STIRRING
Founded in 1999, Stirring is one of the oldest continuously publishing journals on the internet.
Stirring is an electronic quarterly journal.
Founded in 1999, Stirring is one of the oldest continuously publishing journals on the internet.
Stirring is an electronic quarterly journal.
JAN LAPERLE
Above my desk is a poem about a two-headed calf,
and another about yellow.
Yesterday, sitting with my daughter and her best friend,
I settled on yellow as my favorite color.
It felt like my whole life had led me there the moment I declared it.
Yellow: the place to go to in my mind when
I’ve pulled too far into the shadows.
There are so many bald men in this world
and sometimes, not being a bald man is the #1 thing I am grateful for.
Sorry, bald men. Sorry, dad—I’m sorry I have no poems about you.
I’m sorry to my husband for only writing about the gaps in our love
instead of our love. Our lives together
are the ways the sunlight hits the forest floor.
Once, my father called me ugly.
Once, my husband made a face when I was singing.
We went to church yesterday as a family for the first time in over a year.
I will soon forget what we learned about quiet, if I haven’t already.
I’m learning what fatherhood really means,
here where the steam rises from the morning grass
and the clouds of pollen fall from the high branches.
It all dissipates. Somewhere between what I am thinking
and what I am about to do is another dark space
waiting on the morning’s sunlight.
I am here with my here-life
just wondering how to keep the dog
from eating the leftovers our neighbors
dumped in their bushes.
I holler to him with all my might.
The maple tree turns—
I am barging in on her again.
The dog comes at last wagging and I go back
to scrubbing the kitchen floor
where at the other end
my husband sets his shoes down heavily
like come here!
The husband is nervous, headed out into morning
as if there were an answer there.
When the floors are clean, the two of us
work in the yard together, a sweet thing that helps.
I teeter on the ladder-top, my hands in the gutters,
the husband holding the ladder-bottom.
I hold my face away, my hands and my heart
cut from the tinny edges of the roof, this day.
Even his shoes are nervous.
I think he is hating me when all I see is me.
Nervous sweat grows little onion patches
into the warm armpit seams of my work shirt.
Through the window I see the dog,
our ticking time-bomb,
fold his paws tight on his bed,
an envelope sent to sleep.
All day my face is asleep
and wearing this winter skin
that keeps coming back, every year.
Even with so much to worry about,
even with the winter warming,
it is my own skin that hollers the loudest.
Jan LaPerle’s book of poetry, Maybe The Land Sings Back, was published in Spring 2022 from Galileo Books. Her other books include: a book of poetry, It Would Be Quiet (Prime Mincer Press, 2013); an e-chap of flash fiction, Hush (Sundress Publications, 2012); a story in verse, A Pretty Place To Mourn (BlazeVOX, 2014), and several other stories and poems. She completed her MFA from Southern Illinois University. She lives in Kentucky where she serves on active duty at Fort Knox as an Army master sergeant.
