Julia Chiapella
THINGS TAKEN
In the morning, half a gopher lay on the backyard path
its torqued body, cantilevered claws, mouth agape offering
long chiseled teeth—when just yesterday it bore down in
the dark. Still. I was glad to see the root-chewing bastard
excavated from its terrain by the ruthless pursuit of Cat.
Because the garden is best in spring. Apple and Asian
pear release blossom-scent smack against us as we
open the back door. And the iris! The blue-violet
of them catches deep: their bloom arrestingly brief.
Frilled skirts flaunted in a wake of triumph.
Forlorn and dead, so dead, the gopher had to be buried
after breakfast. Cat would not eat any more of it. Dog sniffed
and turned away. Cream swirled in my coffee, and I read
the news—hardly any good—and so it went that, with
a sweep of triumphant wings, Crow took Gopher away.
What’s left behind is carried off: meat or shine or crumb.
In the Second Great War, my father hauled the radio,
sent ahead to shelled and mortared outposts in Luzan. Battle
of Mindanao. He’d throw the 38-pound box to the ground,
crouch beside and send back the Enemy in Sight, the Wilco
or the All Clear. With Japanese gone or dead
the rest of the unit piled in. They smoked Pall Malls,
clapped each other on the back, kicked a boot in the side
of a dead boy, exhaled the mist and once, used a knife
to carve gold-filled molars from inside a dead man’s mouth.
My father was a religious man. He said he stopped
the boy who stole the teeth. Outside, the irises bend
their necks, watch crow rise into the blue, careless sky.
THE WOODPILE
Every few days we run past the woodpile.
We’ve been doing this for years, marker
for a certain distance traveled.
Ah, the woodpile, I think
knowing we near the endpoint,
noticing the slump of timber, shift
of form as it cascades, slowly, over
hillside, its bark sunk into a foggy
gray, dimpled. Splintered.
Do you remember, you asked one day,
when the pile appeared? I said I hadn’t.
It had to be ten years ago, you said.
Remember the pair of initials inside
the heart carved into one end?
You can’t even see it now. It was a quarter
inch deep. We kept running, a mourning
dove purred coo-ah-coo-coo, throaty,
in the distance. It was that deep, I said.
Yes, you said. And it’s gone.
Julia Chiapella’s poetry has appeared in I-70 Review, Midwest Quarterly, Perceptions Magazine, Porter Gulch Review, phren-Z, and The MacGuffin. She co-founded Santa Cruz Writes to enhance literary opportunities for Santa Cruz residents and received the Gail Rich Award in 2017 for creative contributions to Santa Cruz County.