Bruce Whitacre | The Ecru Shirt

The Ecru Shirt

 

I never knew anyone else who claimed it,

But Dad insisted it was his favorite color.

When our young family moved into our $25,000

Custom-bilt split-level, the kitchen was yellow-warm.

 

Our motorboat had a goldenrod dual hull.

He could not mount his skis himself,

But he spent entire weekends towing

His sons tandem in his sparkling wake.

 

Having a favorite color is convenient to others,

An easy default for ties, appliances, even for cars,

But it captured as well his warmth and his wit,

His mellowing with age into a crusty outlier.

 

Flipping through his closet the day after,

We chose the parti-colored sport coat;

It matched the well-worn ecru shirt.

And so he went loudly to the grave.

 

 

 

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Bruce E. Whitacre’s work has appeared in Cagibi, The HIV Here and Now Project of Indolent Books, North of Oxford, and World Literature Today. A featured poetry reader at the Forest Hills Public Library, he has read his work at Poets House, the Zen Mountain Monastery Buddhist Poetry Festival, Kew Willow Books, Lunar Walk, and other venues. He completed master workshops with Jericho Brown, Alex Dimitrov, Rowan Ricardo Phillips, and Mark Wunderlich. He holds an MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, and is an activist and advocate for the arts and social justice. He lives in Forest Hills, Queens.

John J. Trause | Yellow

Yellow                                  Yellow Orange Red Green

San Antonio, as one of the fastest growing cities in the nation, was also experiencing a high rate of homelessness, crime, and depravity, belying the tranquility and ostentation of the tourist trade along the River Walk, a clear separation between the haves and have-nots in close proximity, the former ignoring the latter and the latter trying to gain the attention of the former. What might be lurking in the umber shadows under the bridges along the river or even below the surface of the ochre-stained water moving almost imperceptibly as if stagnant? Was that a whiff of urine wafting from that alley? Is that puddle residual river water or yellow piss staining the walkway? It was from this buzzing yellow miasma along the River Walk that my sister, my three-year-old nephew, and I strolled the short walk to St. Mary’s Church, a block or two away. As we approached the façade of the church, we thought we saw, there, sprawling on the steps, a seeming mass of tentacles and fetid sea flesh bellowing out at no one in particular, a red-haired Scylla of the sanctuary, ready to snatch us from our footing. On coming closer we saw that this bedraggled creature might be a seemingly destitute woman, fleshy, plump, and with brightly but poorly dyed red hair. She had been calling out and gesturing to us from a distance while combing her greasy, colored coif. Does she want money? Does she want help? Does she just want attention? What does she want? Getting closer, I realized that she, knowing that we were headed to the entrance of the church, was trying to get my attention and not that of my sister and nephew: “Mister, mister, your fly is open.”

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John J. Trause, Director of Oradell Public Library, is the author of six books of poetry, including Why Sing? (Sensitive Skin Press, 2017) and Seriously Serial (Poets Wear Prada, 2007; rev. ed. 2014), and one of parody, Latter-Day Litany (Éditions élastiques, 1996), the latter staged Off Broadway. His translations, poetry, prose, and artwork appear internationally in many journals and anthologies. Marymark Press has published Trause’s visual poetry and art as broadsides. He is a founder of the William Carlos Williams Poetry Cooperative in Rutherford, New Jersey, and the former host and curator of its monthly reading series.