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Nine Hours from Oswego
poetry mostly
by Elaine Schear
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Excerpts
Before she was my mother
She glowed before the clean foaming smash of Niagara
that first married summer in upstate New York,
her rounded figure dressed for the camera in mother-to-be,
glad to be pregnant but more than the baby
the belly of success, her bright open face as if to say
Look! I’ve got a man and he got me this way!
That was before the infant broke water,
before the thick weight of snow bore down
into unrepaired rooftops, before she pressed hankies
for his new job in Batavia which she called Siberia.
That was before the nightmares of mortars, his nightly sweats.
She missed her mother’s cooking,
her sister’s gossip, high-heeled treks to work
across the Brooklyn Bridge, stroking her purse where
the latest letter from her sergeant lay waiting.
Ho Jo’s, Lake George
She scoops down low, lopsided
through flip-flop silver cases
into cardboard ice-cream vats,
her cheery orange uniform
stained at the bodice, a palette
she could point to for the famous
twenty-eight flavors, grease of fried clams.
She slides on slick soles
meant for waiting on patients,
dirty dishes aloft on a turquoise tray,
saloon doors thwacking her behind
into the dank florescent kitchen
away from air-conditioned tourists
gazing through picture windows,
Adirondacks stacked against the lake.
Out back near the dumpster
where the freezer’s latch snaps
she fingers the assurance of tips
weighting her pockets, remembers
college brochures left on her bed,
how she’ll sit there tonight
stacking little towers of change.
Purchase Nine Hours from Oswego here.
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