In RetrospectPoems by Mellissa Hunt

Table of contentsBlack Coffee and Cinnamon Rolls

To my Deser t HomeIron Mission Museum

Under the Same Wide SunPaper

Right HandReading by Sunset

The OverseerWhere the Wind Blows

I sat at the handmade kitchen table swinging my legs back and for th,steam escaping, dancing from the cup of black coffee in front of mewhile you sprinkled sugar over f luffy white bread.

Not the dense, thick, rough bread that Mom bakes, but the kind you bought at the store when you took me shopping and you let me put things in the car t.Each bite I swallowed tickled my tongueas grains of sugar rolled across my teethand crunched inside the softness of the bread.It was a secret we shared.

I smiled, and you held the hot cup of coffee gently in your small hands,they looked like mine, just older.Your puckered lips smiled in return and gently blew the swirls of steam.I lay on your velvet couch, listening to the wood in the f ireplace jump and sizzle,the smell of baking cinnamon rolls tumbling into the living room.

The only way I knew how to grieve for you was through Mom’s tears.She was gone a lot taking care of Gromps those f irst days after you left.Dad tried to help around the house when Mom was gone,patching the hole you created.He made dinner and cleaned,leaving bits of food on the plates and forks when he washed them.I scraped the pieces off with my f ingernailand continued eating peanut butter sandwichesas snow swirled,piling delicately on the window sills in the frozen dark.

In the December-cold basement the coal furnace pushed its heat outward in fat, sleepy waves.I lay in my creaky bed and listened to Mom and Dadtalk about Gromps having a nervous breakdown.I didn’t know what that meant. I only knew I was sad.I missed you.

Black coffee and cinnamon rolls

A f ine mist sprinkles rooftops, treetops, cars, and sidewalks.Grass turns to a heavy sponge.

Green wall-to-wall carpeting reaches up rough tree trunks to the canopy. The lake is the only thing to have stood its ground,a patch of cobalt in a sea of moss. Even shadows cast by the setting sun are unable to escape the color.

At night, the sound of toadscroaking their throaty bass calls across the marsh, a hundred wet sounds blending into one another in strange harmonics. Their sound intensif ied by low clouds,sealing away the midnight dark.

But I wish you could sleep under my pillow.

Your heat perseveres through long summer months, pushing and pulling life, warming grass and f ield and f lower.Under the star-packed umbrella,beneath the open window,a thick bed of Snow-In-Summer,an orchestra of crickets serenades,their chirps a persistent symphony.

Over deser t bush and dusty soilblooming clouds build towers in the sky, a crescendoof thunderous applause.Then rain f inally comes, beating on every surface like tribal drums,red dir t smells heady and new.The valley looks up and breathes.

To my desert home

Daybreak horizon Westblue, lavender, carnation.Winter inversion.

Half-century old black-and-whites cluster together

on the wall of the gray cubicle

skeletons of present day stilled inside a photograph.

My history is in there somewhere

in the pictures on the wall

in the window fronts of old soda shops

in diners and drugstores where everyone knew everyone else.

Life was simple in those picturesshe made dinnerhe read the newspaperdominoes falling into place.

A photograph of soldiers marching in a welcome-home parade

grabs me, invites me in.I search their stoic facesand wonder if my grandpa marched with them

soldiers whose bodies and mindswere still dressed in military fatigues.

My heritage, their livestold in 12-point fontblack-and-white captions.

Iron mission museum

Rims surface toward clouds as towering gods,Lifeless sandstone conceived by grainy deposition,conditioned and cast with the pressure of multiple layers.

Ref inement their rise to f irm, august forms. On tiptoes, crowns reach above a carpetof clouds, catch a glimpse of the sun, consume its bright, unf iltered rays.Distantly, another spread of clouds hangs pregnant with moisture.

Drops from slaty heavens anxiously await swift deliverance to solid ear th.

At last rains dash, break through weighty air, fall unburdened, quench thirsty silt dir t, slap rust-red dust, color the ground orange clay, grant silver-gray deser t sagebrush

a clean, sharp fragrance that drifts in the air like mist. Under the same

wide sun

A recyclable lump of marked up essays. The calendar on the wall.A drawer full of college-rule paper.Leftover Snoopy Valentines.Dishwasher, washing machine, TV instruction manuals.Barnes & Noble receipt, doctor bill, mor tgage statement.A Jiffy Lube f lyer trapped under my windshield wiper.Six phonebooks crammed in a drawer.

