The End of the Road Restaurant
My father once told me he felt like a six-piston engine
firing on only two. After L.A.’s poverty,
father dead, mother on welfare, he wanted to believe
his evangelical upbringing, but drifted
through a young dalliance with the preacher’s mad wife,
into the Navy, Korea, back to the bosom
of the Nazarene Church, finally marrying,
bringing his first child into the world.
What was a man to do, then, but raise a family,
go to seminary, become a minister himself
till they kicked him out for speaking in tongues
in the wrong denomination. Desperately,
then, become a junior high school teacher
in the most desolate town on Highway 99
till he couldn’t stand it, left
with his family, took us all to live
in a geodesic dome in the Sierras,
study metaphysics, torture a Japanese garden
from the hillside’s dusty clay. There was
little money, my mother still teaching,
his retirement sunk into dreams of building.
So his friend Jack let him cook
at the End of the Road miles from anywhere
frequented by faithful dreamers
and intrepid tourists. My sister
sang jazz, my mother waited tables,
and I, back from college
watched my father sweat at the stove
cooking steak, barbeque chicken,
finding stubborn joy late in life
over grilled onions, rinds of pepper--
the end of one road, another opening
in his eyes like sky.
Dane Cervine’s latest book is entitled How Therapists Dance, from Plain View Press (2013), which also published his previous book The Jeweled Net of Indra. His poems have been chosen by Adrienne Rich for a National Writers Union Award; by Tony Hoagland as a finalist for the Wabash Poetry Prize; a Second Place prize for the Caesura Poetry contest; twice a finalist for, and the 2013 winner of the Atlanta Review’s International Poetry Prize; 2nd Prize in the 2013 Morton Marcus Poetry Award; and nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2013. Dane’s work has appeared in a wide variety of journals including The Hudson Review, The SUN Magazine, Sycamore Review, Catamaran Literary Reader, Red Wheelbarrow, numerous anthologies, newspapers, video & animation. Visit his website at: www.DaneCervine.typepad.com Dane lives in Santa Cruz, California.
My father once told me he felt like a six-piston engine
firing on only two. After L.A.’s poverty,
father dead, mother on welfare, he wanted to believe
his evangelical upbringing, but drifted
through a young dalliance with the preacher’s mad wife,
into the Navy, Korea, back to the bosom
of the Nazarene Church, finally marrying,
bringing his first child into the world.
What was a man to do, then, but raise a family,
go to seminary, become a minister himself
till they kicked him out for speaking in tongues
in the wrong denomination. Desperately,
then, become a junior high school teacher
in the most desolate town on Highway 99
till he couldn’t stand it, left
with his family, took us all to live
in a geodesic dome in the Sierras,
study metaphysics, torture a Japanese garden
from the hillside’s dusty clay. There was
little money, my mother still teaching,
his retirement sunk into dreams of building.
So his friend Jack let him cook
at the End of the Road miles from anywhere
frequented by faithful dreamers
and intrepid tourists. My sister
sang jazz, my mother waited tables,
and I, back from college
watched my father sweat at the stove
cooking steak, barbeque chicken,
finding stubborn joy late in life
over grilled onions, rinds of pepper--
the end of one road, another opening
in his eyes like sky.
Dane Cervine’s latest book is entitled How Therapists Dance, from Plain View Press (2013), which also published his previous book The Jeweled Net of Indra. His poems have been chosen by Adrienne Rich for a National Writers Union Award; by Tony Hoagland as a finalist for the Wabash Poetry Prize; a Second Place prize for the Caesura Poetry contest; twice a finalist for, and the 2013 winner of the Atlanta Review’s International Poetry Prize; 2nd Prize in the 2013 Morton Marcus Poetry Award; and nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2013. Dane’s work has appeared in a wide variety of journals including The Hudson Review, The SUN Magazine, Sycamore Review, Catamaran Literary Reader, Red Wheelbarrow, numerous anthologies, newspapers, video & animation. Visit his website at: www.DaneCervine.typepad.com Dane lives in Santa Cruz, California.
