October Fences
(for Matthew Shepard 1976-1998)
This
morning in a Walmart parking lot, seagulls
swarmed a
torn McDonald’s bag, and I closed
my eyes
pretending water was nearby.
Now I
stand on our fence rail to reach a high
branch to
prune, and I think of you and your
fence—the
last support your body felt. I was born
five
months before you. Farmfields here in Ohio
are
lonely, too, especially in starlight. I think of
you each
fall when weather turns cold—always
too
soon—and each time one of my kids outlives
you. We
were the same size. I’m too small to protect
myself,
let alone my children. Did the fence
comfort
you or bind you to earth longer than you
wanted?
You were not a scarecrow, so I like to
think
crows came with shiny gifts even if you
didn’t
see. That October I was newly wed, newly
pregnant
with my small boy who was glassed-in
ten days
in the NICU, like you. I wish I had been
water for
you—to clean the rest of your bloodied
face, or
soothe you as a nearby white-noise
river
ambling toward its lake. Lullabies help
us imagine
so we can acquiesce to sleep.
I sang to
my son, through his glass and after.
What did
you hear as that fence skeleton-ed your
purgatory?
I can’t do anything. The blood
was dried.
Did you resist falling asleep or beg
to? Cattle
moaned for you. Killdeer shrieked.
Bats
swooped mosquitoes from your cheek.
Wood-Burning,
NYC
Beyond our
scaffolding, the mirror-walled hotel
across
54th St reflects our hotel’s lobby. I lash the
bits of my
life together best I can, stumbling as if
with loose
cords of firewood. Our hotel façade is
being
refaced. A note in our room says to close
drapes for
privacy. My mother used to know
which type
of wood was burning at neighboring
campsites
by the smoke smell. Our doorman seems
to
stand across the street in his black suit. A
blonde in
our lobby chair appears to hover
over
there, waiting, maybe, for a lover who is
upstairs.
In the city, there’s no wood smoke in
the
air. The doorman keeps the woman’s secrets.
Out in the
country, folks sell fire logs from stacks
in their
driveways. All autumn, my neighborhood
burns
leaves. If I was refaced, what should
be my new
surface? We open our hotel drapes
for some
light. Who would it hurt if a stone mason
peeped in?
Sleeping with October windows open
means I
dream smoke. I should be armored in
mirror.
Who doesn’t like seeing themselves
reflected
at themselves in someone else’s
eyes. Wood
burns too easily. My husband
won’t
sleep with our home’s windows open.
Look how
neatly folks learn to stack every
bit of
wood they don’t even need?
Kerry
Trautman lives in Ohio, USA. Her work has appeared previously in Hobo
Camp Review as well as numerous other journals and
anthologies. Her books are: Things That Come in Boxes, To
Have Hoped, Artifacts, To be Nonchalantly Alive, Marilyn:
Self-Portrait, Oil on Canvas, Unknowable Things, and Irregulars.
Her new books Things to Say When You Have Nothing to Say and Days
of Bees are forthcoming in 2026 from Roadside Press and Dancing Girl
Press respectively.
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