Whiskey

Zara Raab


In the hollows of lightning-struck trees,
deep in the forest of the Weotts,
the fathers ran their stills when you were
still a boy by the cold-running Eel;
they hid the cucurbit of berries,
the mash of scented, fermenting grain,
and lit their secret flames below, then
by every hook and crook jury-rigged
a rick for aging the casks of gin.

Blessed be these makeshift alembics
passed down to you––all else there was oath
and curse, every half breath a “damn it,”
or “hell,” so thank God, thank the Scotsman
for the waters of life that cleanse you,
the usquebaugh, the bourbon whiskey,
raw as salt searing the quenched throat,
turning to vapor all troubles,
de-fanged an evening and slow-content.

This poem first appeared in Red Line Blues 8

Hogback

Zara Raab

The blue Chevy with the windows down
is his idea of indoors, summers;
he has the cast of mind of hogback,
the temperament of coarse-grained basalt;
his stained, half-missing fingers fisted
over the wheel, he cusses, and pulls
the trigger on a harem of does,
(and misses) downwind in the tare grass,
then roars into third so’s to bypass
thinning pinewoods and ferret the coves
for three braces of pearly mollusk.
He’s a jack-of-all-trades. Come sundown
to the lit sawmill, he’ll strut around,
trimming the burl and burning the husks.

His new woman stands by the oven
of her gold-dun kitchen, baking rusks,
she has a mind of wide open fields,
at home in fescue, tare and chickweed.
Come Sundays, he jaws the venison,
she revs the Chevy’s V-8 engine,
or sights along a twenty-two:
She’s coming along, he says, none too soon.
This very morning she took her knapsack
to the blue-lupin pastures, loony
as a bluebird among the dobbins.
Any day now, she’ll mount the hogback,
track bucks with points on the knobby spine,
and shoot to kill, too, and not soften.

This poem first appeared in The Dark Horse (2011)

Earthquake Weather

Zara Raab

Over the Maacama,
storm clouds touch down on the hills
mottled as snake skin with cinnabar,
bluecrist and color of jade.
Creviced stands of pine form dark swathes
like sweat in the sleeping canyons––
the heat’s that strong today,
the wind hot, everything dry.
I can see to the valley,
its floor a flat-bottomed boat––
mills and houses and two men
against a truck, one of them––
dark, keen––might be my father.
Desultory, they smoke and talk,
shuffling and raising clouds of dust
mingling with the smoke of pipes––
insignificant, really,
to the billowing mill smoke,
hardly anything at all
to the clouds plowing the air,
nothing at least to me now.
Yet I might move from this heat
into cooler shades below
and stand with him where he smokes––
this small, dark man who more than
once spared me from consequence,
interceding on my behalf
before the gods, before the wrath
of Maacama cooking.

In memory of E.M.M. September 9, 1920 - March 24, 2011
This poem first appeared in Spoon River Poetry Review (2010)