~ Delta Poetry Review ~

Dianne Oberhansly

Cheap and Trembling

That spring, we furnished our house

from garage sales and the city dump.

The front off a coca cola vending machine hung

like a rusted landscape on the living room wall.

A tweedy brown sofa missing a middle cushion

still vaguely whispered contemporary.

We were artistic and in love, not

cheap and trembling.

When we pushed the sofa into place, a scorpion

crawled out, small Visigoth stung by light.

My desk was two saw horses holding an old door.

A queen mattress splayed on the bedroom floor.

Scarred wood and breakage, cast-offs and junk. 

It was a blistered, brief marriage.

Little invested, nothing to divide.

Who knew that nothing could hurt so much.

Family Dis Function #7:  Refusal to Disperse

The long moldering of sadness, of

Days gone wrong and those who

Strayed. Guilty notes found

In a guilty pocket. The man who was

Always looking for a better job.

A mother turned into an angry

Bird pecking at nothing. It’s true:

Fire rarely skips a generation,

So the children quietly

Burned, too, sooty smoke drifting

Along with the radio’s top 10.

Years didn’t soften pain

But leached it to the surface:  red

Welts and words tangled

With heart’s debris. When

Is it enough? Even now

They are planning next year’s

Reunion.

Dianne Oberhansly is a multi-genre writer:  her book of short stories, A Brief History of Male Nudes in America, won a Flannery O’Connor Award, and she has published many poems in journals including Anapaca Review, Evening Street Press, Two Hawks Quarterly, Paper Nautilus, and Eclectica. She lives in southern Oregon, where she is a slow food enthusiast and an Arts educator/supporter.