Keith Gorman

In Rooms of The Past

 

An achy spine was the boy’s price to pay for

a good night’s dreaming on grandma’s bed, waking

to the sounds of the train whistle, the morning

sunlight peeking around the old yellowed

 

shades. Late Fall and the acorn wind searching

around the sash gaps, the trees already

bare and the scrawny branches whipping

against the cold glass panes. All of these things

 

I remember now: the stench of litter and what I

later learned to be Pine-sol mixed with percolated

coffee, hairspray, and cigarettes. Late night:

the old cat curled below the bookcase with hell’s-

 

red eyes, eager for a battle should I rattle her

world. The Glenwood stove—the jack-o'-lantern

flame—and how I loved ruffling that Siamese

cat, flipping a finger close to the nose, chasing her

 

below the bed skirt and pricking her whiskers 

with a hickory stick. The same stick grandma used

on me. All of these things I remember now:

the uncle, crushing a cockroach with a flat heel

 

of his shoe and the cigarette sliding down against

his lower lip as the giant bug popped, leaving

a prune-like smear on the hard plank floor. My

grandma cleaning in a sleeveless smock, killing

 

a wasp with a wadded Kleenex, the coal-black

soot embedded below her nails. And Mom's lessons

on Ladybug Luck, cupping her hands and counting

the small spots of happiness—one for each year—

 

speaking soft and slow as the morning. All of these

things I remember now: placing a nickel on the rail

tracks, my father taking my hand, and the great train

thundering past, honking its horn, the big wheels

leaving a childhood disk of thin-nickeled moon.

  

(First published by Delta Poetry Review in the Summer 2022 issue, Vol. 4, Issue 11.)

Keith Gorman is a southern-born poet and retired factory worker who lives with his two cats, Iggy and Ozzy, near the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Eastern Tennessee. In his free time, he enjoys hiking the slopes and feeding backyard squirrels. His poetry has been published in various journals, including Verse-Virtual, I-70 Review, Chiron Review, 3rd Wednesday Magazine, and Impspired Magazine.