3 Poems
by Fred Shaw
As a poet more interested in the real rather than the abstract, I’ve always been drawn to the work of former U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser. The way he applies straightforward language and accessible imagery to subjects like family and daily life makes his poetry sneaky-good in my estimation. When he writes in an essay on craft that “we each have our country of memory always within us, always open to exploration, and we hold this for most of our lives,” I’m reminded of the joy I find in remembering the past. It’s the place I suspect many visit when we sit down to write creatively. It also reminds us that our lives count and are valid landscapes to explore.
A lesson or two from teachers like Tony Hoagland and Robert Gibb on the early Imagist poets and the exhortations of Pound and Williams was revelatory. Their principles of “make it new” and “no ideas but in things” seemed obvious, though it wasn’t until I realized I had nothing to say in my own work that I began to take these notions seriously. I was soon making a mental checklist of all the totems in my life that held some kind of emotional energy along with a story—a clock radio that caught on fire, an old red pickup that stood as my inheritance, a broken vacuum cleaner from my time in New Orleans. These things didn’t own me so much as they acted as a portal, one I could step through to explore my life through images grounded through detail.
The poems that follow (a new one and two from my first book, Scraping Away), represent this angle I’ve been pursuing in my work for almost 15 years, trying to make the mundane relatable. As a writing professor, all of my students have been asked to do the same with their own poems, some succeeding while others doing so only reluctantly. I’ll keep on them, hopeful they’ll find their own obsessions. In the meantime, I’ll continue to pursue the tangible down the rabbit-hole of memory and see where it all ends up.
The Discipline of the Shot
--after Hemingway
With that .20-gauge Mossy
I never peppered
ruffed grouse the way Dad said
we would, though every Tuesday
of my eleventh summer, I’d hurry
sleep from my eyes, the blue
Bonneville honking at our curb.
Bed-rousted, I fumble
for my blaze vest before I’m off to blast
my first clays with Dad’s bar-chum,
a slight old man in wire-rims
who survived Bataan.
On the dusty plain, the lesson begins
upon skeet stations painted
black with yardage, arranged in a half-moon,
and with his cheek on the comb,
hands steady, he calls pull,
shredding the discs into bits raining
on the horizon, bending grass
as the kills add up.
Then it’s my turn to mind
the raised heel of my back foot, the butt
nestled in the shoulder’s crook,
hovering over the trigger before the trap’s
metal arm flings another, and for just a season,
I’ll grow keen of the shoulder-kick and smell
of each spent shell, turning targets
into splinters and dust.
The Price of Labor
I. Obsolescence
A horseshoe tag stitched
above a Dickies back pocket
that once held daily wads of cash
and credit slips, now collects dust
and lint in the dim-lit basement,
their yoke and side seam having been sewn
together by deft brown hands, these pants
grown grayer than black.
When first bought, stiff enough for spills
to bead on the polyester blend, they relaxed
until all those washes grew cuffs
ragged and belt loops frayed.
I keep them shelved and folded neatly,
unsure of their uselessness.
II. Fatigue
The hard-plastic seats of the bus
are all I want but it never arrives.
My feet wet after work, cold midnight
seeps into every step of cracked soles.
The hard-plastic seats of the bus
don’t hold me on the last turn one Friday.
I fall foolish on my back in the aisle
with a nearly empty bottle of pink wine.
The hard-plastic seats of the bus
are where young thugs grope my girl’s ass.
Inert, I have no answer for their grabbing
hands when dared to do something about it.
It’s like I’m a child
against this cherrywood table
which has now been in my kitchen
for ten years, the crescent
under his left eye even longer.
It’s a spindly sapling,
creaking and bending,
that neither breaks nor grows, gathering
time in its scratches and stains.
It’s set the scene for beer-soaked tirades
those Sundays after work,
and the dinner parties we hold for two.
On it, three generations of women
have rolled kluski, powdering
pressed-out stretches with flour,
folding dough, then slicing out ringlets
before dropping them into bubbling water.
This slab has held
piles of folded boxers and socks,
pounds of pot, and blow scraped
into lines. Our slowly emptying red wines.
Candle wax being poured into molds.
The Crock-Pot’s slow cooking.
A cell phone ringing,
telling me to visit Dad in ICU one last time.
by Fred Shaw
 |
| The forge at the Derosne & Cail Company, Grenelle by Edmond Morin |
As a poet more interested in the real rather than the abstract, I’ve always been drawn to the work of former U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser. The way he applies straightforward language and accessible imagery to subjects like family and daily life makes his poetry sneaky-good in my estimation. When he writes in an essay on craft that “we each have our country of memory always within us, always open to exploration, and we hold this for most of our lives,” I’m reminded of the joy I find in remembering the past. It’s the place I suspect many visit when we sit down to write creatively. It also reminds us that our lives count and are valid landscapes to explore.
