January Index Cards
Collin Garrity
1. Cold Turkey
My father is away in Kosovo
and I am maybe eleven. My mother is scared
that the axe will hit me, and it lands
too-lightly on the turkey’s neck.
Now the turkey is scared as well.
2. IOU
When I turn ten, I am allowed to help my parents’ church
count the offering, separating the brightly colored coins.
Every week there are unsigned IOUs.
Pretending to throw them away, I pocket them.
3. Squinting in college
My roommate gets into his bed saying
I can’t believe squinting works,
We both fall asleep thinking about this.
4. Ephemeral
Something breaks in the kitchen and
from across the room someone asks:
what was that.
5. Fool’s Errand Boy
We are in college; it is not raining.
I am in the back seat of the car, talking
about a poem. I say it’s about the absurd idea that
we are expected to believe that any of this is real.
We are at a stoplight and they both turn
to stare at me. They are beautiful.
‘we are science majors’ they say.
6. Stitches
I am young, peeling carrots
into the kitchen sink. Looking down,
I imagine that I have six fingers.
7. Small Craft Advisory Potatoes
The captain begins to curse the fish and flotsam
in our net but soon moves on to the sea, diesel in general
and his eye-doctor. These are the regular customers
of his mousetrap anger, but today is an exceptional day
of frustration and as an endboss, he lays a sling of curses
on private eyes. It is really raining and his mouth and the sky
are a pair of storm-twins. Then he stops to point at the portside distance.
‘look at that bird’ he says, ‘that’s got to be a hard life.’
8. Adjective
I am under her blankets. The phrase
‘all the books I’ve ever read’
comes into my mind. Did I read it somewhere?
It is an adjective for what we are doing.
9. Dinnertime
I am fourteen, reading Steinbeck on a bench beside
the Kander river. It is the first time I have cried
because of art. The wind picks up,
and my prohibition-drinkmouse-day
begins to end.
9.5 Left-Bank Gypsy Jazz
It is wintertime and I am in the bar’s doorless bathroom.
The ceramic basin is so cold that my piss steams
and I am forced to watch as I breathe my own urine.
9.5 Honesty
I am 22, pouring coffee
on a Sunday. My missionary mother asks me
to stop taking communion.
9.5 Athiest
I am a first-grader in Brussels.
The roasted metro-chestnuts smell like January index-cards.
I ask, but we cannot afford them.
10. Too Young for Wabi-Sabi
We are near Aix-en-Provence. I am eight and my father
sets me to work raking leaves from a forgotten nine holes
of miniature-golf. I smell bread and pine-sap
and feel the pride of a job well done.
The day will be warm and I watch a falling leaf
undo the shoelace of my work.
I carry it to the base of a poplar
with the patience of someone who knows
they are going to leave a place
and not come back.
Collin Garrity is enrolled in his final semester at Warren Wilson College. He grew up in Germany and Belgium, moving to the US to attend university. He spends his summers working on a commercial fishing boat in Alaska. His work has appeared or will appear in: The Peal Literary Journal, The Warren Wilson Echo, {RE}vision, Sono Libero, The Madison Review, Allegheny Review and Hamlet Hair. He can be reached at Paleblueatlasclub@gmail.com.