Three by Hart GH

 

Gwen Hart

CHALLENGER

What I recall

is not the fire ball,

but the prinicipal's voice,

disembodied as God's

on the intercom, pronouncing

all the astronauts dead.

Then Shelley Marshall's mother,

who stayed home all day

watching television,

rushed to the classroom,

mascara running,

crushed her daughter

to her chest and shuffled

her out the door.

I studied my constellations

of freckles

in the restroom mirror

and did not cry.

At 3:30, I went home 

on the bus, fingering

the house key hung

around my neck.

When I turned the lock,

I took a deep breath

before I pushed forward,

just like Christa McAuliffe,

Judith Resnik, and all

the other girls

who walk into the future

knowing at any moment

they might explode.

 

ANNIVERSARY TRACK

My heart

is a cassette tape

that's been played

and rewound, played

and rewound, sped up

and slowed down,

the best bits sought out

again and again

until all the delicate

darkness unravels

in kinks and snarls

on the Chevy's floorboard.

My love is a bad track

that can't be played back

until it's spooled back

into tight, compact blackness,

carefully, delicately,

by hand with a pencil:

Your hand, your pencil

 

THRILLER

Lamar Jackson claimed

he was Michael Jackson's cousin.

It was 1983, and I believed him,

even though we lived in Cleveland,

and I'd been to his house

with the gray asbestos siding

and the lopsided garage.

When Lamar asked me

to be his fake girlfirend

in our grade school re-enactment

of the Thriller video

in the gymnasium,

my heart turned

into a fistful of sequins.

Lamar grabbed my hand

and we ran for our lives,

Kangaroos sneakers squeaking

across the polished wooden floor.

We screamed as our friends,

who had become zombies

and ghouls overnight,

stumbled after us, their eyes

rolled up in their heads,

their feet dragging, but gaining

ground with every step.

I can picture us now—

a black boy and a white girl—

locking arms, turning back-to-back,

up against an angry,

encircling mob. We didn't know

what we were playing at.

We didn't know why

when they chased us down

it felt so real.

 
 

Gwen Hart teaches writing at Buena Vista University in Storm Lake, IA. She is the author of two poetry collections, The Empress of Kisses (Texas Review Press) and Lost and Found (David Robert Books). Her poems and short stories have appeared recently in Measure, Raintown Review, and Litro.