Dives: On Rejection
There was a certain rich man who was clothed
in purple and fine linen… Luke 16:19
“It is not impoverished to say,” the screener wrote,
“Your erotic sonnets are no small achievement.”
Poets are grateful for any warmth in the cold –
The longhand, a scribbled signature, scent.
In the business-like second paragraph, a switch
To poetry’s prosaic, review-running concerns –
The next issue’s theme, a subscription pitch,
The individual’s preferred, gender-bent pronoun.
Dives pictures a kid-assistant recently
Graduated summa cum (Hons) in English,
In distressed-denim, a metalled co-ed
Earning advanced credits at the host university.
And not too unsuited, not altogether unluscious.
He would not kick them out of bed.
____
A Lumberyard in Gloucester, Massachusetts
Present ends at the truck-wide doors,
Summer, the age, traded for a dark barn
Where cedar and balsam, hard hickory, oak,
Release a calm, wood-refracted glow,
Primitive and thin as primordial sun – or moon,
A false dawn, sand at one fathom:
2x4s and 2x6s, spar-
Sturdy 4x4s, trunk-muscle
Stamped with a sawmill’s trademark,
The species in Latin, grades common to select.
And final, destiny-dependent pricing: jack
Stud or medallion, attic truss or veneer.
Lumber pulled to check on warp and split
Discovers field crickets and a spider, the barn
Abutting as it does a damp patch of fern
And moss that ramps up to the company pier.
Out on the apron, a wait for the agent, receipts.
Contemporary sun softens asphalt, skates
Off the water and wood – forklifts, palms
Orant with skids of pressure-treated timber,
For someone’s dream house, a new garage.
_____
BIO
John J. Ronan is a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow in Poetry, a former Ucross Fellow, Bread Loaf Scholar, and Poet Laureate of Gloucester, MA. My book Marrowbone Lane appeared in 2010 and was a Highly Recommended selection of the Boston Authors Club; Linda Pastan has called my work “Very good indeed: original, assured, just a touch sardonic.” A new volume, Taking the Train of Singularity South from Midtown, appeared in 2017.
Poems have appeared in Confrontation, Folio, Threepenny Review,The Recorder, Hollins Critic, New England Review, Southern Poetry Review, Louisville Review, Greensboro Review, Notre Dame Review, NYQ, et. al.
