Todd Mercer- Three Poems

Impound Rebound

 

It wasn’t worth it, trying to accept being robbed

to get my beater Pontiac out of the Cook County impound.

The fines and fees accrued by the time I returned to town

months after they towed it came to three thousand

and sixty-five bucks. I earn nine an hour. So…

The rainy-day fund didn’t cover this contingency.

I told those criminals, Keep it. A lot of good

it will do you. Whoever drives it should

gear down if they need to stop—I put off

a four-wheel brake job. Too damned expensive.

Add a quart of oil in every time you fill the tank,

which thanks to something I ran over

leaks a steady drip. May it bring you

every happiness. I’ll take fifteen hundred cash

to a guy who knows a guy who fixes beaters

he buys cheap from —wait for it—

the nearby impound yards. It’s hard

to beat the city at the fine art of hustling.

If you don’t know who to talk to here,

plan to empty out your billfold

and ride a bus to a slower place.

 

 

 

Benefits, With Friends

 

The same (roughly) hundred active people

continually see each other at various

and sundry meetings, charity shindigs,

musical performances. The norm

of interlocking circles spinning near the middle

as town rotates on an axis, its poles

idealism and apathy. A form of

advertising failure means the nucleus

of fine but familiar folks support every

benefit and show. What would draw

the rank and file residents who don’t

attend public functions? We’re in competition

with television, losing. The community

committees gasp for new blood. They yearn

to put more butts in the seats, given

the level of talent passing through. They wish

to see the same few friendly faces

a little less often. But if we stay home,

then who will come? Conversations tend to

repeat themselves ad infinitum at intermissions.

Oh hey, how are you doing? Nice duds there.

It seems that we see each other

every, every, everywhere we go.

 

 

 

The Quilt-maker’s Exit Sign

 [Ekphrastic on Jon McDonald’s painting

from the Slavery’s Chill series, “Tumbling Blocks”] 

 

All of us are leaving off this place—

soon, soon, sooner than

the wedding party’s embers ash over,

before cotton-thickened revelers

rise much past the roosters.

 

We’ve been waiting on this signal—

there you see it, Tumbling Blocks.

It means to fetch traveling shoes,

pack what carries easily.

Make haste, make tracks,

make for true North.

 

I spread the quilt

while musicians set the meeting point—

“Down to the River,” they play with gusto.

Master’s daughter and her husband

twirl to mark their beginning.

We wait to go into the world.

 

Preacher-man ran through his questions.

Bride and groom said, “I will. I do.”

Swore vows, like I did to myself,

when I stitched this signal patchwork:

 

I will. I swear,

not one more morning.

I will, we will,

be free.

 

 

TODD MERCER won the Grand Rapids Festival of the Arts Flash Fiction Award for 2015, the first Woodstock Writers Festival Flash Fiction Award, two Kent County Dyer-Ives Poetry Prizes and was runner-up in the Palm Beach Plein Air Poetry Awards. His digital chapbook, Life-wish Maintenance appeared in 2015 at Right Hand Pointing. Mercer’s poetry and fiction appear in journals such as: Apocrypha & Abstractions, Cheap Pop, Dunes Review, Eunoia Review, Kentucky Review, The Lake, The Legendary, Literary Orphans, Main Street Rag Anthologies, Midwestern Gothic and Spartan.