Issue 3 - Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art

STEPHANIE STRICKLAND RICHARD HENSLEY
46
Lives of the Saints
Into the ladlings of sunlight
a gauze curtain dips
its white sieve, brims with yellow, spills
some and rides
wider, emptying.
Hidden between bright parsley in a tipped
pot and a crook of gold
squash, the dark
tomato reddens on a white enamel sill
until its shoulders open.
Deep scratches web the blue
counter, which is cleared
cool
and so quiet
even the spider stops moving,
hangs
in the air.
The Antique Buyer
We were all living in the country back then. It was
exactly as Faulkner -describes it: oppressive,
melancholy, terrifying, with every et cetera
imaginable—et cetera in the form of trees with overhanging
branches, pines, willows, black oaks, magnolias
on wicked lawns; broken wagon wheels hidden
sometimes in the tangle of ditches beneath weeds; lanterns
crushed and splintered into glass in certain backyards
of houses; houses . . . they were few and far between.
We lived in one very far between, very very far
between . . .
"How boring it is to live in the country," we said to
one another. We thusly got upon each other's nerves.
"Why dont you leave the country then?"
"We're too damn poor." We all laughed. Too damn
poor.
"That chandelier, dont you think its going to fall on
us some day?"
"It must; it just must." And besides that there was
a gun hung on the wall; a gun very definitely hung on
the wall.
"We're too damn poor." We all eyed the chandelier.
Several hours later (but terrible hours, filled with
pain, hate and suffering, inflicted and received; indeed
we cannot even skip over these hours: no, we'd better
live through them in their entirety, boring as they are.
Everything is boring in the country; nothing happens;
and our nerves are swollen like muscles on male beauty
47
J