Etiologies and Other Satisfactions
Many years ago, a travelling circus—
my friend will remark, passing
a certain hill in his flat city—
performed in this park, and an elephant,
Cricket, died. Instead of a grave, they piled earth
around her, and soon the grass
got mown, soon children climbed toward the sky.
An elephant named Cricket! My friend and his son
imagine as if remembering her.
What’s true: the parks commission built a hill
for sledding next to the cricket field.
What would you rather have—
a graph to track how Cricket Hill acquired
its origin story, so that my friend grew up
believing it, or, his belief?
A beast, a burial, a beloved elevation—
and yet some would choose the curse of correction.
In the prologue to The Last Crusade,
we meet a boy still unafraid of snakes; a few scenes
later, he’s running the roofs of a steaming circus train
and falls through a hatch into a crate
unlidded, unlikely, full of writhing scales
that girt the horror on his face like Scylla’s
first glimpse of dogs barking below her waist.
A few scenes after that, he gets his hat.
Meanwhile, his father works at a desk,
his back to the world as he translates it.
Old man not yet so old, you’re like one who knows
each moment suffers for another—
one day your boy will admire
how you locked your heart and time
up tight. How long ago you had to start
to get this ending right.
*
Thrones
My son picks up the roll of white
paper tape I’ve kept out
for my bandage. What is this?
Oh, it’s nothing—
so close to bedtime, everything
feels like nothing. He hears the dismissal.
His perfect shoulders grow like he’s
an offended god,
an imbroglio of a superhero
about to reveal his angered self,
aggrandized in size and strength
just by breathing.
At the preschool Christmas concert tonight,
his teacher told the story, with Herod
so angry, so angry—Can you make
your best angry face?
he asked the dozens of kids arranged
on risers, who glowered, showed their teeth,
and snarled. And we all laughed at our children
mimicking Herod.
My son about to brush his teeth
holds the roll of tape. WHAT IS THIS?
he demands, from his far-off crystal fortress,
his secret cave.
One of my jobs is to define;
not to mimic, not to mock.
Definition is not mockery
except those moments,
in spacious chambers warm with people,
when mockery unmakes, dethrones
the terrible. When it tells terror,
You are nothing.
*
Katie Hartsock’s second poetry collection, Wolf Trees (Able Muse Press), was listed as one of Kirkus Review’s Best Indie Books of 2023. Her work has recently appeared in the Threepenny Review, Plume, The New Criterion, Tupelo Quarterly, Image, Literary Matters, and elsewhere. She teaches at Oakland University in Michigan.
