top of page

"Snowscape", "White on White", and "The Bronze Bust" by Mark Belair



SNOWSCAPE


Flakes gathered 

on a stone,


on a leaf,

on the arm of a lawn chair left out.


A coating of snow, I suppose

I could say.


Yet 

each object 


holds 

its own.



WHITE ON WHITE


The white lettering pasted 

onto his front bass drum head 

blends into its white background, so no 

full words emerge 

to name the snappy society quartet 

for which he was the drummer.


My teenage grandfather, cigar 

jutting out, brandishes 

two sticks in one hand and a tambourine in the other

for this sepia-toned, Roaring-Twenties

publicity photograph.


If, say, fourteen, he had ten years to live before 

his fatal auto accident and made use of them:

played in a band on a boat to Europe; played 

on a cruise to the Caribbean; filled-in, one night, 

with Paul Whiteman (the biggest bandleader of the day);

married a beautiful, tender woman; fathered my father.


And left this blanked-out—so iconic—lettering.



THE BRONZE BUST


I forgot to buy milk

and needed wine

so I threw my coat on

and clopped downstairs

with the shops across the street in mind

when I saw, in my building foyer, 

a life-size bronze bust 

of Gene—one 

he fashioned when a young artist 

of his beautiful young self—receding

atop a wooden dolly, an appraiser

giving instructions to the mover

in her British accent.


I literally clutched my heart, having 

known this bust nearly thirty years

as it presided over the entry hall 

of Gene’s apartment, a bust

passed countless times by my wife and me 

and our two boys when Gene invited us up 

for tea and pastries, a bust that seemed to watch 

its model’s manifold life unfold before its 

attentive, sensual, unchanging gaze.


But Gene, at ninety-one, his memory deteriorating 

by the day, felt it was time to deaccess 

his kept work while he could handle it 

judiciously, stripping 

his apartment of every piece, a process 

about which he was unsentimental—or 

so the appraiser reported when I confessed 

my stab of pain.


And she, of course, was as unsentimental as he, 

just doing her job while I stood and watched this 

emblem of Gene’s full life—and emptying memory—

fade away, its tender face to me.




Mark Belair's poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Alabama Literary Review, Harvard Review, and Michigan Quarterly Review

Author of seven collections of poems, his most recent books are two works of fiction: Stonehaven (Turning Point, 2020) and its sequel, Edgewood (Turning Point, 2022). A new collection of poems entitled Settling In will be published by Kelsay Books later this year. He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize multiple times, as well as for a Best of the Net Award. Please visit www.markbelair.com


コメント


bottom of page