HARD | JOHN M. ANDERSON


He liked some horehound ready to hand,
root beer barrels, butterscotch in autumn yellow
transparent wrappers, candy
that had a hint of melancholy,
of hard times, medicine in the flavor,
that took awhile to melt.

The descendent of horse thieves, he was
a hard, religious man
who would never touch snuff or bourbon.
Even at Christmas, when green and red ribbons
of hard sugar candy brightened every end-table,
he had horehound deep in his pocket.

He wouldn't play cards, either; he would snap
your fingers off with dominoes, though,
a crafty player and dead serious, ruthless.
Nobody wanted to play him.
But I set the dominoes up to watch them fall,
and he liked that, liked to hear the bone click of them.

His muscles stood out beneath the collapsed skin
of his forearms like a ship's rigging
in the silt on the ocean's floor,
his veins like the long, long black leather reins
that guided his mules—their ears just clearing the corn tassels,
their horny hooves dipping topsoil.

He fell asleep in his bright plaid flannel,
and his turtle eyes turned up in his head.
I could hear him snoring softly
from the rocking chair while I propped up
a fragile wall of dominoes on his hassock,
knowing the first wrong move would knock them down. 





John M. Anderson teaches creative writing and the Emily Dickinson Seminar at Boston College. His chapbook, Dictionary Quilt (Pudding House, 2007), is about the weird dream landscapes of the American southwest.
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COMMENTARY | POETRY | FICTION | SUMMER 2008  
THE BOBOLINIS
 S.L. WISENBERG

HARD
JOHN M. ANDERSON

SEICHE
JOSEPH DROGOS

PARABLE OF SENSITIVE SKIN 
MEG FRANKLIN

ALONE IN PARIS
SUSAN ANDERSON

BEGINNINGS
EDWARD MC WHINNEY

SEAMUS, THEN
J.M. PATRICK

WILL DEIRDRE BEAT THE ODDS?
A.S. KING

INSTEAD OF WHAT WE COULD HAVE SAID
VINCENT REUSCH


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