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Adam Nielsen

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My Town

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Listen to Wes McNair Reading the Poem

My Town Initial Exploration
Where it belongs on the state
tourist map, well above the red lobster
on the coast and in between the man
skiing down the slope and the shining dome
of the capitol building, you’ll find nothing
except a moose standing in the grass.
But who would come to this placeto see the three-foot long spotted
yellow butterflies faithfully displayed
on the side of LaFlamme’s house, or gather
with the others in the Grange Hall to hear
Ethel Chadwick recite with a lisp
and the dazed, oddly beautiful look
in her eye “The Cremation of Sam McGee”

in its entirety on Old Home Day?
Anyway, what (as people from the city
might say after straying off Route 2
to find our few houses thrown downhill
among the trees) do they do here
for work? Nothing important, as you might
guess from how early in the morning

they start up the hill to do it, driving
to the shoe shop two towns over,
or the paper mill, or just down the road
to the store, where Betty De Carlo stands all
day at the counter asking the same question:
“Can I help you?” I’m the one waiting
in line behind the couple with the skis

on their minivan who don’t even notice her alert,
genuine eyes, on their way through Eyeblink,
Maine, so someplace they’ve never heard of,
and I’m the one lying awake listening
to the cars struggling up our hill in the darkness
of 5 A.M. to start their long day,
and at twilight sitting down in the old parlor

with the Redlevskis, that’s me, with a bag
of rhubarb I’ve just picked from my garden
for the two of them. On the television
in the corner a frowning man, on mute,
mimes all the news of concern to the nation.
Meanwhile, they are talking about how good
it is to eat fresh sticks of rhubarb raw, a concern

so small you wouldn’t care much about it
unless you could be there to see the face
she makes for the taste, a mixture of sorrow
and pleasure that seems to have her whole life
in it, and to hear, in the lamplight, the intimate
twang of their voices telling me this news
at evening in my town, as I’m telling it

to you now, in this only other place I know
where unexpected things can happen, off the map.
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As I Am

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Listen to Wes McNair Reading the Poem
 
As I Am Initial Exploration
Behind my false beard
and the frown line between
the eyebrows I have developedby trying to pay attention
to the world. I am the same kid
who could never remember

his library books or what
he had been sent to the store for.
“Fog” was the name my teachers

gave to where I spent my time,
a haze that even today
can descend while I’m having

a conversation, or suddenly lift,
revealing the wrong
landmarks drifting past me

on the wrong road I took ten
miles ago. God, it has been lonely
to turn up all those years

where everyone else has arrived
long since. Yet how, without
looking just beyond

the shoulders of others
as they spoke, or searching
everywhere for the pen

I found in my own hand,
could I concentrate on the thought
I learned to write down

at last, back from the place
that has wanted me off-course
and bewildered, just as I am.
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The Last Black and White TV

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Listen to Wes McNair Reading the Poem
 
The Last Black and White TV Initial Exploration
Were your parents, or you yourself
among those children who left their primitive
games of giant steps and hopscotch to gather
like stunned pygmies before cowboys
and puppets moving in the light of the firstblack and white TVs, square bulbs so heavy
it took two men to deliver them? As night
came on in suburban neighborhoods
perhaps like yours, families unfolded
the legs of dinner trays, longingto be in the studio audience with the host
of the variety show, or in the white kitchen
with the mother and her children as the father
arrived at the right moment in his dark suit
with the knowledge the rest of them craved.

“It needs more contrast,” someone would say,
adjusting a knob until the vegetable slicer
they saw between programs or the black and white
shoes or the kitchen range with the glow-clock
in the changing world behind the glass

looked real, then bought the slicer, the shoes,
the kitchen range, and even the new TV
that their old TV said would make them feel
like they were there. This was how the first
black and white TVs made their way

to the homes of the poor, who loved them best,
turning from disappointment all day long

to watch people opening the doors of ranges
and cars, or men with easy-going smiles
give them away on game shows. When they kicked

their sets or pounded them, it was mostly
because the picture was starting to roll
and ruin the happy ending they were so anxious
to see. The last black and white TV might have been
one of these, its console scarred by fists,

flipping scenes of game show contestants
and sheriffs bringing justice to Americans long ago
in the West out of sight again and again.
Or it may have been the set that played itself to death
above the heads of old folks at the nursing home

in the suburbs, grown sick of wonder and desire.
Or perhaps it stares by the old color set into t he dust
of your own attic among things you once discovered
on the screen and would hardly imagine longing for,
they are so strange, so useless, and so still.
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The 1950s

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Listen to Wes McNair Reading the Poem
 
The 1950s Initial Exploration
“Let’s take the car after school,” the two girls
would say, which meant they wanted to be taken
by it, the top down, the wind surfing over
the wrap-around window. The stepdaughter,Carol, always drove, just as her new stepfather
insisted, and while her girlfriend Debbie listened
for the lighter to pop out from the dash,
and with its tiny, interior hotplate lit menthol

cigarettes one by one for both of them, they thought
about how the boys would admire them.
When they drove into their station at the A&W
and Carol unhooked the mic to order their Cokes,

pushing back her shoulder length hair to reveal
her long throat, she thought she resembled
a popular singer. “Beautiful” was the word
the boys used to describe the car as they gathered

around it, stroking its curves and sometimes
asking if they could see what was under
the hood. Then they looked into Carol’s amazing
and frightening blue eyes, or Debbie’s warm,

compliant ones, the door or fender giving them a way
to steady themselves. All of that was OK
with the stepfather, who required only that they let
no boys inside, or they could never borrow

the car again. Handsome like a man, he really wasn’t
much more than a boy himself, and not wanting to be
anyone’s father, told them to call him “Petey.”
As he said goodbye in his T-shirt some afternoons,

leaning comfortably into the open window of his new
Chevy convertible, he would call Debbie
“Ginger Snap,” and his stepdaughter, his favorite,
with a knowing wink, “Angel Pie.” He was proud

of the sinuous Hawaiian woman in green he wore
on his muscular forearm and the darker tattoo
in cursive letters of his own name underneath, the same
tattoo he had his new wife ink on the inside

of her ankle. “Don’t you go changing on me,”
he would say with a smile before they headed out
the driveway and the motion rose in their ears, but
the two in the car were already changing, Debbie,

who hoped each day at the A&W for a certain
cute boy to return her gaze, and Carol, in distress
because she couldn’t quite get the muscular forearm
and the wink out of her mind even after she touched

her cigarette to the lighter and took a deep
drag and tried to find a good station on the radio.
 
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Hymn to the Comb-Over

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Listen to Wes McNair Reading the Poem
 
Hymn to the Comb-Over Initial Exploration
How the thickest of them erupt just
above the ear, cresting in waves so stiff
no wind can move them. Let us praise them
in all of their varieties, some skinny
as the bands of headphones, some rising
from a part that extends halfway around
the head, others four or five strings
stretched so taut the scalp resembles
a musical instrument. Let us praise the sprays
that hold them, and the combs that coax
such abundance to the front of the head
in the mirror, the combers entirely forget
the back. And let us celebrate the combers,
who address the old sorrow of time’s passing
day after day, bringing out of the barrenness
of mid-life this ridiculous and wonderful
harvest, no wishful flag of hope but, thick
or thin, the flag itself, unfurled for us all
in subways, offices and malls across America.
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