Issue 3 - Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art

JAMES BRASFIELD
The Stringer
Called from my room to a death,
It is your unknown face that frightens me.
I drive past the city limits
And park my car. I did not know suicide
Could look that simple: your caretakers in white,
The beer-joint's neon script
The only bright color in the damp light.
I walk to you at the field's edge,
To you lying more still
Than the ground beneath you.
The sheriff pulls back your smooth sheet.
I absorb your half-opened mouth and eyes,
Your blue lips.
Everything you could not finally abandon
Is evidence.
I am infatuated with your wound, wet
Empty socket with its eye stolen.
I want to put my finger there,
The shallow well
Where someone will split you,
Gather your limp machine into a plastic sack
And never answer what dam broke
That so many rivers at once
Washed over you.
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JOE DONAHUE
Returning
The prodigal does not feel
all that penitent.
He thinks forgiveness a trick
with words —
A parapet and broken wall
moulded from ice
fill the yard of his old house.
The children who live here now
are in for dinner.
His father does not hammer
the frozen latch and let him in,
as he might have in life.
The evening wind would creak the gate,
but the gate is gone.
The snowfort rises cold
as a household,
but he feels no loss.
He follows God's advice,
which is indistinguishable
from silence.
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