~
Arts & Crafts Lied To Us
We followed directions to take our uncles’ cigar boxes
and rubber bands to make a guitar
on which we played the kind of songs kids sang those days
while we spilled powder-mix-made lemonade
that attracted lines of ants.
Our plucking loosened the bands tunelessly
or the box collapsed at the seams,
but our uncles with their mustaches and hair tonic
smoked more and gave us more boxes
and the newspapers (news of gasoline shortages
and rising prices) came every day with more bands.
And now we’re adults and see the price
of a guitar we can’t afford and its shape,
and we think how useless our handsaw, hammer,
and screwdriver set would be trying to make that,
not to mention the long aisles of slightly warped boards
at the lumber store.
And if you put all our uncles together
the parts of their mouths lost to cigar cancers
could make a whole other mouth—
Oh, what kind of song would it sing?
~
Gary Leising
(additional pieces by Gary Leising in this issue)
After I Bought Noise Cancelling Headphones
Gary Leising is the author of the book The Alp at the End of My Street (Brick Road Poetry Press 2014). He has also published three poetry chapbooks: The Girl with the JAKE Tattoo (Two of Cups Press 2015), Temple of Bones (Finishing Line Press 2013), and Fastened to a Dying Animal (Pudding House 2010). He lives in Clinton, New York, with his wife and two sons, where he teaches creative writing and poetry as a professor of English.