A lesson or two from teachers like Tony Hoagland and Robert Gibb on the early Imagist poets and the exhortations of Pound and Williams was revelatory. Their principles of “make it new” and “no ideas but in things” seemed obvious, though it wasn’t until I realized I had nothing to say in my own work that I began to take these notions seriously. I was soon making a mental checklist of all the totems in my life that held some kind of emotional energy along with a story—a clock radio that caught on fire, an old red pickup that stood as my inheritance, a broken vacuum cleaner from my time in New Orleans. These things didn’t own me so much as they acted as a portal, one I could step through to explore my life through images grounded through detail.
The poems that follow (a new one and two from my first book, Scraping Away), represent this angle I’ve been pursuing in my work for almost 15 years, trying to make the mundane relatable. As a writing professor, all of my students have been asked to do the same with their own poems, some succeeding while others doing so only reluctantly. I’ll keep on them, hopeful they’ll find their own obsessions. In the meantime, I’ll continue to pursue the tangible down the rabbit-hole of memory and see where it all ends up.
- Fred Shaw
The Discipline of the Shot
--after Hemingway
With that .20-gauge Mossy
I never peppered
ruffed grouse the way Dad said
we would, though every Tuesday
of my eleventh summer, I’d hurry
sleep from my eyes, the blue
Bonneville honking at our curb.
Bed-rousted, I fumble
for my blaze vest before I’m off to blast
my first clays with Dad’s bar-chum,
a slight old man in wire-rims
who survived Bataan.
On the dusty plain, the lesson begins
upon skeet stations painted
black with yardage, arranged in a half-moon,
and with his cheek on the comb,
hands steady, he calls pull,
shredding the discs into bits raining
on the horizon, bending grass
as the kills add up.
Then it’s my turn to mind
the raised heel of my back foot, the butt
nestled in the shoulder’s crook,
hovering over the trigger before the trap’s
metal arm flings another, and for just a season,
I’ll grow keen of the shoulder-kick and smell
of each spent shell, turning targets
into splinters and dust.
The Price of Labor
I. Obsolescence
A horseshoe tag stitched
above a Dickies back pocket
that once held daily wads of cash
and credit slips, now collects dust
and lint in the dim-lit basement,
their yoke and side seam having been sewn
together by deft brown hands, these pants
grown grayer than black.
When first bought, stiff enough for spills
to bead on the polyester blend, they relaxed
until all those washes grew cuffs
ragged and belt loops frayed.
I keep them shelved and folded neatly,
unsure of their uselessness.
II. Fatigue
The hard-plastic seats of the bus
are all I want but it never arrives.
My feet wet after work, cold midnight
seeps into every step of cracked soles.
The hard-plastic seats of the bus
don’t hold me on the last turn one Friday.
I fall foolish on my back in the aisle
with a nearly empty bottle of pink wine.
The hard-plastic seats of the bus
are where young thugs grope my girl’s ass.
Inert, I have no answer for their grabbing
hands when dared to do something about it.
It’s like I’m a child
and all my bombs are water balloons.
The Place Setting
Drunk the night before Grandpa’s funeral,
I only half-remember throwing my father
The Place Setting
Drunk the night before Grandpa’s funeral,
I only half-remember throwing my father
against this cherrywood table
which has now been in my kitchen
for ten years, the crescent
under his left eye even longer.
It’s a spindly sapling,
creaking and bending,
that neither breaks nor grows, gathering
time in its scratches and stains.
It’s set the scene for beer-soaked tirades
those Sundays after work,
and the dinner parties we hold for two.
On it, three generations of women
have rolled kluski, powdering
pressed-out stretches with flour,
folding dough, then slicing out ringlets
before dropping them into bubbling water.
This slab has held
piles of folded boxers and socks,
pounds of pot, and blow scraped
into lines. Our slowly emptying red wines.
Candle wax being poured into molds.
The Crock-Pot’s slow cooking.
A cell phone ringing,
telling me to visit Dad in ICU one last time.
Fred Shaw was named Emerging Poet Laureate Finalist for Allegheny County in 2020. He is a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh, and Carlow University, where he received his MFA. He teaches writing and literature at Point Park University and Carlow University. His first collection. Scraping Away, was recently published by CavanKerry Press. A book reviewer and Poetry Editor for Pittsburgh Quarterly, his poem, “Argot,” is featured in the 2018 full-length documentary, Eating & Working & Eating & Working. The film focuses on the lives of local service-industry workers. His poem “Scraping Away” was selected for the PA Public Poetry Project in 2017. He lives in Pittsburgh with his wife and rescued hound dog.
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