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Adult Supervision, White Horse Beach, 4th of July |
by Timothy L. Marsh
I couldn't tell what kind of rocket it was
as he placed it on the hardpack
and led her cheerfully to the fuse,
practically doubled-over
for she was no more
than the height of his hip.
And she must have, I think,
honored her daddy very much
because she moved without contention,
but with the stiff determined inching
that seizes a child's stride
when the fear of disappointing
exceeds that of the challenge.
Five feet from the two-foot cannon tube
he lit her sparkler
and with his hand around her fist
guided the fizzling stick
to the tip of the fuse,
father over daughter,
and showed her
how to set off a fiery disturbance
without getting burned herself.
Imparting a knowledge that,
until then,
I was sure every woman
had been born with.
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Post Grad |
by Timothy L. Marsh
Sun burnt, burned out, glaring up
the freshly-painted-poorly wall
with three or four diplomas
stuffed and sucking lint in your back pocket—
there will be the urge to feel bad about your life,
the way things have turned out.
Well, maybe you should.
Maybe you're right where you belong:
too lazy, weak or distracted to put your
education to better use.
Or maybe your education has no use,
has let you down and left you to dry
like the coat of latex paint you just applied
to the side of this two-car cathedral garage
but which still isn't doing the trick
because the owner forgot to mention that
that's oil-based paint your painting over up there,
and it doesn't take an advanced knowledge
in a specialized body of theoretical and literary topics
to know that you can't apply
latex-based over oil-based.
So now the old coat is showing through,
and it's too late to do anything about it today,
and the owner will be home any minute to
assess the sum of your day's work
and tactfully express his disappointment with it,
while you tactfully contest that it was his own damn fault
until finally, fine, you'll do it again,
but you're charging for the hours
you already spent applying the first coat
plus the gallon of paint it took to do it.
And he'll nod and agree because maybe he didn't
give you all the info he should've before you began,
and you'll nod and think twice about aggravating
your first source of income in the last two months
and offer a free sampler
in case he wants to touch anything up,
because maybe you could've taken a splash of denatured
and tested the base coat before you applied the new one,
like anybody with an advanced knowledge
in a specialized body of theoretical
and literary topics probably should've.
But he doesn't know that.
Or that Roethke drowned just 35 miles from here
or the function of the interlocutor in the Socratic Method
or what the proliferation of computers
is doing to the character of modern poetry.
But the son-of-a-bitch must know something
because he's got the checkbook and you've got the paint,
you're on the hour and he's by the month.
So do yourself a favor and
put your pride on the shelf.
Get back up that ladder,
recoat that goddamn wall,
and for once in your life have the sense
to respect the smarts of a simple understanding.
You don't piss away business
when the cupboards are bare;
you don't begrudge the customer
for seeing how books fool us.
Timothy L. Marsh is on a mission to find a home just like Southern California, minus the cops and traffic. He currently resides in Bali, Indonesia, and may have reached the end of that mission. In the last year his writing has appeared or been accepted in The Evansville Review, The New Quarterly, Connotation Press, Waccamaw Journal, Toasted Cheese Literary Journal, and others. His awards include a 2010 fellowship and residency at the Vermont Studio Center, and a 2009 Arts Jury Award from the City Council of St. John's, Newfoundland.
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