DESCENT: My new manuscript

My new manuscript has been printed and is ready to send to the editor at LSU Press. I've already decided on the cover, if LSU chooses to accept the book. You can see it above, Cindy Davis's TOTEM GHOST, acrylic on half inch gallery wrap canvas. It's 23"h x 23" w, and I have just made arrangements to be its owner!

Here's a poem to go with it.


DOWN



When the telephone rang,
I was brushing my hair
in the bathroom and squinting
my eyes just enough
so my face in the mirror
looked almost like those
on the covers of Seventeen,
distant and dreamy,
the dogwoods and
pear trees in flower,
the windows wide open,
my mother’s voice suddenly
crying out, gone,
almost gone, and the door
slamming after my father
whom I can still see driving
too fast, as always,
down that sandy road
to the house where my uncle
lay dying, my mother
forgetting to turn off
the oven as she grabbed
the keys to our Chevrolet,
flinging back one last
command, which I tried
to obey, standing there
at the edge of the known
world, my hands holding on
to the fence stretched
alongside the highway,
while I watched the swollen
sun that I knew nobody,
not even Jesus, could
talk into not going down.

from WAKE, a chapbook published by Spring Street Editions.