Greg McBride
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Lying in Air
One more day done, heading back to the room,
my home now these nearly 29 years,
into a gray and brittle-cold twilight,
I take one angular step, careless of me,
and the ice tosses me skyward, face-up,
where I lie on the air, briefcase in hand.
Passing teenagers stare, laugh at the sight.
I have a new slant on things. The library
looks as if it might spill all its books
from its windows and doors onto me,
as I lie on the air. Below,
the sidewalk is buried in thirteen degrees,
bare ice that holds one hard moment
in time, jagged swoops of car-sprayed slush,
a negligent shoveling job, one man’s
boot prints trudging into the storm toward home.
As I lie on the air, I think of him there:
a brick house, warm fire, wriggling the toes
of his argyle feet crisscrossing a hassock,
a rumpled dress shirt, and his wife cozied up
on the arm of his chair in his favorite skirt,
wine glasses in hand as they talk out the day,
nuzzle into the night. Lying in air,
I assure myself that this will not hurt.
Pram
Newborn baby boy aboard, he steers
a second-hand umbrella stroller
onto Woodside. He does not see
the layered, floating clouds.
He does not hear the non-swivel wheels
squealing, the plastic hubs rattling.
His hands quiver with the murmur
of a royal Silver Cross Balmoral,
which he guides by its swan-neck handle,
its fat-tube, cream-colored tires rolling
under a sky so clean its blue-white
shines wet with artist’s paint.
O, to stroll
his infant son in a coach-built pram
crowned by its quarter-moon bonnet,
its hand-sprung, strap-hung chassis
bobbing above chrome wheels, spokes arcing
late sun, gliding the hours, then dimming,
rolling desultorily between
tall brick homes receding into
the dusk as the streetside gas lamps
arouse themselves, one by one,
a procession of small suns glimmering
into twilight. Then horses’ hooves
clopping over the cobblestones
pulling dainty carriages home
from The City.
O, to nod
left and right in time to the song
he hums, like Bing Crosby crooning
a tossed-off tune from a warm
tube radio, the willows sweeping
low before this son, this son
of all sons, this prince receiving his due.
Music Lady
My wife is in the kitchen making
kitchen sounds, odd arhythmic tunes
she’s always played: the skillet slide
across a grate, the counter thump,
the scrape along a carrot length,
tunes that somehow call to mind
her birthing cry, her calves and inner thighs
in nylon, scuffing one another,
back when she could walk in heels.
In those days, the music drew us in,
slow-dancing close at night,
lights dimmed in the family room,
the kids asleep, the Divine
Sarah Vaughan on the stereo,
or Miss Peggy Lee vamping a saxophone.
Because we can no longer dance,
the music only now remains.
She speaks of something into
an empty room, her voice-tones round
and shushed.
Her good leg drags the bad
across the kitchen’s hardwood floor the way
a jazz brush slurs a snare drum’s skin.
"Music Lady" first appeared in Salmagundi. "Lying in Air" first appeared in Slipstream.
Bio
Greg McBride is the author of a chapbook, Back of the Envelope (Copperdome Press, 2009), and a full-length manuscript, Dead Man's Word, in search of a publisher. His awards include the 2008 Boulevard Emerging Poet prize. His work also appears in Arts and Letters, Connecticut Review, Gettysburg Review, Hollins Critic, River Styx, Salmagundi, and Southern Poetry Review. A Vietnam veteran, he writes after 30 years of law practice and edits The Innisfree Poetry Journal.