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THE LAST VISIT
OF THE 201 8
WINN ER
POE TRY PRIZE
DONALD IUSTICE

Chad Abushanab
The Last Visít
The Last Visít
poems

Chad Abushanab

AUTUMN
HHOUSE PRESS
pittsburgb
 Copyright O 2019 by Chad Abushanab

All rights reserved. No part of this book can be reproduced in any form whatsoever
without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of bricf quotations
embodicd in critical reviews essays. For information
or contact: Autumn House Press.
5530 Penn Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15206.

"Autumn House Press" and "Autumn Houseregistered trademarks owned by

are

Autumn House Press, a nonprofit corporation whose mission is the publication and
promotion of poetry and other fine literature.

Autumn House Press receives state arts funding

ADTC pennsylvania
COUNCIL ON THE ARTS
support through a grant from the Pennsylvania
Council
the Art, a state agency funded by
on

the Commonwealth of Pennsylvanía, and the National Endowment for the Arts, a
federal agency.

Cover art: Angus Macpherson,"The Lamp." 12" x 12". giclée print. Albuquerque
painter represented at Sumner & Dene Gallery, www.sumnerdene.com.

Text and cover

design: Chiquita Babb

ISBN: 978-I-938769375
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018952005

u
utumn House books are printed on acid-free paper and meet the international
standards for
permanent books intended for purchase by libraries.
Contents

Negatives under Microscope

The Factory
Plastic Men
The Way
Dead Town 6

Ghazal 1
Toward Your Understanding
Missing
Confession: Silva's Quarry
12
Boys
Found Dead in the Sequatchíe Valley 13
The Dive 15
The Future of the Past 6
To Speak of Woe That Is in Marriage 17

Cheating in a Small Town

19
Ghazal
20
Again 21
Layover after Visiting My Father
22
Poem Begun in a West Texas Corn Maze
23
Ghazal
24
A Haunted House
2
Restless
26
Custody Denied
27
Ghazal
28
Roadkill Ode
30
Visiting My Own Grave
 Hallowecen
3
Love Poem with Five Lines Stolen from VHS Boxes
32
Drive ln
33
Ghazal
34
Drinking All Night ínTennessee 35
Small Funeral
36
Desert Elegy
37
A Voice from the Wreck
38
Ghazal 39
Rubaiyát for My Father
40
Necessary Rituals
4T
The Landlocked Lighthouse
43
Love Poem with Desert and Stars
44
On the Dred Ranch Road Just Off 283
45
Hometown Knowledge 46
The Phone 47
The Last Visit 49

About the Donald Justice Poctry Prize 51

Acknowledgments 53

Thank You 54
Negatives under Microscope

I'm focused on the space inside your eyes-

first pupil, then iris, now cellular disruptíon-
in search of some clear catalyst, some reason

for these scars, for this crooked helix on my chest.

I want the DNA for empty bottles.
I need to know what made your cruelties grow
unwieldy, like cancers let loose upon a body.
I've scoured the entire frame, pushed past
the edge of every family negative
believing the secret's hidden, like a code
between the plastic and the acetate.
I stare for hours at a single portrai,
deducing from a smile the hell behind your face.
At times I think I smell the whisky sweet
perfume of you, as though each image captured
something of how you lived, how you breathed.
But then each clue turns out a part of me:

a hair, a thumbprint left while leafing through

the pile of specimens, a flake of skin,
a barely visible scratchI made in haste
more me than you, more you than science,
naked and pinned down beneath the lens,
as though our cause is finally
in the frame,

begging for exposure, for the light.

 The Factory

Hulks in shadows just outside of town:

a rustcd mess, a postindustrial tomb.

Poorwills roost in smokestacks falling down

and cry out something awBul in the gloom.

