Sample Poems by David Sullivan

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Black Ice 1

My night train home was
delayed by snow and hard rain.
Dad waited, heat on,

as an aria
Cecilia Bartoli sang
bore him aloft.

I slapped the window
and he jumped, laughed. On Route Five
I told him Barbara

was breaking it off.
Knuckles whitened on the wheel
as I unspooled hurt.

Never saw that man
again. The next morning, still
comforter- cocooned,

heard: Is he up yet?
I'm going for the paper,
before he drove out

of our lives. Mother
and I were just sitting down
to bacon and eggs

when the hospital
called: Your father's been in an
accident. "How bad?"

Pictured him whistling
as car wheels grooved the slick road.
Come down now. Drive safe

---

Back Home

Woodpecker's specialized skull
hammers out revelry
every goddamn day.
My near-deaf dad sleeps
through the racket, islanded.
He doesn't ask why I wake him,
folds me against his chest-
forty-odd years whispered away
as he strokes my hair.
His condition grows him kinder.
I've been wanting this without knowing it.
Mother's missiles are fistfuls of stones
hurled to put the bird to flight.
She curses as she launches each weigh

---

Archduke Franz Ferdinand at the Austrian Military Museum

Barely fourteen. My fingers smeared museum glass
as I traced the jagged lightning in the uniform-ink blot
I surmised was blood. The bullet bit through clothing
the seamstress had stitched him into that morning;
taut seams they didn't bother cutting, just knifed open
the fabric to lay bare his neck where an open hole
belched inarticulate blood. Franz Ferdinand's eyes
reflected faces of the uncomprehending. He asked
for his wife, his children, then burbled Es ist nichts.
I'd read the accounts but this was different, a man's
suit could jump the glass, lay gone hands on me.

---

Test

After school we threw switchblades as close as we dared
to each other's shoes. Two circles of boys,
the four in play with legs splayed, and the hangers-ons
who talked trash or cast bets Rocchio would collect
and call. Girls, sometimes. Blades flickered awake
as we chanted and nailed throws that quivered the ground.
We'd toss at the foot to our right, then breathe-after.
The trick was to get close without piercing them
or flinching. The champions bled but shed no tears.