Joan Jobe Smith and Fred Voss have been extensively published in the UK and in the US. Voss's Carnegie Hall with Tin Walls was published by Bloodaxe books. Joan's Pow Wow Cafe (UK's Poetry Business) was a 1999 Forward Prize finalist. Their 2006 collaboration Teatime @ the Bouquet Morale was a Nerve Cowboy chapbook winner.
My grandmother Nora and her twin Dora, age 83,
the long hot Texas summer of 1973, made for me
a patchwork quilt. Sorry, honey, we’re not faster,
the needles slip out of our fingers the weather’s
so humid, they wrote me in California where we
had drought, dust turned my peach tree gray, heat
dried up all the fruit but just in time for Christmas
the quilt arrived, a brilliant spread of cotton magic
I placed on my daughter’s bed, later covered three
granddaughters for sleepovers and when the quilt
frayed, I stored it away in plastic. Nora and Dora
never let me pay for all their lovely, hard work,
told me scraps were free from their church folks
and last summer, long and hot like ones in Texas,
I remembered the quilt in the closet; across my bed
I tossed its bright wide skycloud sunrises and sunsets,
memory mosaic patches of Sunday-go-to-meeting or
Monday–go-to-school-or-work-or-coffee shop clothes,
stripes of blue, green, yellow, brown plaids from the
cowboy, farmer, truck driver, fix-it-man or teacher’s
shirt, aqua paisley from Myrtle’s apron or Michelle’s
orange 8th grade skirt, red polka-dot sunbonnet, scarf,
green gingham kitchen curtain bits, black slashes off
back sleeves of Johnny Cash wannabes, tie-dye of the
town’s only hippie, all of them picnicking now upon
my bed where my great-grandson, age 2, sits in the
midst of them, eating a cookie, touches for a crumb
next to one of the 100s of threads Nora or Dora sewed
long ago time moment for some kin like him to find.
© Joan Jobe Smith
It would have been fun to make the mouthpiece
for the trumpet Louis Armstrong
blew
each shaving of brass falling to the concrete floor
as my hands turned the wheels of the lathe worth
10,000 Dixieland notes
I’d love to have made those aluminum braces FDR leaned on
the moment he first rose from a wheelchair to walk to a microphone and make a
speech
after the polio felled him
How good to smell the stink of the steel chips I cut to make
the doorknob
Charles Bukowski turned to step into a tiny New Orleans room and write
CRUCIFIX IN A DEATHHAND
the wheel
of the train taking Martin Luther King toward that podium to shout
“I have a dream!”
the tip
for the pen the long lost son will lift to write
the card finally forgiving his mother so their love
can flow again
the stainless steel spout
to the coffee machine pouring the good strong black coffee into the cup
of the skid row wino
who will finally put down the bottle and find his way back into a machine shop
to step up to a machine
that can cut stinking steel smoking in cutting oil down into the shape
of a dream.
© Fred Voss
King Kong fluffs a pillow like he’d wring
the neck of a tyrannosaurus Rex. No! No! I
command. Fluff it gently, like you would a
baby girl’s ruffled dress, but he frowns, he’s
never even held one of my grandkids, let
alone ever touched a baby girl. He shoves
the mattress against the headboard, yanking
out the quilt as if he’s shoveling coal into
the guts of a Titanic. I’ve tried to teach him
how to dance the foxtrot on the 7th floor of
a hotel with a view of the Golden Gate Bridge.
I’ve tried to show him how to cook, open doors
for me, but he’s impossible to train, he’s such a:
Troglodyte! I say. Tennessee Williams told us
girls not to hang with brutes and I married one!
But that only makes him smile, feel manly. So
then I say the meanest thing I’ve ever said to
anyone I didn’t hate: I wish you’d been drafted
during Vietnam just so you could’ve learned
how to make a bed! But then the image of him
choking in the napalm jungle, an M45 in his
arms, makes me feel so cruel. Until I remember
his nearsightedness, high GPA and math skills
and realize he’d’ve got desk duty, promoted
a general for his 100wpm and ability to quote
Shakespeare such as “Rest, perturbed spirit” so
I imagine his weekend furloughs to San Francisco
to learn the shing-a-ling AND the foxtrot AND
make a bed and learn it perfect from a cute nude
Haight-Ashbury hippie chick, flowers in their hair.
© Joan Jobe Smith
“I’m always ready to grate carrots!”
Frank shouts
in response to Jane’s request for grated carrots so she can make her famous
carrot cake
though at the moment
Frank is reading Beowulf for the 3rd time out on his balcony in the sun
and doesn’t get up.
“I’m always ready to take out the trash, you know that!”
Frank shouts
after Jane drags out 2 big Trader Joe’s bags full of garbage
though at the moment
he is sitting cross-legged on the floor in Buddhist meditation
and doesn’t get up
because he is ready to enter Nirvana
where he knows a man is capable
of anything.
“I’m always ready to vacuum the living room rug!”
Frank shouts
after Jane opens the blinds to let the sun shine in on their living room rug and
points out
the mountains of throat-choking hair and dust balls rising up all over it after
months
and months of not being vacuumed
though at the moment
Frank is reading one of his own poems
about the joys of getting up in the morning knowing
you can do anything
and can’t be bothered to get up.
When a man is as absolutely certain as Frank is
that he can do anything
what need is there to do
anything?
© Fred Voss