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from Clangings

By Steven Cramer

I hear the dinner plates gossip
Mom collected to a hundred.
My friends say get on board,
but I’m not bored. Dad's a nap
lying by the fire. That’s why
when radios broadcast news,
news broadcast from radios
gives air to my kinship, Dickey,
who says he’d go dead if ever
I discovered him to them.
I took care, then, the last time
bedrooms banged, to tape over
the outlets, swipe the prints
off DVDs, weep up the tea
stains where once was coffee.
Not one seep from him since.
What, you wander, do I mean?
Except for slinging my songs
wayward home, how do things
in people go? is what I mean.
Added: Monday, July 14, 2014  /  From "Clangings" (Sarabande, 2012). Used with permission.
Steven Cramer
Photo by: Thomas Sayers Ellis

Steven Cramer is the author of The Eye that Desires to Look Upward (Galileo Press, 1987), The World Book (Copper Beech Press, 1992), Dialogue for the Left and Right Hand (Brookline Books/Lumen Editions, 1997), Goodbye to the Orchard (Sarabande Books, 2004)—winner the Sheila Motton Award from the New England Poetry Club and an Honor Book in Poetry from the Massachusetts Center for the Book—and Clangings (Sarabande Books, 2012).  His poems have appeared in numerous journals, including AGNI, The Atlantic Monthly, Field, The Kenyon Review, The Nation, The New England Review, The Paris Review, and Poetry.  Recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, and two fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, he founded and teaches in the Low-Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing at Lesley University. Learn more at Steven's website.

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