Garage Painting, by Alexandra Burack

Corner From Ocean, by Herman J. Garfinkel (USA, b. Ukraine) before 1979

Garage Painting                                                        
  
The Cape Islander’s hull is white on starboard
     and blue on port, but in water
its reflection is moss green, there, hung on my mint green 
wall in a frame that’s faded 
     seventy years from 
 
sea-blue to yellow-beige, which would have angered
     Uncle Herman, the painter, the
barely 5-foot wizened man who married my Nana’s 
sister Blanche, Blanche who didn’t 
     like me, so brash I
 
was, not to care for cooking, cleaning, sewing, 
     and serving a man—in a house,
outside a house, in a car, office, drive-in, diner--
any abode of servants,
     which role ensnared Blanche
 
in their compressed saltbox a few hundred feet 
     up the curved slope of Town Street from 
Nana, sunk below street level, hollowed primly tight
in the province of fisher  
     cat, deer, coyote,
 
and salamander in the Hadlyme woods, loud
     enough for Mr. and Mrs.
Garfinkel—not the original name, we suspect,
as Herman’s small family fled 
     Kovno or Minsk or
 
Dvinsk, or a village that was one day in 
     one country and another the
next—to staunchly avoid other sounds days brazenly
resonate. We made visits
     infrequent, as their
  
shrouded-quiet marriage seemed more specter-like 
     than ghosts shuffling dirt floors in Pale
of Settlement shacks. No fisherman abound in caps
on the wharf where the still-lifed 
     boat moors, tucked in wood
 
in a time with reverence for what was made
     from wood that livens the brown strokes
shaping the meeting-house, the cannery, the broad smoke-
house scenting a blue scene gray 
     in the cramped foreground.
 
The river seems an oddity in narrow-
     ness for industry, but I still
know as little of angle, ground, line, perspective, grid, 
or geometries of points 
     vanished as I did 
 
when young, watching the swipe, dab, and swirl of his 
     brush, swept by waves of finished oils 
lapping the sides of the garage where he painted, stunned
at three dimensions full-wrought
     on two. Herman co-
 
owned a hardware store in a satellite burb
     of raw New York City with Ed,
Nana’s brother (an odd choice of partner instead of 
the convenience of his own
     brother, but too late 
 
to back out of married family ties), but when
     banks called in their loans in the steel, 
serrated teeth of the Great Depression, he’d retired 
sans savings, shame-mired in needs
     to rehome himself
  
on rural land owned by his wife’s family. Sand-
     pit exchanges with the state not-
withstanding (the era of frenzied street and highway
construction sucked most sand from
     the provinces), their
 
home budget personified frugal the way 
     Blanche’s housekeeping vivified 
servitude; the stench of wood oil that drenched the perfect 
banisters terrified me
     out of touching things,
 
so I sat with hands suffocated under
     my ass at their kitchen table, 
feigning life. The fishing boat, the woven wooden crab
pots, the pilings, the nets hung 
     to dry, build a red-
 
roofed era of everything from hands, even                            
   the iron bascule bridge, its decks 
in the position of prayer, (risen to let schooners
dock after the rich return 
     from Connecticut 
 
River cruises) built to prod circulation
     of trout, shad, perch, bass, and catfish,
ferried to mom-and-pop groceries in our childhoods 
of food without PCBs. 
     My life repainted,
 
I’d try toil as a deck-hand on this peeling,
     fogged-glass craft, fortunate in wise
use of muscle and eye, confident that collective
labor would be seen a gift,
     like this scene, inscribed
  
to my mom and dad (strangers among their own
     families), For my good pals, Ann 
and Boris, without leaving his name. It is a name
must stand for all that was made, 
     all that spreads over 
 
us uncreased, not knowing a hand had touched it.
     Outside the frame, in the northwest 
distance, the antique Hadlyme ferry diagonals 
the river, hushed, perfect for 
     the plein air painters.

Alexandra Burack

Note: This poem is also after Information Desk, by Robyn Schiff (Penguin Books, 2023.)
​
Alexandra Burack, author of the chapbook, On the Verge, has published ekphrastic and other poems recently in Metphrastics, ucity review, The Sewanee Review, and Bulb Culture Collective, among other venues. She is the founder of Ekphrastica, a creative writing pedagogy for poets/writers and visual/performing artists, and enjoyed a 45-year career as a college creative writing professor. She serves as a Poetry Editor for Iron Oak Editions, and a Poetry Reader for The Los Angeles Review, The Adroit Journal, and $ Poetry is Currency. She currently works as a freelance editor, writing coach, and tutor. Her website is: https://www.alexandraburack.com.