“Old Fingers, Shining Rings”
The speaker watches his mother reading, turning painfully turning each page with arthritic hands and considers how he has seen those hands change over the course of the past fifty years. Throughout all the physical changes from sensual to gnarled with age and rheumatic disease the fingers have always—without cease—been adorned by a matching pair of diamond rings. They have become symbols of perseverance and the will to always be the absolute best it is possible to be.
“Mrs. Rowley”
Mrs. Rowley aka “the old gasbag” is the woman who shows up like clockwork on Thursday mornings to take grocery orders for the store’s regulars. Also like clockwork, each Friday morning would see the a box of food items left behind on the doorstep. Her true purpose, however, is to catch up on the latest gossip. The speaker recalls this with the casual ease of someone who has grown up witnessing a ritual without realizing how dependent and reliant the processes of ritual really is. Until one day when Mrs. Rowley doesn’t show up one Thursday. One Thursday that stretches into infinity as she just stops being a part of their lives completely.
“Elvis Dead”
The speaker recalls driving a rented Dodge down a road in Canada when he hears the news that Elvis Presley has died. He is instantly transported through time his younger self twenty years earlier, first hearing the music that revolutionized the world. He muses on how Elvis ripped away the self-assured confidence that Doris Day and songs featuring violins were the true portrait of youth in American in the 1950’s. The image of that “scruffy punk kid” dropping like a bomb into polite society and ripping it to shreds will suffer none from the later lapse into a “fat rich boy.”
“Dracula”
The poem begins innocently enough with a recollection of all the most potent stereotypes associated with the Dracula story: Transylvania, travelers, a foreboding castle and bite marks on the neck. The second stanza takes things in a different direction: questioning vampire givens such as the power of the crucifix to repel and the even greater power of a wooden stake to defeat immortality. The speaker is left cowering at the thought of vampires in the dark, not fully convinced of the legends that tell how Dracula could be vanquished with such ease.
“Interior with Woman”
The speaker describes a mystery woman sitting alone in a room contemplating flowers in a vase while the light from the sun, a wall and the people including the narrator stare at her remain as good as non-existent in her mind. Wondering who she is—and, notably, what she is, the speaker concludes that no clue will be found in the room itself nor the books within with titles which can’t be read from the speaker’s viewpoint. The narrator confesses to the difficulty of tearing his attention away and leave because to do so might just result in her leaving, which would be a “loss beyond belief.”
“Soccer Coach”
Speaking in the second person, the narrator of the poem addresses the soccer coach only in the imagination. Openly recognizing all the hard work the coach has put in to practicing in order to make them ready for the game, the speaker commiserates with the equally unspoken thoughts of the coach who rails against the team’s incompetence in a profane and humiliating assault upon not just their skills, but their very essence. And all while smiling back at the happy parents and joining in their applause punctuating every single error on the field.
“The Gravediggers”
A poem that quickly upends the expectations most people will bring to it based on the title. The titular characters in this tale are not hired hands at the cemetery, but a father and young son. The family cat gives birth to kittens about three times a year. One is retained for her milk before it is given away. All the rest face the same cruel fate: being stuffed into a bag and plunged into a bucket of water until they drown. The narrator—the young son—is charged with the job of burying them and emptying the pail. The entire brutal scenario ends with a single emotional confession by the traumatized child: “It hurt.” But whether it is the entire action that causes the hurt or just the father’s emotionless instruction remains unclear.
