, half-sister,
immigrant of two names,
mother of four, penniless flower seller,
widowed survivor, and learn
this is the spirit discovery wakes.
George Lober is a former winner of the Ruth Cable Memorial Prize for Poetry. In addition to the Monterey Poetry Review, his poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Sage; Eclectic Literary Forum; Quarry West; Homestead Review; The Central California Poetry Journal; The Anthology of Monterey Bay Poets, 2004; MiPOesias; Lily; Porter Gulch Review; and Red Wheelbarrow. He is the author of Shift of Light (Hummingbird Press, Santa Cruz, CA, 2002) and A Bridge to There (Hummingbird Press, Santa Cruz, CA, 2009). He lives with his wife in Monterey, California.
Setting a bedroom window,
my brother tells me a bullet
traveling through a home
can do phenomenal damage,
just phenomenal, he says,
can shatter studs and split
sheet rock the entire length
of a hallway before lodging
in something at the other end--
the sleep, for example,
of an elder couple he knows,
their home riddled
when drive-by shooters
targeted the wrong house.
Tore it up so badly, he says,
they never slept in their
bed again, only the floor
‘til the remodel was done,
traumatized them both,
wife barely spoke after that.
Sold it for a loss, he adds,
patting the frame, then just
disappeared. Phenomenal.
Ancestry
for Lena
The ancients warned to speak
the name of the dead was to make
them live again, but what about to read it,
to see your cursive signature looping
from seventy years ago across
the certificate of your husband’s death,
to trace the thread of your name through
census reports from a century past
to learn you were born in Germany,
in Pittsburgh, and finally at sea,
to witness you emerge from memory
as more than maternal root beer maker,
pinochle player, breakfast smuggler
of ice cream in corn flakes,
into fatherless daughter, half-sister,
immigrant of two names,
mother of four, penniless flower seller,
widowed survivor, and learn
this is the spirit discovery wakes.
George Lober is a former winner of the Ruth Cable Memorial Prize for Poetry. In addition to the Monterey Poetry Review, his poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Sage; Eclectic Literary Forum; Quarry West; Homestead Review; The Central California Poetry Journal; The Anthology of Monterey Bay Poets, 2004; MiPOesias; Lily; Porter Gulch Review; and Red Wheelbarrow. He is the author of Shift of Light (Hummingbird Press, Santa Cruz, CA, 2002) and A Bridge to There (Hummingbird Press, Santa Cruz, CA, 2009). He lives with his wife in Monterey, California.