Poetry By E.C. Gannon
Nancy, Baltimore, 1963
I was working at the nice hotel on the water
that spring, trying to save enough to visit
Clara in New Haven. We had only a radio
at home, always tuned to WBJC’s evening
program, but the hotel had black and white
TVs in every room. Miss Ada told us we weren’t
allowed to watch, so I kept the volume low
enough while I changed the sheets and cleaned
the bathrooms. Sometimes, I’d sit on the edge
of an unmade bed and watch so long I had to rush
to finish the rest of my rooms. I couldn’t look away.
It was one thing to hear about something, another to see
the fists and the big police dogs. It felt a little
like the hours before a big storm hits, but maybe
that’s a bad comparison. One night, I asked
Mama what was happening, why so many people
on the TV were so upset, why so many were sitting in
diners and getting in trouble for it. She told me
she had no idea what I was talking about and asked
me to bring Daddy his nightly gin and tonic.
Later, as she cut me a slice of blueberry pie,
she told me a nice girl like me had no business
worrying about the world. Clara never thought
about that stuff, and look how happy she was.
Any Post Office in America
A man with an accent that sounds fake
and a toupee that looks faker fills out
a passport form and asks the mailman
questions about local donut shops.
Which has the best glazed?
Which opens earliest?
Which has the most egregious specialty flavors?
He’s new to the area, forgive him.
A cardboard box that says “Live Animals”
tweets at uneven intervals. An occasional beak
pops out of the beak-sized holes in the box.
A stray child, not a competent adult in sight,
asks if the baby chicks have names.
The mailman doesn’t know.
Nobody asks where they came from,
where they’re going, why these chicks
are special enough to mail.
On the wall, the Twin Towers stand erect
under “Never Forget” in Times New Roman.
I think sure, yes, never forget, and then
I take a step closer so I can read the text
superimposed over the Hudson. It says,
“Share this with five of your friends to ensure
it never happens again,” and I feel a little guilty
for laughing. Maybe it’s never too soon for stupidity.
A woman bellies up to the counter. She’d like stamps.
American themed. American.
Donut World is the mailman’s favorite; maybe
the man without a passport would like it too.
Filling a Hole
Really, I could drive down to Publix right now
and buy a sheet cake, and I could carry it
back to my apartment, set it down on my desk,
lock my bedroom door, turn out the lights,
and take a fork to the cake, stuffing as much of it
into my mouth as possible, all the frosting flowers,
the sprinkles, until it becomes too much
and I have to crawl to the bathroom and throw up
the entire cake, and then I could sit there
on the moldy tile, my back against even moldier tile,
waiting for the sweat to cool off my skin,
and I could walk back to my room, and I could draw
the blinds, and I could pick up the fork again,
and I could finish the cake. That’s something
I could do. I could hit all the burger joints
on this strip, tell myself I’m running an experiment
to determine which has the best fries and chocolate
shakes. I could fill the backseat of my car
with all the wrappers and empty styrofoam cups,
the same backseat where I used to sit
and look at the stars through the sunroof
and wonder how long someone can feel
unlovable before it becomes pathological.
I could start putting French vanilla ice cream
into my coffee. I could leave a gallon of chocolate
milk on my bedside table in case I get thirsty, and when
I wake up in the middle of the night, my sheets
soaking wet and my head pounding, I could eat
an entire pack of Entenmann's, and I could wash it
down with a case of caffeine-free Coke.
That’s something I could do. I could order
a large pizza, extra cheese, and when it arrives,
I could open my front door just wide enough
for the box to fit through, and then I could drop
the whole pizza, and I could get down on my
knees and I could eat the pizza straight off the linoleum.
