by Therese Gleason
With a line from “All Hallows” by Louise Glück (1943-2023)
I want to write a poem about autumn
that doesn’t decay
and stink on impact.
I want to write a poem about the beauty
of small children (whose shoelaces flap
and sneakers slap
asphalt) that doesn’t reek
of sweetness.
All I can offer is a dispatch
from a mid-October recess in central Mass.,
the sky scrubbed squeaky
by an overnight rainstorm,
where kindergarteners skip and whoop
as the wind picks up, pointing to heaven
as the tall honey locust drops
its shower of gold: spiraling eddies
that drift slowly, softly onto cracked concrete.
The bulky apartment complex next door peeps
between ragged bushes and chain link
as I holler at a child to come down the hill, away
from the edge of the dark wood
where scattered syringes linger
in the barrenness of harvest or pestilence:
our playground tree a site of life
and death, both honey and locust, feast
and famine. We found a dead mouse
beneath its fraying canopy
last week. I stood astride the carcass
swatting curious fingers seeking to probe
its torn side buzzing with flies, its tiny
bared teeth—and in an instant
I remember the sickening bump
under my back left tire, a raccoon
on a dark road, how I honked and swerved,
too late… I can’t forget its wobbly tromp,
its eyes blinded by my headlights
before I rendered it dead meat—
I feel a tug like grief, like a small hand
at my sweater’s hem, and look down
into cupped palms brimming
with tattered gold leaves.
that doesn’t decay
and stink on impact.
I want to write a poem about the beauty
of small children (whose shoelaces flap
and sneakers slap
asphalt) that doesn’t reek
of sweetness.
All I can offer is a dispatch
from a mid-October recess in central Mass.,
the sky scrubbed squeaky
by an overnight rainstorm,
where kindergarteners skip and whoop
as the wind picks up, pointing to heaven
as the tall honey locust drops
its shower of gold: spiraling eddies
that drift slowly, softly onto cracked concrete.
The bulky apartment complex next door peeps
between ragged bushes and chain link
as I holler at a child to come down the hill, away
from the edge of the dark wood
where scattered syringes linger
in the barrenness of harvest or pestilence:
our playground tree a site of life
and death, both honey and locust, feast
and famine. We found a dead mouse
beneath its fraying canopy
last week. I stood astride the carcass
swatting curious fingers seeking to probe
its torn side buzzing with flies, its tiny
bared teeth—and in an instant
I remember the sickening bump
under my back left tire, a raccoon
on a dark road, how I honked and swerved,
too late… I can’t forget its wobbly tromp,
its eyes blinded by my headlights
before I rendered it dead meat—
I feel a tug like grief, like a small hand
at my sweater’s hem, and look down
into cupped palms brimming
with tattered gold leaves.
Therese Gleason is author of three chapbooks: Hemicrania (forthcoming, Chestnut Review, 2024); Matrilineal (Honorable Mention, 2022 Jean Pedrick Chapbook Prize, New England Poetry Club); and Libation (co-winner, 2006 South Carolina Poetry Initiative Competition, selected by Kwame Dawes). Her poems appear in 32 Poems, Indiana Review, New Ohio Review, Notre Dame Review, Rattle, and elsewhere. Originally from Louisville, KY, she is an adjunct creative writing instructor at Clark University and an ESL teacher in the Worcester Public Schools.