Gerald Wagoner
Three Poems
A Grumble of Muffled Voices
April 8, 9:50 PM
I hear a grumble of muffled voices
from a second floor room.
Outside the hospital, a row of
ambulances wait idling.
Shuttered shops
spawn wind strewn trash.
Someone in shadow,
mad in disappointment,
declaims a poem
of non sequiturs.
Across the canal, it echoes
through hollow buildings.
The tide comes in heavy
on yesterday’s wind.
The pink moon untangles
itself from still black branches.
The flaccid flag’s halyard
taps the pole wearily.
It’s the same empty
night after night.
I am lost to myself.
I Want
April 4, 9:30 PM
I hear the subway rumble
through down there.
I want to go somewhere,
but alas, I am now too
aware, so das’nt dare.
How Grand It Must Be
April 5, 9:15 PM
Tonight I came upon two big rigs
parked head to head on the sidewalk
opposite Con Ed. On each lowboy
trailer tons of copper cable
spooled onto five tall, wide wheels.
Each cab sported gleaming chrome,
an array of custom running lights.
Each was painted lustrous white.
Scripture, lettered in silver script
behind the driver’s door on one.
I don’t remember the text, exactly,
but it rang Calvinist, and once
I would have dismissed the driver
an unthinking drone. An enemy
of complex thought. A stranger
to the sceptic’s requisite doubt.
But, tonight, I imagine how grand
it must be hauling Interstate 80 from
your Indiana to my Brooklyn.
Up high, maybe the window down,
your elbow out, with what you
believe to be truth hand lettered
meticulously beside you
for all the world to see.
—Submitted on 06/10/2020
Gerald Wagoner‘s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Right Hand Pointing, Ocotillo Review, Passager Journal, BigCityLit, The Lake, and other journals. He went to college at the University of Montana and holds an MFA in sculpture from SUNY Albany. Wagoner moved to Brooklyn in 1983, and taught art, writing, and literature in the New York City public schools for over thirty years.
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