2018 John MacKay Shaw Award

 

 

      The directions don’t match the parts

and I hammer wrong sides of wood

      to wrong sides of pieces. My thumb licks 

splinters. Each nailing and reworking,

      each mistake throws the body together

like a half baked book report on Babbit.

      Bits blow off the edge, run under

tables, hide from my spews with the mice.

      Even they fear my banging.

I turn stripped screws through particle boards,

      I make legs for it to stand, a shape

to hold itself up. But where will it go,

      this chest of drawers built on fumes,

this rickety frame with one arm

      on the cross? How will it stand knowing

it bares roses dead in vases, pictures

      fading in light? When will it find a shovel

and bury itself from me and 

      hide in a hole filled with old poems--

Yeats, Poe, and White. I need more than

      a hammer to nail this together. I need

a home to keep it in, a corner 

      to place it in. I need someone to share it 

with, to tell me to fix it when the wheels 

      leave the latch, when it no longer opens.

I need you-- to help me when my hands

      splinter hard. To uncover it

from the dirt. To find it working.

      To help it stay put in a house, our house,

the one we’re still building, on dirt

      and lava, waiting to blow up.