FINVOLA DRURY

 
THE TRAINS
Nothing changes from
generation to generation
except the thing seen
and that makes a composition. . .
Gertrude Stein
The trains my father rode
mostly 
never went anywhere
he stepped on and off them
lightly
coupling and uncoupling
coal
and explosives
his destination
safety
and Hitler

The change he spared us
smelled
like tobacco
my mother’s dollar
Coty’s 
Rachel #2
from 
his Bull Durham bag
and her big
black pocket book
it was real money

Under the elm tree
in the back yard
Bea Nauman said
Finvola’s father
rolls his own
I 
could hardly
breathe
in front of 
the other girls

Bea was bigger
but she
couldn’t write
I did her book reports
because she lived
next door
she got an A
on Bulwer-Lytton’s
The Last Days of Pompeii
I found out how
people turned to stone

Now my mother’s head’s
thrown back
her arm’s up to take down
the long gone
work clothes
laughing   laughing
at how
I didn’t know
what
his own
meant

To this day
he's
still got that look
he had
when the war tax came
Cosmetics
he said
aren't a luxury
you take a woman
going to work
in the office for instance

It isn't fair

 


 
 
 
NOW, CHILDREN, LET US ALL RISE AND SING THE STATE SONG
But first let me tell you about the snapdragons
the pink ruby yellow and white ones
in the tall footed glass my grandmother
used for celery
it’s on the old secretary
we shouldn’t have cut down
so that it could no longer hold
The World’s Hundred Greatest Detective Stories
in their bright red bindings
I got through all of one vacation
sitting in the brown velvet chair with the ottoman
my aunt gave my uncle for his birthday
in Bay Village
right on the lake outside of Cleveland
just down the road
from where that summer a man told the police
a bushy-haired intruder
had gotten into the house and murdered
his wife
and they searched and searched for a person
fitting that description
but they never found one and my uncle
was sure they never would
because the man had killed his wife himself
but the jury would not
recommend the death penalty he said
later during the trial
because they would deliver the verdict
on Christmas Eve
and no jury ever did that to a man
on Christmas
his father whose photograph
stood on the table next to the velvet chair
had witnessed an execution once
in some official capacity
and afterward had thrown up
he was a rock-ribbed Republican
my aunt said
so I wondered a lot about that
because
somebody was always
getting the chair in Ohio
and if it happened as it usually did
at night
my mother would sit on the couch
across from the radio
near the wall where she had put
a picture
of Mary Magdalene   bared to the waist
and kneeling
with her long hair hanging down
and when time ran out and the Governor’s call
didn’t come
she’d always say
some poor mother’s heart is broken tonight
hers was anyway
it got to be part of our evening programs
after jack Armstrong and The Lone Ranger
and Little Orphan Annie
we stayed tuned in for the execution
we knew by heart what would happen
the condemned man ate a hearty dinner
the priest administered the last rites
there was the long walk to the green door
and then
the strapping in
Columbus
was the Capitol of punishment
and as all those men went so my brother might
come under a bad influence
and end up like Jimmy Cagney instead of Pat O’Brien
in the movies every Saturday
because we were poor and Irish
and hadn’t she seen him
behind the window of the pool hall on Main Street
chalking up a cue tip
as cool as a cucumber a cigarette
dangling from between his lips
and he was there with her in the stands
the night
the Mangan girls and I
and hundreds of others
danced under the lights
in the huge stadium
and the Governor rode around and around waving
his hat
from the back seat of an open car
while the band played Beautiful Ohio
and my mother had told me earlier
fixing my hair in the bedroom
she hated him
the tree surgeon
and we stood in a ring and waved back
in our pink ruby yellow and white
dresses.
July 24, 1990