CROWBARRING INTO A SCHOOLHOUSE AT AN OBSCENE HOUR 

by Ian Hall

Trouble makes us
hunt out the places where we knew

fatter times. That’s gospel, but still
my hackles are up. Sitting here in the same migraine

beige desk I did as a thirteen-year-old, I can’t
outmuscle the feeling that I’m about

to be born. Sentimentality: when you give
more tenderness to a thing

than its creator. It’s told that God’s love is broad
shouldered enough to bear even the louses

that sublet the comb-over on a child
diddler, but I can’t figure why he’d give

two hoots about how phantasmic the fish
patties tasted at my grade school. I swear, reminiscing

concusses you. Right now, I know I’m credulous
as a dental patient: even the exposed

bulb in the nurse’s office, gray as a hundred
cases of flu, looks transcendent. & the monoxide

vroom of an old hand dryer wafts across the ear
as mere purr. But I can’t relish any of this like

I’d like: in 5-7 business days, they’re intent
on dozing this building down

to stud & ion. & in the asbestos they’ll lay
a victory garden, & AmeriCorps greenhorns will teach

crop eugenics to hungry people, hand out packets
of cantaloupe seed to pensioners. They humanely think

we’re all Neanderthals. But forked light
from a sudden squall reassures me

that the young still carve their hellacious
lusts into the desktops. & through its trachea

tube the thunder tells me don’t
dwell. In the hallway, my finger-ends rake across

the maimed lockers, & it kills me that I can’t help
but halt at #39, the one with the hoax

bottom, where my good buddy
Clay-boy used to stash pouches

of Skoal Citrus. After recess I’d nab a few
whenever I wanted to

flutter my brain. & swooningly I take stock of #48, hoping
against hope that the note I left the first girl I ever held

hands with will still be crammed in there
somewhere. It said let’s run away

to Tahiti. We’ll live on love & papaya. Thrice now
I’ve been married, but recalling her I still

feel the earliest chigger bites
of longing on my lower half. That teases to mind

this oily joke I used to bandy back
& forth with Clay. It had to do with a man

named Enis. For the sake of it, I tell the joke
to no one. But my voice tripped out

peculiar, as if I’d simply
leased it. I was of a firm mind to call

Clay the other day, but wouldn’t you
know his sister answered, & she said his tongue

had capsized in his mouth from the months
of chugging Robitussen. That his ex

ex-wife had left with the kids, feathered
a new nest with some local lawn mower

mogul, & that Clay was altogether low
as the blue jeans

on a bulimic. It’s the bafflingest thing: we never know
we’re living in a pat of butter

until it blinks.

Ian Hall was born & reared in the coalfields of Eastern Kentucky. He is currently a PhD candidate in Poetry at Florida State University. His work is featured in Narrative, Mississippi Review, The Journal, Southeast Review, & elsewhere.