Tag: David Salner

An Uncle in Ohio by David Salner

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An Uncle in Ohio

I’m browsing a bookcase in the attic in Ohio, where
for sixty years, my uncle slept. It’s a library for a night-shift guy:
page-turners like Mickey Spillane; year after year of Ellery Queen;

and a magazine of the outdoor life. On the cover, a fisherman,
his rod bent double, stands thigh-deep in a mountain stream.
Also, a shelf of self-enlightenment—Will Durant on philosophy

and an earmarked copy of Fromm, The Art of Love.
On the table by the bed, the headshot of a dark-eyed woman,
my Aunt Jean. She lived with him in this remodeled attic,

hot as blazes, then left. They were lovers, on and off, until his death.
On the facing wall, the painting of a woman—not a pinup, exactly,
but what is she doing there, waving from a fishing dock?

In the background, vague shapes, possibly yachts. Did it remind him
of his vacations to the Florida Keys? If so, he’d wear an aloha shirt—
there are several in the dresser—and meet her for drinks.

After vacations, he returned to Aunt Jean, night shift, and these books,
which can be mine—all of them—since I’m the next of kin.
I might grab a few, I’m also a night-shift guy. But the painting on the wall

better stay where it is. Let someone else
disturb the attic where my uncle dreamed.

*

David Salner’s debut novel is A Place to Hide (Apprentice House, 2021) and his fourth poetry collection is The Stillness of Certain Valleys (Broadstone Books, 2019). He worked as iron ore miner, steelworker, machinist, and now librarian. His writing has appeared in Threepenny Review and Ploughshares. Innisfree Poetry Journal 33 featured a retrospective of 25 poems drawn from his four books. https://www.innisfreepoetry.org/innisfree-33/a-closer-look-david-salner/

Their World by David Salner

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Their World

In the world of the dead
the sun sets every morning;

the pious pray to shadows
they call light;

the successful live in a prison
of their success;

the rich live long lives
in the comfort of their self-love.

And the Arbiter,
who lives to correct everyone else?

Like a stopped clock,
twice a day he’s correct.

Twice.
At most …

*

David Salner’s debut novel is A Place to Hide (Apprentice House, 2021) and his fourth poetry collection is The Stillness of Certain Valleys (Broadstone Books, 2019). He worked as iron ore miner, steelworker, machinist, and now librarian. His writing has appeared in Threepenny Review and Ploughshares. Innisfree Poetry Journal 33 featured a retrospective of 25 poems drawn from his four books. https://www.innisfreepoetry.org/innisfree-33/a-closer-look-david-salner/

Three Poems by David Salner

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New York

When I lived in New York, I’d bathe in the kitchen
because that’s where the bathtub was.
Ancient history. I should keep it to myself.

Some people lead exciting lives,
and who doubts their miraculous stories
of the cave-in, the fire, the flood.

All I can tell you is of the warm bathwater
and the drowsy feel, of looking over the porcelain rim
at a frying pan I didn’t get clean.

*

Ice Water in Hell

—and don’t we
deserve it
all of us longing
for hell to freeze over
stacking life’s ingots
beside hot furnaces
at the ceaseless conveyor
of modern life
in this dark-mill place
the din of machines
thundering around us
while we wring buckets
of our precious sweat
from sopping bandanas
wearing t-shirts
with slogans that
proclaim how unrepentant
we are, will always be
and when we pull them off
sweat drips down a chest
containing a heart
beating
longing to sin again.

*

Plant

From the blacktop road
and the school bus stop,
look down the lane
between muddy pastures
and wire cow fences
to that house
where a man
who’d like to be
feeding the world
raises his hands
to plant the barrel
of a shotgun in his mouth . . .

*

David Salner’s debut novel is A Place to Hide (Apprentice House, 2021) and his fourth poetry collection is The Stillness of Certain Valleys (Broadstone Books, 2019). He worked as iron ore miner, steelworker, machinist, and now librarian. His writing has appeared in Threepenny Review and Ploughshares. Innisfree Poetry Journal 33 featured a retrospective of 25 poems drawn from his four books. https://www.innisfreepoetry.org/innisfree-33/a-closer-look-david-salner/