Summer 2007 Museletter

Museletter Poetry Page

Wrong Turns
Editor: Wendy Vardaman

OLD SOLDIERS

A long white coat drifts
through the halls. An old
stethoscope hangs around
his neck as his listless legs
stride the space he once owned.
He makes his rounds as if he
is needed, to check a chest,
feel a belly, or change a dressing.
He wanders over to a room
that was his office, where he kept
his files, now useless, and gazes
at the nameplate—not his own.

In those years when he left
at dawn and came home late,
his family had learned to live
without him. They liked having
his name around to buy things
and go places, but he was too
awkward to go along with
their friends. He had become
a trophy—good to look at
but useless to do anything with.

He has taken to going out
to eat and drink where he
would sometimes see his
friends doing the same.
They meet once a month
for dinner and talk about
grandchildren they don’t know,
cruises they took and
meetings they attended
long ago. Life is frozen.
Like aging race-horses
they graze on past memories.
Most people have forgotten
their names.

—Phil Hansotia, Ellison Bay

IN THE MIDDLE OF NOTHING, GREATNESS

I pass a sign on Highway 26 that states
Juneau is 5 miles away, Oshkosh 53.
I saw the same sign just ten minutes ago,
but listen, when I check my gas gauge
(then, it had been a little below a quarter)
now, I swear, it shows half full. And there,
around a curve, against the steel November
sky, in a field of cornstalks far as a crow can
see—are you ready—rises an assemblage
of grain elevators more magnificent than
the Cathedral at Reims.

—John Lehman, Cambridge

NOTES FROM MISSISSIPPI

Katrina swept Lou’s house
off its foundation
and down the road.

Placing the house back
on six foot high blocks,
small groups with large jobs
began the rehabilitation.

Through bleating rainstorms
and chill November days
we affectionately toiled.
Morning insulating accomplished,
lunching over,
dripping sunshine setting like glue,
we were back to work.

Then offering no change in direction:
one misstep,
one wrong turn,
one awkward woman
took an unwanted flying lesson
off the unguarded porch
landing like a wounded sparrow
in the moss embedded
Mississippi mud!

Now with the early spring days
passing in cool snail-like fashion
while the pelvic factures
continue to slowly heal,
my pen is posed in spiritual relief
as the words paint pictures of destruction,
loss, endurance, faith, and love.

—Susan Anderson, Baraboo

THE TRUCK WAS BIGGER

She drove to work to her healing facility
an ordinary day
wearing a strained smile
human not clinical
vulnerable not medicinal
the truck was so much bigger
against her car
she didn’t turn fast enough.

—Philip Wissbeck, Middleton

DRIVING WITH AN ADULT

Out in a developing area,
southeast of the city,
driving our light blue, hydramatic
’ 52 DeSoto at fifteen, according
to my learner’s permit “with a legal adult,”
my grandmother, senile but loving
to go on rides, who waited
patiently in the front seat
while I stopped off to see friends—
I made a wrong turn, got into sand,
my wheels, dervishes dancing up
graceful sprays of gold.

Not wanting to call home,
hear the dread voice so like God’s
demand to know how I’d gotten
into that fix, and what in the world
was I doing out there, called
my boyfriend at the gas station
where he worked from some
kind soul’s house.

Came with a tow truck,
got me out, wouldn’t take pay.
Grandmother said nothing,
not then, not later, in fact
seemed to have enjoyed
the hullabaloo, a change
as good as the vacation
she never got.

—Peg Lauber, Eau Claire

LEAVING YUMA

Leaving Yuma, stick to main roads.
Don’t answer the hall phone
at Jade’s Motel. Toss flashbacks
of one girl’s easy whispers
behind in the rolling tumbleweed.
Be the cowboy and ramble.

Don’t stroll lone and lanky
to a smoke-dimmed booth in some
diner next to a broke-down Greyhound
bus nor stare long at the stranger
wearing crimson lipstick and pink lace.
Don’t let loose you’re staying at Jade’s
up the street. Hit the fast highway and go.

Skip those rutted trails of silence, eyes
turned mountain hard, skin and then
years burned dark as dirt. Leave Yuma
any other way.

—Jean Biegun, Two Rivers

GEOGRAPHY-CHALLENGED

She is a genius with net and cell phone technology.
But can’t find her way from real place to real place.
I call her geography-challenged.

Such as when she and her best friend, Grace
drove back to Green Bay from St. Paul.
But had to turn around in Fargo.

From Fargo, it was finally back to Green Bay, though
stopping for a comfort rest in Rensselaer, Indiana
where they had a late breakfast of potato pancakes
at a place called Conchita’s.

Cheered by that snack, she cell-phoned,
“ We’re on our way now, Jerry! Back to Green Bay.”
And added that the potato pancakes were the best
that she and Grace had ever tasted.

When she called again to ask for directions
from Ypsilanti, she said a hitcher suggested
having a mechanic check the water pump which could
be expensive. And that I should be ready for that.

Her last call came from Saginaw.
And she sounded pleased (having remembered
that Theodore Roethke was born in Saginaw).
"A very good poet, Jerry. From your century too."
She said by cell phone.

             —Jerry Hauser, Green Bay

ROLE MODEL, 1963

You could call it a feminine mistake,
that thing my neighbor did—her moving out
like that. At night! She didn’t even take
her clothes; just her hat and overcoat,
some books, and boom!—she’s out the door.
Just drove away, without a word to Bob—
because she knew he meant it when he swore
that he would never let her get a job.
I guess she thinks her fancy education
entitles her to some sort of “career”,
like that bunch from Women’s Liberation
who bellyache and burn their underwear.
But if you ask me, she’s acting like a brat,
throwing away her happiness like that!

             —Marilyn Taylor, Milwaukee
             previously published in Dogwood

Theme for Fall issue:
Poems inspired by science

Deadline:
Friday, August 3, 2007