From The Vents
the news story before school is about an accident that happened near fort bragg
two planes collided midair and crashed into some troops sixteen killed an unknown
number injured “identification of victims is being withheld pending notification
of relatives” says the spokesperson mechanically when the phone rings mom makes
me answer “you watching this?” martin asks i say we haven/t heard anything
“looks like faces of death” he says and hangs up the image on tv is an aerial shot
the front half of an airplane is an ashen skeleton and the back half looks brand new
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i go to school to see mary but learn louis xvi was beheaded in front of an empty
pedestal that had supported a bronze statue of his grandfather melted down
to make coins for the new regime i go to school to see mary but go w/ trevor
behind the autobody to smoke three marlboros in a dirt lot of rusty car parts
in the woods four whitetail deer hop through the trees i go to school to see mary
but a couple guys in a bright yellow jeep w/ a black bikini top drive by blasting
“touch of grey” by the grateful dead i go to school to see mary but learn
that algebra in arabic means “reunion of broken parts” i go to school to see mary
but learn about hydrothermal vents a mile-and-a-half under the sea where no sun
can reach inhabited by creatures like the pompeii worm that dwells in 170 degree
clouds of smoke w/ nipples for eyes and bacteria for hair i go to school to see mary
but only see her in the distance walking w/ someone further away from me
her hair shakes like maybe she/s laughing at something the other person just said
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the rest of the week i do as gerry taught me skipping school and sleeping til noon
in mom/s waveless waterbed when the office calls i/m there to delete the recording
from the answering machine on her bedside table i sleep under her comforter
w/ a pillow on my face for the soft weight pushing me gently down deeper and deeper
away from my feelings talk shows and local news are on the television to keep
the thoughts away the first news story i remember as a boy was about a little girl
who had wandered out the door and fallen into a well they called her baby jessica
she was trapped in blackness w/ everyone far away it was a fable that unfolded
in real time we heard about it over breakfast then we went to school came home
played outside ate dinner showered went to bed woke up and poor baby jessica
was still in the well she only knew a couple words that they yelled into the hole
“mommy/s here!” “daddy/s here!” “binky!” “peekaboo!” a long pole
threaded the darkness to make contact finally rescue workers dug a parallel
tunnel alongside the well and reached her from the side baby jessica was strapped
to a tiny stretcher and lifted out of the ground unharmed how jarring the daylight
must have been after being in the dark for so long how terrifying the cheers
must have been when they assaulted her eardrums this is what i am dreaming of
in my mom/s waveless waterbed when i hear the phone ring three-and-a half times
before the machine picks up “please leave a message after the beeeeep”
“you had better get yr ass out of my bed this fucking instant and get to school now”
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when i tell my english teacher my plans he says anyone who reads as much i do
will be alright i don/t know why i believe him he doesn/t know anything
about me no one does all week i had to come to school early to eat breakfast
in the dining hall with the dean because of a wrinkled sportscoat i didn/t talk at all
and he made no effort to fill the silence either on friday i finally got the nerve to say
i/m dropping out i withstood the obligatory arguments he made for me to stay
then i disappeared like a crease in his slacks when he stood up to wish me luck
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on weeknights mary and i circle campus on the twisting country roads around
the school until it/s time to drop her at her dorm for curfew we each do our duty
to come up w/ excuses to see each other once it/s my idea to search for a fabled
mansion on a hill built by a drug dealer who had his assets frozen by the feds
days before he was to move in another time mary suggests we look for gravity hill
where she instructs me to put the van in neutral at a certain mile marker on a dark
and empty road “grab my hand” she orders reaching from her captain/s seat to mine
as a mysterious force pulls us slowly up up up at a speed barely worth reporting
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Craig Blais is the author of About Crows and Moon News. His poems have appeared in Arts & Letters, Denver Quarterly, The Southern Review, Yale Review, and elsewhere. Craig lives in Massachusetts, where he is associate professor of English at Anna Maria College.
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Jennifer Kircher Herman is a writer and photographer. She is widely published in literary journals, including North American Review, Prairie Schooner, Hobart, Alaska Quarterly, Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art, The Rumpus, American Literary Review, and The Nebraska Review, where her work also won the Fiction Prize. She holds an MFA from Emerson College, and has been selected to participate in numerous writing workshops including Bread Loaf, One Story, and Kasteel Well, where she won the fiction fellowship. She is working on a novel and a collection of essays.
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