David Ackley

Lost Love Poem

My love is like a red, red rose.

Well, not really, but she might be

if her hair or even the rest

of her were red. I’m not sure I’d like that.

It might depend on which red we’re

talking about. Probably not scarlet

(tacky, overused) or maroon ( too glum.)

Maybe something like carmine,

though I can’t really picture her carmine.

Is it pinkish?

Fuchsia—that’s red isn’t it?

And the rose, not my favorite,

is a problem,

though nothing else would sound right:

My love is like a red, red fuchsia,

I’m sure doesn’t work.

What are some other flowers?

(And why can’t I think of their

names when I need to?)

I think my love is upstairs packing.

Proximity

Through the lens the moon appalls,

a cross-section of  bleached femur,

cleaned by space jackals.

Still we look and look, can no more

get enough than of what’s-her-tits on the tv

nose pressed to the screen

the reruns of collapse

From every pan and closeup,

eternally plummeting

Or the wild dogs in their pit

we lift our child to see,

singing, closer, Mommy, closer

Just to see

After the falls and fatal lunges

Is it only something in us

Can’t abide distance?

Must always bring the far near?

All this, no more than that?

Teddy Recalled

A quiet kid, one easily lost in a crowd,

who was along, I’m sure, when we senior boys

(a small school, there were only eight)

took our class trip to Salisbury Beach

in two cars with cases of beer

and got suitably ripped in a drizzling rain.

We might have looked at the waves once or twice

before we slept the night in the cars,

and in the morning, drove back home,

hugging our hangovers like basketball trophies.

Sandy-haired, medium height, blue—maybe green—eyed.

Odd how the liking outlives the particulars.

I still see him at the last,

only a year or two out,

after we all had left,

where he quiet remains,

him, his shotgun, the fence.

CP

David Ackley lives in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. His work has previously appeared in The Greensboro Review, Prick of the Spindle, THIS, A-Minor and other fine journals. His fiction has been listed as a Distinguished Story in Best American Short Stories, and nominated for Best of the Net and Million Writers Awards.