ALEC HERSHMAN

Alec Hershman lives in St. Louis and teaches English at St. Louis Community College.
Other poems of his can be found in recent issues of Phoebe, Harpur Palate, Salamander,
DIAGRAM, and The Sierra Nevada Review. He is currently the poetry editor at The White
Whale Review.

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Show of Hands

An envelope grew hills
from water, from the slip of the note

curled inside—that you wouldn't
open it: relentless September,

a dinner-table ransomed with light,
a few curses mumbled into carpeting,

and the good dog recalled for table-scraps,
faithful as refrigerator glow—

always the same look
on the still-wrapped vegetables,

a kind of inhibition despite
impulsive weather on a gloomy shelf,

which was kind to no one, let alone
the owners who believed it makes a difference:

how quickly you respond, how loudly
you say the name of a leaf turning on

the slow oven of a tree.








Sleeping Alone

Brief illuminations in blue:
I've seen TVs perform this trick,

but never before on a whole tree.
I've seen vapor just enough

to be smug, having gathered first
a crisis afoot: a thunderhead landing

on a listener's shoulder.
It occurs to you is not a place.

But a quiet you climb acutely
to sleep. All the friction in a stairwell

coincides with a neighbor's open door,
a schism of access, a jammed reel

in the slot-machine, like waking
entire moments before the eyes do.

There is a window in the hallway
and you find you have dreamed

of the gradient where ceiling
turns floor, the hour

when to doubt footsteps over the bed
is as much an entrée to prediction

as to memory, a little storm or sea
you first saw coming in his eyes.








Still Life Without Help

I put away the knife
and so saw no dilemma in the apple,
no tears in the pears.

I washed my hands to see
glass change me
through the faucet's moveable stripe.

It was nothing with the dinner underway,
my spirit-chores suspended—
It was easy to feel inclusion,

to curtsy strangers into friends.
Or let a man take you by the gauntlet
while you bowed to the whiteness of your wrist—

your wrist against your forehead. Diplomacy
among the bodies, the great perusers
of the flesh, the ones for whom

preparations must be made:
you roll the spinach from the skillet,
tuck it alongside the steak;

you release the final seasoning
from clean fingers and think
to cut the meat then stop—

smaller and smaller pieces,
just so for the mouth—you know better
than that now—he will want to do it for himself.








Radio

Sky was the benediction of the windows.

The ones lit at twilight
neither here nor there—a bat

stole a scrap of his ear
like static passing through the radio—

the music was a blundering levity
if the other monks could hear.

News betrayed his curiosity,
the songs more so. In their variations

was modesty forgone—forgotten.
The corn grew raunchy at the stalk,

the pumpkins overripe.
He hid the transistor in his pillow,

learned to discern judgment
from footfall. He memorized

the sounds of doors.
Shame was warm

and renewed its robes.
October came and the others

rolled the pumpkins to the river,
held them under. No one knew

the lyrics and it was cold.

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