: Edward C. Lynskey
: The Tree Surgeon's Gift
: Digitalia
: 9780916379759
: 1
: CHF 47.20
:
: Belletristik
: English
: 76
: DRM
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: PDF

“Edward Lynskey has given the force of his fine talent and the strong faith of his poetry, to the people of this world... And the poems bountifully reward his readers.”-Fred Chappell, University of North Carolina, Greensboro. 

“It is good to have these poems. Lynskey is well worth reading, and the best poems in this volume leave the reader looking forward to the next.”-O. B. Hardison, Small Press Review. 

“The title poems reveal Lynskey's gift in what he does best-seeing beauty in the ugly, putting the job, the ordinary work, within a context of wonder and ritual.”-Shelby Stephenson, The Pilot, North Carolina.
The Lame Shall Enter First (p. 2)

His favorite of seven

daughtcrs, I nursed the oíd man,

dogridden and bedtired and soon

to die. His combative lungs

wheczed as a pair of leaky

bellows. I wondered at how those eyes

talked, gesturing, restless as wrens

inside Tom Cat`s yard. I turned the

pages of the family Bible, he seldom

strayed from Esdras: so much depends on

asylum, offered in thick woods,

hollows in the tidewrack. His mind

snatched four words in the space

God had permitted for one. He

sensed the lateness of summer: the smell of mown

vetch, the fence of wet sheets,

spired by a clothespole, slapping in a burst

of breeze. And in the stillbirth of the midnight,

he dreamt, God yes, dammit he did:

burning decks at sea, howling coves

along Dolly Sods, distressing faces in mirrors.

His eyes sank, looking like chalky

taws, and I knew it wasn`t the last

breath that undid him, but all those

unnoticed which had gone before it.

Lights Over Quantico, USMC

Summer`s lazy axis I think elucidated best my

father`s psyche: getting through the brief but

hot nights, he`d slump over the airy panes, cut

his bloodshot eyes toward the hushed and distant

margins of the Corps` timber. Did he grieve alone

for his choice made to slumber in a powdery boudoir,

dreaming of a carbine and a hammock to sling against Che?

The sentry in him read the starry horizons, paused

at the roof over the Quantico garrison. In that land

leathernecks fresh back from the Mekong River concocted

an argosy of combustible rockets, pissed enough to shoot

them high up the very bowels of Heaven itself, remembering

the rainbow infernos replete with deafening swirls. For

my sake he acted like the phantasmagoric lights were

something wrong with the steamy sferics of late June

clashing with the wintry remnants of April. He called

me a fortúnate son, perhaps, for rarely were the night

lights wiínessed but by a few insomniacs. Even now after

this long night since, my father`s searching gaze will

shine in dreams. I watch the enigmatic lights and fall

silent, never singing as he did of foreign shores and halls.

Turnip Patch Kids

Black Maria chided us children to keep

off the burial plots of her relations,

lords of sleep you let be or else they

breathed on you, turning your dreams bad.

Limestones were tucked under their derbies,

rolled beneath their shoes. Evenings clouds

blew free firespit stars. Maria slipped on her nervy

red wrap, pattered quickly outback, silver

snake bracelets and belted church keys...
Table of Contents10
Foreword12
Part I — Relationships14
The Lame Shall Enter First15
Lights Over Quantico, USMC16
Turnip Patch Kids17
The Night Light18
Lillian's Chair19
Windless Orchards20
Bad Apples21
The Hyacinth Girl22
Pink Flamingos23
Kiss of Kin24
Polio Summers25
Part II — Rituals26
The Tree Surgeon's Gift27
The Risk of Green28
Shade Tree Mechanics29
Inside the Gun Factory30
Seasons of the Hunter31
The Duck Corps Rupture32
After Berrypicking33
Never Once34
Storm Windows35
The Whore's Coo36
Choptank Oyster Dredgers37
Bartholomew's Cobbler38
End to Melancholy Questions39
The Tree Surgeon's Alibi40
Death of Cold41
Waifs42
Part III — Places43
White Trash in Summer44
Winter Fields: Getting Through45
Building a Fencerow46
Catching a Flick in Morelia47
Getting Mad and Even48
If He Hollers, Let Him Go49
Mail at My New Address50
Hanging Gardens51
Little Haiti52
Not Out of the Woods53
Caution Lights54
Little Boy Blue55
Something Wrong56
Summons to Enigma57
Part IV — Biography58
Fallen Angels59
Teeth of the Hydra60
At the Moon's Gate61
The Strange Case of Doctor Mudd62
Hôpital Albert Schweitzer63
Honeycutt Goes Iron64
Mrs. Lincoln Enters Bellevue Place65
Mrs. Lincoln Winters in Nice66
All Her Pretty Ones (Sussex, 1941)67
Portrait of the Outlaw68
How Peter Lorre Could Have Saved My Life69
Trout Fishing70
The Tobacco Queen71