University of Northern Iowa

SurvivorsAuthor(s): John Nixon, Jr.Source: The North American Review, Vol. 289, No. 2, National Poetry Month (Mar. - Apr.,2004), p. 30Published by: University of Northern IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25127144 .

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NAR

LAURA WEAVER

Alzheimer's Unit For Norma

Moments strung together because

we have linked them that way. One year follows another. The quivering quail egg releases a quail. Each memory a bead

on a necklace, a story we have told

ourselves over and over until it stays.

Then the beads scatter across the floor, the mind unraveling

like a spool. See its tangled patterns?

a hand raised to say something it has

already forgotten. All the images bleeding

through so that time runs together, becomes a vast

blue lake, the barren blue of her gaze as eyes shift and shift and hold onto nothing.

There are holes between thoughts, a synapse like a vast chasm she jumps into, never reaching the other side.

Spaces widen, swallow far and distant

stars, the brain thinning, diffusing like an ever expanding universe,

more and more dark matter.

In a hospital room, I watch her snip scissors through air at lengths of hair that once dropped to the small

of her back. She plays notes on the broken

hammers of a piano, presses ghost songs

into the keys, burns up and down

these bonewhite hallways

searching for her own name.

GERS0N SILVERSTEIN

The Retiree Royale

Hearing aids drowned out

by yackety-yak, the complainers

bitching about the complainers,

mushy string beans, the soup too hot, not enough, too cold,

the chow line a traffic jam of snails,

Niagara Falls toilets at 3 a.m.,

Richter Scale snorers Jericho the walls.

Mad cacophony plus the unbear

able wailing sirens in the dark? a Bedlam Philharmonic tuning up.

Bye, I put my trust in God.

Now at Senior Rest I replay chess from memory, review the might

have-beens, do Rorschach with dark clouds.

In the metastasizing silence I look

for a sign. I become a cupped ear;

I call, shout, but only the squirrels show up. Prayer denied mixes

rescue, gratitude, epiphany.

The crows caw counterpoint

to my tinnitus, send me repacking

Depends, Fixodent, hearing aids, bifocals, whatever.

JOHN NIXON, JR.

Survivors

Originally numerous and new,

We kin played hide-and-seek, shot marbles, sang

(Off-key) "How Come You Do Me Like You Do?"

Our parents, siblings, when they learned that we

Had misbehaved, threw orchard parties, served

Us liberal amounts of peach tree tea.

Later, we jitterbugged. Some went to war.

Most married, then were "fruitful, multiplied."

The old folks faded from the scene. How far

We've come from laughing dawn now and the warm

Domain of noon as we close ranks and stand,

A few chilled cousins, braced against the storm.

30 NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW March-April 2004

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