Before The War

Before The War

by Scot Siegel

here he chops a ripe cord in a whiteout by the treatment plant. there she leans over a granite island high on the hill. she’s kneading the fair-trade rye with the chatter of daughters in the foreground. with each blade strike, pine tinctures the fog over the settling pond & he draws the hard air a little deeper.

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sometimes a dayshift dream: here she joins him on the spring-loaded seat of a backhoe. she’s left the kitchen unattended; the stove hisses, flooding the house with gas. there her husband dozes while the wallpaper curls from the fumes in the hours it takes to dig the trench.

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now he collects scrap: builds lean-tos for ghost soirees & tells time by the hum of arterials. some days he sits cross-legged by the tracks for hours & pretends he has pennies for the trains. when the folding arms of the crossing guard finally come down, she becomes nearly human again.

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rain. rain like sheet metal and rolling pins. it wasn’t always this way. back in the day, they’d hold hands in the rain & wander the town smelling jasmine stamens by the bay. he’d pick brambleberries in jean cutoffs while she plucked sea glass from the cobbles in a summer dress.

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july 4. a processional of tubas. veterans saluting one another under main street awnings snapping in the wind. that was the last time she kissed him. july 4^th, dusk, they walked the briny shore before the big show began.


-refers to the phrase “the hill” in  Cary Briel’s poem Shall I Go Up?