Two Poems by Stephen Mead

Resident artist/curator for The Chroma Museum, Stephen Mead has intermittently been submitting multi-genre work for publication going on four decades. He remains grateful to all of the editors who have given his art and writing a good home as now, a retiree, he continues to try and sell his poetry-art hybrids and novels via CreateSpace. More poetry from The Feedsack is here.

Harmonium

Picture keys and pedals pumping, the creased bent over brow
never anticipating the massage of fingers or a kiss for each fold.
No, only dissonance, the buns numb from sitting, the marrow
receptive for chills even though
it’s only September and there’s
plum wine to contemplate beside
the bowl filled with cash.

Yes, he is crinkling too, recalling, as a kid, how he helped
Grand Dad to the john, the catheter, its bag, a magical sump system,
the old mariner illustrating, off, on, squeezing the tubing, controlling the sluice----
“Watch this George! An Olympics!”

Now, on tenement’s outskirts, it’s a different kind of levity
George must walk like a balance beam with skill, dignity:
mending the same Shetland sweater, Grandpa’s bequeathed hand-me-down,
enough bucks from the fish bowl for Rose, the bar maid, and he, walking home,
belting show tunes.

Steps

No difference in churches, only photographs & years.
Here you are mother, as bridesmaid in blue,
the pleats nearly metallic with the bouquet
a shield of laciness.

Down the road it would be your turn for the white,
the rice flying with your smile a painting
blurred as pastel Kodachrome.

Later, at the reception, two brass lamps
stuck out behind your head like antlers.
Was the photographer a prankster or just a little off?

Queer, some might have said, & I picture hats
also of those days, a little veiled netting
with fabric petals clasped to each arch.

They must have pinched like the clip-on earrings,
but you’d been hiding some hurt since the Great Depression,
an alcoholic dad & another world war.

Of ours’ what would you make with the gas stations
pouring blood mobiles for riddled soldier youths on all shores?

Oil was not what you voted about in those booths
for these robber barons of Presidential clout.
With your purse you claimed your ballot & laughed in irony
for that’s not what your conscience cast ever -
giving to the Thrift & the collection plates.

Still too, your sister jokes about how you burned
both bridesmaid’s & wedding gown
in the farm’s rusty ancient barrel,
the smoke something of a sacrifice & a battle-flag
for old dreams at last being let go.