from Pontoon 10

now Available from Floating Bridge Press, Pontoon 10. The following poem is by John Glowney, one of our chapbook finalists for 2007.


MY FATHER GOES SWIMMING IN THE AFTER-LIFE

This is how I see him now,
wading
into that pinkish beach of clouds
covered with angel footprints,

as I remember the one and only time
he went swimming with us

Mom somehow dragging him out of the fields

and away from his prized
herd of milk cows
for a hot Sunday afternoon in early August
at Moore’s gravel pit,

and he waded in,
his thick farmer’s torso stripped down
to an old pair of swimming trunks
dug out of the bottom of the dresser,

burned red at the neck and wrists
where the plaid shirt-sleeves stopped,
red and worn where weather

and baling twine and busted combines,
rusted bolts and dry spells
and lost calves, smashed him up,

he shuffled
into the spin and slop of sun
spread across silted water
like butter gone bad
where kids shouted and played—

and how we stared, amazed
at his great glossy bulk,
soft, spoiled white of banker’s hands,
the sickly white of the larva of flies
—white, white, white—

a purity we had never suspected.