Poem for Friday: B.H. Fairchild, “Mrs. Hill”

Though I urge you to check out River Styx’s Hungry Young Poets series this summer, I also want to alert you to a poet who will be on the bill for the first regular-season reading on September 21. B.H. Fairchild is the author of the marvelously titled poetry collection Early Occult Memory Systems of the Lower Midwest (Norton, 2002). This poem, below, is from that collection; you can hit Norton’s site to read more of his work. & note: St. Louis’ own Jenny Mueller will be reading that night as well. –Stefene Russell

Mrs. Hill

I am so young that I am still in love 
with Battle Creek, Michigan: decoder rings, 
submarines powered by baking soda, 
whistles that only dogs can hear. Actually, 
not even them. Nobody can hear them. 

Mrs. Hill from next door is hammering

on our front door shouting, and my father

in his black and gold gangster robe lets her in

trembling and bunched up like a rabbit in snow

pleading, oh I’m so sorry, so sorry,

so sorry, and clutching the neck of her gown

as if she wants to choke herself. He said

he was going to shoot me. He has a shotgun

and he said he was going to shoot me.

I have never heard of such a thing. A man 
wanting to shoot his wife. His wife. 
I am standing in the center of a room 
barefoot on the cold linoleum, and a woman 
is crying and being held and soothed 
by my mother. Outside, through the open door 
my father is holding a shotgun, 
and his shadow envelops Mr. Hill, 
who bows his head and sobs into his hands. 

A line of shadow seems to be moving 
across our white fence: hunched-over soldiers 
on a death march, or kindly old ladies 
in flower hats lugging grocery bags. 

At Roman’s Salvage tire tubes

are hanging from trees, where we threw them.

In the corner window of Beacon Hardware there’s a sign:

WHO HAS 3 OR 4 ROOMS FOR ME. SPEAK NOW.

For some reason Mrs. Hill is wearing mittens.

Closed in a fist, they look like giant raisins.

in the Encyclopedia Britannica Junior

the great Pharoahs are lying in their tombs,

the library of Alexandria is burning.

Somewhere in Cleveland or Kansas City

the Purple Heart my father refused in WWII

is sitting in a Muriel cigar box,

and every V-Day someone named Schwartz

or Jackson gets drunk and takes it out.

In the kitchen now Mrs. Hill is playing 
gin rummy with my mother and laughing 
in those long shrieks that women have 
that make you think they are dying. 

I walk into the front yard where moonlight 
drips from the fenders of our Pontiac Chieftan. 
I take out my dog whistle. Nothing moves. 
No one can hear it. Dogs are asleep all over town.