Off-Shift

[hillwalker]

OFF-SHIFT

Off shift this late at night
I drag the empty shadows in behind me
silent key then slip the bolt
my hibernating she-bear purring
touch her face to check
she’s there
her lair a mound of crocheted blankets

I take a vodka for my strength
and one for Lena
one for Babu and the saints
then pick up Mishka from her basket
feel her flexing claws like pinpricks
seize her scruff
and sense her heart like claustrophobia
thumping
deep enough to set the tumblers rattling
on the drainer

I pull the blinds
and marvel for a moment at the April snowstorm
melting into flecks and fireballs
sense the sliding weight of stolen sky
tilt closer
masking all perspective
clouding skeletons of sycamores across the Prospekt
feel the acid deep inside me
kick against the womb

I crawl between the sheets
slide clumsy hands around her swollen belly
press my thighs against her sleeping heat
embrace the tidal furnace
longing for the maelstrom
hidden deep within her molten core
a clenching clutch to choke this dread
and hold at bay the coming day

H

[Delta40]

I felt the heavy weariness of this poem and the search for blessed comfort. I especially liked the last stanza Hill.

[Skia]

I love this line Hill I take a vodka for my strength
Even though Vodka does take your physical and mental strength away!

Lovin' the Juxtaposition of an Oxymoron ;)

(I think thats what it is) ;)

[Jerrybaldy]

Some poetry I can quickly realise I will never get to the bottom of and I can easily let them go. Some are obvious, but not always the lesser for being so. When you write like this, you sit between these two for me and I feel one more read will unveil some more and maybe just maybe I will find that silent key to unlock the story within. So I will keep reading and perhaps I will get there before this thread does.
cheers
Jerry

[hillwalker]

Thanks all -

Delta - for your kind words
Skia - for finding what lies hidden
Jerry - for your patience and perseverence. There is indeed another buried story here as usual - and there are hopefully enough clues to help you unearth it.

H

[PrinceMyshkin]

The only thing that beats or even comes close to your always vigorous verbs are your knock-out nouns, adjectives and adverbs.

(Your articles and conjunctions aren't too bad either, come to think of it.)

[Haunted]

I feel a sense of someone torn between feeling endless love for his significant other, and the fear of fatherhood... Then again I could be way off base. The imageries are rich and palpable.

[Hawkman]

Sorry hill, I nearly missed this. It's a great poem but the lack of punctuation detracts from it a little. On initial reading, in the first verse, this transition particularly, irritated me to be honest.

"I drag the empty shadows in behind me
silent key then slip the bolt..."

I kept wanting to read, "silent key" as silently.

I do think the Russianale was very subtly handled, though I'm curious about the motive behind it.

On the whole it's a nice narrative and well expressed. Cheers, H

[hillwalker]

Thanks Prince - your praise is always welcome.

Haunted - the poem was indeed meant to focus on aspects of 'fear' (including fear of responsibility) - and the comfort we get when pressed close to a loved one (as Delta suggesed earlier)

Hawk - thanks for reading this; punctuation I feel sometimes dictates too strictly how the reader is meant to approach the poem - in this case I was allowing him/her too much freedom perhaps.

As for the background - it was a crude snapshot of a worker arriving home on his last shift hours before the Chernobyl reactor meltdown (hence the seasonal and Russian references - and the undercurrents of impending doom culminating in the final verse).

Having said that, I also wanted the poem to be able to stand alone without relying in any way on this sub-story. So two for the price of one, eh?

H

[PrinceMyshkin]

Thanks Prince - your praise is always welcome.

Haunted - the poem was indeed meant to focus on aspects of 'fear' (including fear of responsibility) - and the comfort we get when pressed close to a loved one (as Delta suggesed earlier)

Hawk - thanks for reading this; punctuation I feel sometimes dictates too strictly how the reader is meant to approach the poem - in this case I was allowing him/her too much freedom perhaps.

As for the background - it was a crude snapshot of a worker arriving home on his last shift hours before the Chernobyl reactor meltdown (hence the seasonal and Russian references - and the undercurrents of impending doom culminating in the final verse).

Having said that, I also wanted the poem to be able to stand alone without relying in any way on this sub-story. So two for the price of one, eh?