Turn a page in my imagination with qualif ied ink and paper and Iswelter with a hobbit as he converseswith a dragon in a cave,f ight alongside a common girl to get her slippers back,cry with two Iraqi women when they’re punishedfor defying their husband,ponder as a prisoner thanks Godfor the f leas in her bed,suppor t an outspoken redhead,cheering as she smashes a slate over her classmate’s head,let curiosity overwhelm me as I sneak with a young girl through a wardrobe,get to know the boy who livedin a cupboard under the stairs.

Laundry soap, dish soap, body soap testimonials. Four pancake recipes.Revolutions per minute, miles per hour.Nine forwarded emails in my inbox.W-2, 1099-T, 1098-E.Two credit card offers.

Paper

I remember when the canyon road was dir t and gravel, tiny pebbles kicking up against the windshield, dir t smoke trailinglike a rusty cloud behind the old green GMC.

I slam the heavy door and leave the truck behind.Like mountain grass I anchor myself at the edge,toes clenching woody ear th for stability, my roots equally invested in stayingas the red-f leshed Cedar and chalky Aspen.

I can’t see my home from up here,it disappears into the distant silence. Familiarity reshapes into patchesof block after block, square miles packagingneighborhoods, homes, families.

A honk from the truckforces my toes to let go, and the view from the mountainis replaced by the rumbling of the engine,the chatter of my brothers, and the smellof home-baked bread.

Right hand

The girl next to me didn’t need a wombto create life. All she needed was a penciland paper – any scrap would do.Graphite lines and shapes would slowly turninto faces, people. The shy kid with the bir thmark who knew all the answers but never gave them.The blond-haired noisy one who sometimeswinked at me. My own strawberry hair transformed into gray traces on paper.

Sometimes we’d sneak into her pantrywhen her mom was at work and her dad was napping.We’d open the box of Lucky Charms, carefullydigging out as many of the marshmallows as we couldbefore getting caught. Then we’d scuttleout the screen door to her back porch and eat our treasure.

Her dad read Tolkien for bedtime storiesand the old trees in her yard grewinto our fantastic world of monsters and kings. We’d wind our way through dry, overgrown foxtails, through noon-high summer sun just to climb a few limbs

to f ight dragons and goblins. Our bare feet would brave the boiling concrete on her sidewalk to f ind haven under the branches of the Last Homely House.

Reading by sunset

Her long legs could skitter up the tree like a squirrelwhile my shor t legs collected scrapes and scratches

as I straggled after her. She’d light among upper brancheswhile I settled for spots with a wider perch.

With a book in hand,

she’d settle in for chapter after chapter.

When my mom would call me home for dinnerwe’d still be sitting there. She’d still be reading

and I’d still be trying to balance. I’d fall down the tree and tell her I’d come over tomorrow.

She’d faintly wave good-bye,nose nestled in her black-and-white world,

gleaning the last of July’s twilight hoursand I’d take the shor tcut through the block and wonder

when she’d come down out of that tree.

One vast shoulder of Navajo Sandstone stretches toward dawna thousand-foot palette of rust-to-cloud colored sandcompressed into a sturdy, angular mass of grainy rockwhere water once f lowed, cutting down and through the monolith.

Now sliced openthe V-shaped valley erodes under sanding windgranting breath to a lifeless god.A wind gap patterns Tovoots – perennial overseer of the Gapstandard-bearer of the Red Hills.Like a sphinx he surfaces out of sand and stoneonly this deser t idol is crafted by tools of wind and water.

Clefts and fractures etch his gritty, lithif ied prof ile.The dark smoke of deser t varnish stains his sloping browblack and brown licks of manganese and iron streak the jagged plane of his cheek.Evergreen bristles of Indian tea and sagebrushworship atop the crown of his craggy helm.Rabbitbrush blooms in bright yellow clustersjewels adorning this lesser-known god.

He surveys the desolate silencewaiting for the eastern sun to drift across the skylineglide toward his mouthand settle upon his tongue a taste of November warmth before he swallows the last of the season’s life.

The overseer

In the dark the sound of his pocket change clinks.Late night reminders of where he’s been. It’s 2:00 a.m.Coil springs twang as he lies down beside me,adding pressure to our arrangement. He triesto say sorry with his cold, rough hands. I try

to play dress up with ignorance, but fail, asthe tension again bubbles inside of me.I am the volcano, whose many layersof ash and lava and debris from steady eruptionsonly show how my disguise isn’t perfectly masked.

I roll away from him and into darker places.In my head I pack my bags and close my bank accountand travel nor th. Colder, numbing temperaturescut everything off until there is nothing left.Only me and a hypnotic sea of snowf lakes.

Where the wind blows

This book was completed on March 31, 2010.

The fonts that were used are AvenirLTStd-Medium and PetitaLight.

All poems were written by Mellissa Hunt.

All illustrations were created by Dustin Foran.

The layout of the book was designed by Tyce Jones.

Colophon

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