Shoveling by Jill Moses

Shoveling

What is this life anyway
but an accumulation
of sitting in a kitchen
with a china cup of tea
a small breeze moving
the white gauze curtain
you barely notice or remember
or an overheard conversation
where voices get louder
and someone’s feelings get hurt
over soup and red applesauce.
Perhaps you were reading
“The Heart is a Lonely Hunter”
overlooking the golf course
or perhaps it was a card game,
11-card gin with a plate of change
on top of a bowl
or a stripe of sunlight
on the formica
where you sit in the afternoon
with an aunt or an uncle
eating cheese bread
and you learn a card trick
or a few words of Yiddish.
Perhaps you see the black and white photograph
on the matching end tables
that resemble large encyclopedias on their side
or the photograph appears later in a shoebox
perhaps when you watch your cousin
put on her makeup
or during a funeral
as you’re shoveling dirt
on top of the casket
not doing it properly
trying not to think about
how deep the grave goes
how grave it is
to be alive
to be the archive
of the generation
speeding down the tracks
its final train car
disappearing into the distance.

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Jill Moses earned her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Oregon, where she received the Graduate Award in Poetry. Other awards include the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award, and honorable mentions through the Lane Literary Guild, the Chester H. Jones National Poetry Competition, and the San Diego Book Award for Best Unpublished Poetry Chapbook. She is currently the assistant director of the first-year writing program in the Department of English and Philosophy at Drexel University in Philadelphia.