Five After Living in America Exhibition, by Tom Driscoll

Welcome, by Dan Kovacevic (USA) contemporary

Welcome/Burl
​
It’s not the wracking wind one would assume
brings about this shape, not the sculpting flow of water
either, the way that can model stone given enough time. No.

It’s actually confusion on the cellular level, a tree’s own growth
deranged by some distracting presence, parasite
or infestation. Not unlike an itch

scratched at until it is a wound, then a scar, then simply
something of the wood itself, of its form and flesh.

It sings somehow something more than the monotone
ring upon ring of the straighter trunk material.
This eloquent moment of melody, silent, complex.

Is it that the irritation is forgotten finally? 
Does some kind of acceptance come about in the end?

House of Opinions, by Tarja Cockell (USA, b. Finland) contemporary

​House of Opinions

The phone mounted on the wall
next to my father’s place at the kitchen table.
He’s talking with his father, a Democrat since Roosevelt 
came along with the WPA. Grampa built bridges, 
dug ditches all through The Great Depression.
I only hear my father’s side of the conversation:
Richard Nixon and a concept called “Peace with honor.”
They talk a long while, my father raises his voice at times.
“Dad, Dad! I’ve three sons. I want this war over and done.”
It's twenty years later and I’ve come to dread the sound
of the telephone ringing. Always the same time of night, 
same topics we covered the last time. Everything wrong
with the current (Clinton) administration. He tells me he loves
a good debate. An exchange of ideas he calls it. What I hear is pain.

Cowboy Oil, photography by Peter Gumaskas (USA) contemporary

​Cowboy Oil

Weather had its way with the paint once more blatantly 
red, white, and blue. Sheet metal rusted through those places
it was joined together. Neon long gone, not even power to the lamps
meant to light that cowboy bronco busting a bumblebee.
Central Equipment bought the land more than twenty years back.
At first they simply didn’t bother with tearing the old sign down.
Then they got to liking it, that sad old face, that wistful song
of a bygone place not even quite singing any more.
I was sorry to learn someone’s started to repaint the thing,
they mean to maybe even get the lights working again. I think it’s a mistake.
The other night it was just me and my TV and I found myself watching
Simon and Garfunkle singing the songs that made them famous
fifty years ago. Their voices were shot, their friendship still plainly strained.
Two old men. But there was a sweet brokenness there that I would never want to fix.

Thank You Anita, by by Laurie Simko (USA) contemporary

​Thank you, Avita

The hospice nurse who’s come to the loft
because Denise has fallen says she grew up
in the same town we lived in way back when.
Her grandmother raised her there.
And I think I remember her, too. A shy little girl.
We got her in trouble giving her Halloween candy
against Grandma’s strict proscription. They lived 
just two doors down, rented from the same woman.
I thought, at the time, that the grandmother 
was unnecessarily hard on the girl, a cruel scold.
I say nothing now and doubt our kind nurse remembers.
She cleans the wound with water and explains
that there’s often more blood than damage with cuts 
like this one. This will heal, she says, I promise you.

City Shapes, by Margaret Emerson (USA) contemporary

​City Shapes

I’d never seen a helicopter hold so perfectly still
as on that night I was walking the way I always do
along Suffolk beside the canal. I think
it was some water main broke down toward Father Morissette.
Fire trucks and squad cars all there with nothing to do
but watch the water rising. A large bald man in it up to his knees
was looking like he was somehow to blame.
His bare arms lifted slightly from his sides, his hands balled into fists.
And that chopper. It could have been painted on the sky.
Four pigeons up there on a telephone line.
The moon was full. I stopped and just stood there for a little while.
It was like we all expected to see something. Something different. 
Kids running about taking none of it seriously.
And just for a moment I did not feel so all alone in this universe.

​Tom Driscoll

Note: These poems are from a visual art exhibition, Living in America, at Loading Dock Gallery in Lowell, Massachusetts, October 2024, a poetry convergence. Tom wrote the poems to works shown in the exhibition. Tom says, "Once again and always, thanks go out to poet Stephan Anstey (the propellant force behind the poetry convergence every year) and to the artists at Western Avenue/Loading Dock."
​
​Tom Driscoll is a poet, columnist, and essayist who lives and works in Lowell, Massachusetts. Driscoll’s poetry has appeared appeared previously in The Ekphrastic Review as well as Oddball Magazine, Abraxis Review, Scapegoat, Paterson Literary Review, and The Worcester Review