H

Personally, it's almost a matter of honour on my part to miss some or all of the "clues," but I'm never less than content with the brilliant, nubbly surface of your poems.

[hillwalker]

Thanks, Prince; a 'nubbly' surface sounds about right.....

[AuntShecky]

Despite the fact that to my dismay I can't open my mouth on the Internet without putting my proverbial foot in it, I thought I'd nonetheless comment on your poem and hope I can give it justice.

First of all, it never dawned on me that the backstory was about Chernobyl -- any more than a reader would know off-hand that Wm. Carlos Williams's red wheelbarrow poem was about the scene a dying child sees out of his hospital window. However, by adding the Chernobyl information, it widens the dimensions of your piece.

Since Russia is often depicted by the emblem of a bear, the images in the opening "strophe" are good ones -- "hibernating," "she-bear," "lair." But an even more powerful notion comes from the fact that this is how the speaker always sees his wife-- already asleep--when he comes home from work.

The next strophe is full of fine details. I'm always harping about "showing" rather than telling -- here's a splendid example of "showing"! Instead of a prosaic statement full of abstractions of how the worker "feels," we see him take a belt of vodka --and two more, one for Lena-- the sleeping
missus?-- and one for Babu and the saints. Miska apparently is the cat, for upon arrival home, one's pets are next in line for attention and affection, after family.

Then, we see the speaker opening the blinds which shows the snowy weather in April, found often in that part of the world (and occasionally in mine, but that's neither here nor there.) The "skeletons of sycamore" is a good image as well as alliterative. All serve to establish setting in a subtle way.

I liked this line--
I feel the acid deep inside me

very much. It shows the man's stress, not only from his work and from worrying about impending family changes, but also --take it from someone who once wrote term papers called "all-nighters" way, way back when --a dyspeptic symptom of staying up very, very late.

Next comes a line that took me aback somewhat--
kick against the womb
Does that line go with the acid stomach? If so, is it the husband's "sympathetic pregnancy" in which he shares the wife's physical symptoms?

Or does it mean the speaker has placed his hand on the sleeping wife's belly and feels the fetus kicking there? If so, perhaps there should be a clarifying transition between the "acid deep inside me" and the "kick against the womb" line.

These lines:
embrace the tidal furnace
longing for the maelstrom
hidden deep within her molten core

could be safely deleted, I think, as they're a tad abstract. Additionally, "tidal" and "maelstrom" appear a bit too often in poetry, as does "molten core." But come to think of it, a womb in gestation is somewhat similiar to a "molten core," at least in clinical appearance. I do realize, though, that you'd want to make the point about the speaker's worklife --and the disturbing facts we know about Chernobyl and its tragic "furnace."

This penultimate line
a clenching clutch to choke this dread

harkens back to the embrace with the
speaker's "clumsy hands" (nice, "homely" image!) and such.

Although I don't know if you intended the rhyme in the concluding line, I wonder if, since no other rhymes appear in the piece, it might diminish or somehow trivialize the effect of the line. I do like the idea of holding back, temporarily keeping back the approaching day, in which the speaker, sadly enough, will have to do it all over again.

Overall, this was quite an affecting, evocative piece,
above all, finely crafted. As a matter of fact, it might serve as a "textbook model" as an antitote for everything I've been railing against lately. It's exemplary, that's for sure!

Thanks for sharing this with us.

[hillwalker]

Despite the fact that to my dismay I can't open my mouth on the Internet without putting my proverbial foot in it.

Well, what can I say? It must be a seasonal affliction since I had a similar day yesterday.

Thanks for taking the time to analyse this so painstakingly, and you have more than done it justice.

- 'the kick in the womb' was intended to show the man's internal chemistry mirroring his wife's (her kick is from her foetus - his is a reaction to recognising what he has just witnessed through the blinds - burning debris from the ruptured reactor)

- the 3 lines you felt could be eliminated were perhaps too heavy a dose of foreshadowing - but were suggestions of what was happening outside as well as portraying how he sees his wife's body, a place of refuge (through some comforting sexual union) in order to erase the reality of what lay ahead; the realisation he has probably completed his last ever shift

- the rhyme at the end was intentional to round off the piece - a little conceited perhaps but I hope it doesn't diminish the sense of 'dread' he feels too much.

Thanks again for your time

H