Rock of Ages, Pencil Sketch, Picture 59, by Janet Reed

Rock of Ages, by James Edward Deeds Jr, The Electric Pencil Artist (USA, b. Panama) circa 1936-1966.

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Rock of Ages, Pencil Sketch, Picture 59
          
As if buckshot blew a hole
in the side of an Ozark hill
 
he once called home, the pencil
patient artist of State Hospital #3
 
left a wound gripping the rock
of his mountain, spraying
 
green spruces grown in shale,
lime and sandstone,
 
mortared by bones of the dead
bedded in hot springs
 
up the side of his discarded
invoice canvas,
 
ROCK OF AGES #59 penciled
over a reminder to pay
 
promptly as required by law
on an otherwise empty page.
 
I see him, a boy running these hills
standing in his pew
 
at his father’s church to sing
let me hide myself in thee
 
with nowhere to hide, helpless
against his father’s fists
 
his father’s name on a dotted line
remanding him to this place,
 
as empty of grace as the columns
of debits and credits printed
 
on his medium, double sins
of difference and indifference
 
in the shattered Rock of Ages.

Janet Reed

Janet Reed is guest editor of I-70 Review, author of Blue Exhaust (FLP, 2019), and a multi-year Pushcart Prize nominee.  Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Sow’s Ear Review, Ellipsis, Tipton Poetry Journal, and others. She began writing knock-off Nancy Drew stories on wide-lined notebook paper at age 11 and now teaches writing and literature for Crowder College in Missouri.