Places of Meaning

The two poems in our December issue take us to places where the unexpected happens. In James Davis May’s “The Patron Saint of Suburban Foxes,” it’s to a quiet neighborhood where early risers catch a glimpse of a rare visitor. Gary Jackson’s “Pinkie Masters” takes us barhopping in Savannah with the author’s wife and mother-in-law, who pulls a prank for the ages. Both are gorgeous poems that offer not just rich settings, but a more expansive sense of the meaning that hides all around us. You can listen to the authors read their work by clicking the Listen button below.

Take care and read well,
Nancy Holochwost, Associate Editor

 

The Patron Saint of Suburban Foxes
By James Davis May

The morning’s dressed in what would be
a gaudy filter if this were a photograph,
but the greens of the lawns and crape myrtles
really are that green, the blue of the sky and jays
that blue. Her own orange, though, deepens
in shadow to red, like condensed autumn,
and makes her almost invisible
against the brick she edges past
on her burnt-matchstick legs
before choosing speed over cover
and bolting straight up the street, igniting
a comet tail of confusion, then wonder:
the bleary-eyed, not-yet-caffeinated,
still-pajamaed, stiff-legged witnesses
fetching the dew-softened paper or peering
out the kitchen window as they wash
the remnants of last night’s dinner from the pan,
or those of us who just stare at the day, hoping
it will start itself, all wordlessly asking, Is that . . . ? 
then declaring, It is! It’s something like belief 
that she gives us without knowing she gives it,
an echoing urge to look around—maybe
it lasts the day, maybe just a minute—to see
the marvelous appear again, not out of nowhere,
but from the ordinary, where we know it hides.

Pinkie Masters
By Gary Jackson

Fresh from the Garden of Good and Evil,
we arrive before dusk in search of The Lady
Chablis and the best dive in the South—

you, Lisa, and me in Savannah
on Christmas Eve, greeted by green-
and-red lights strung around

the Confederate flag, the bar full of men
thick with beards and sweat and the right
amount of nutmeg in my mother’s recipe,

a patron says as he passes around
a tin of almond cookies—buttery
and cold. Six drinks in, we ask

the woman whose man just left her
if we can buy her another round.
She accepts, laments how she’s been

there since noon, how her man begged
her to come home. How she refused.
I have the hiccups like a motherfucker.

A good scare can cure anything, she says.
We nod, and I thank her but insist
on holding my breath all night.

A man across the bar asks where
I’m from. Charleston! I yell back,
meaning that’s where I live,

but it’s never been home. They think
pretty highly of themselves up there,
don’t they? he asks. Fuck yeah, they do,

I reply, thankful he didn’t include me
with them. He asks me to step outside.
I forget my jacket. We stumble

into the cold, turn the corner, and greet
the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist.
The man points up at the parapets

and asks, Ain’t that something?
And I say, Yeah, like I’m in a Carver 
story, before coming back

inside, rubbing the warmth
back into my arms,
still trying to hold my breath.

A woman pulls me aside, instructs me
to make sure you get your wife and mother-
in-law home safe. I nod and do my best

impression of sobriety, taking the lead
as we walk Savannah’s dark
and lovely arms. Years from now

Lisa and I will sprinkle your ashes
in the same bar, under the same
seats, into the same flowerpots

that line the smeared window
with its broken neon sign: Miller
High Life. But tonight’s not over:

We order drinks to go from
the rooftop lounge, the fake
Irish pub, the basement bar

serving Grand Marnier in Dixie cups
with more ice than a Missouri
winter. I am loved. We are going

home. You clutch your heart
and lean against the wall, slide
down to cobblestone, struggling

to breathe. We reach out, ready
to dial 911, when you stop and ask,
Do you still have the hiccups?

before you stand and slip a Dixie cup
out of your pocket and take a sip.
We laugh, and I ask how you can

pull a drink from your coat without
spilling a drop. I still know a few
things, you say. You said.