Glass: A Journal of Poetry Volume One Issue Three
In the Name of Some Endowment
The day ends in downtown Nashua
with shadows half a mile long.
A brick mill five stories high
stands aloof beside the river.
The railroad's branch line wanders
among restaurants featuring tacos
and Brazilian food. Near the dam
in a space fenced off with planters
a crowd hogs umbrella tables
and cheers a big-screen TV
wheeled outdoors in honor of spring.
I shrug past tattooed and buxom
drinkers already swaying like
sunflowers on delicate stems.
My tote bag contains the novel
on which I'll lecture to earn
a couple of hundred dollars
in the name of some endowment.
I'd like to join the jolly crowd
overlooking the river, but doubt
that beer-breath would endear me
to the pouting library ladies.
I wish a train would rumble past
with carloads of gravel from Milford,
but the rails look too flimsy
to bear any weight. The shadows
recline in mottled shades of gray
and the sun crawls behind that tall
brick mill to lick its wounds. I veer
between a slurring man in leather
and a woman who's yanked up
her tank top to flash at traffic.
Trudging to the library
I'm small and barely literate;
but I feel a terrible distance
smoke up through the sidewalk, the plain
old storefronts looking ashamed
and a pair of fire trucks hustling
with a clatter of long steel ladders
to the usual false alarm.