Elsewhere, men with bloody lungs keep

coughing up clots like overripe berrics.
Their wives beside them pretend to be aslcep,
their stories.
imagine dillerent endings to

2
Plastic Men

After each fight, Mom took us both

to Wilson's Five & Dime to pick
some cheap toys. Our father's slurred voice
became a ghost of breath beneath
the long tin ventilation shafts.
Mom waited by the counter,
spoke to the clerk about discontinued
spools of thread, buttons she'd meant
to sew on weeks ago. She wore

green bruises below her eyes.

Her split lip kept her dabbing blood
with Kleenex-a poppy tlowered rag.

Digging through crates of army men,

we looked for figures of tragedy:
broken at the wrist,
missing arms, hands
bomb
the grenadier whod gripped the
too long. Back home,
we'd line up the men

on our bedroom windowsill. We smiled

maimed green soldiers.
at our army of
They could not raise their voices despite
their mortal wounds, their missing limbs.

3
The Way

The day I found him doesn't stand apart

from any other, save for how a rain
cooled the afternoon and left the hills
smelling of steam and creeping amber rosin.
The afternoons were hot, and beneath the shade

ofspruce and pine I followed narrow creeks

until their quiet, strangled ends. I searched

for caves and the remains of ancient arrowheads.

The woods were deep and took me far from home.
Failing light made shapes look soft, unclear,
and at first it seemed he might be drunk or sleeping-
he slouched against tree, and
a sweetgum maybe,
T thought, I saw him move, or twitch, or flinch.
The sudden stench of rot said otherwise.

His eyes were open, clouded over, blank

much like the sky now hidden by the trees.
He sat surrounded by fallen ochre leaves,
legs splayed out into wide, facing angles.
A film of
something greentouched his lips,
swollen from the heavy August heat.
He gripped a small revolver in his hand.

Behind his head: the splintered trunk, a ring

of blackened blood, glittering fragments of bone.
Tfroze, afraid the slightest move might bring
him back,
might wake him from his bleeding slumber
Iwatched until the red sun died away,
and darkness
dimmed that shining in his eyes.
It seemed this scene had been set up for me.

A
He walked into the woods to die, while the sun
drew out the long shadows of the lorest.
And when the gun went oft, there was no shudder

among the trees, no importance lelt

by the birds. just violence and the body, waiting
for me, thc pupil, who wanders in the woods.

already on a path toward knowing death.

He walked into the woods to die, while the
sun

drew out the long shadows of the forest.

off, there was shudder
And when the gun went no

among the trees, no importance felt

by the birds. just violence and the body, waiting
for me, the pupil, who wanders in the woods,.

already on a path toward knowingg death.

Ghazal

When my father left for good, we were

living in the desert.
I wouldn't cry for him.
My eyes became a desert.

7
Toward Your Understanding

You believe your father is made of stone,

a tower whose
strength ís silence.
Neither of you speak. T his is not unusual.
Today he walks ahead, leads you
down Cranberry Lane, to White Horse,
where you are outside the dead man's house.

Your father says, "He shot himself in there.

a white house with a browning lawn
and a
single twisted-up crepe myrtle.
And maybe because it looks so familiar-
like your own home-this does not irighten you.
Your father says, "He shot himself in the
head.
He leads you to the window, grips your waist
and lilts you to the darkened glass.
Your retlection tades into the room,

sparsely furnished, gray earpet, white walls.

You see it there above the sofa: a blossom
of blood, a
ring fanning out to nothing
In the center of the plaster: a small black hole.

lt seems, somehow, impossibly empty.

When you're lowered back to the ground,
beneath your feet.
you feel the neighborhood
Even the bone-white sun is fading faster

than it should. You know it will be dark soon.

Missing

When Bea McConnell disappeared,

she was only eight years old,
and because of what our parents feared
the neighborhood went cold.

We saw the posters everywhere,

the broken nose, the curls.
The frightened words above her hair
said Have You Seen This Girl?

We started locking doors at night

before.
though we never did
No matter the hour, we burned the light
that hung above our door.

Police put corpse-dogs on the trail

and dragged the quarry lake.

They looked in every open well

in hopes the case would break.

lt never did. The posters taded.

In time, so did the search.

Her parents, pale as plaster, waited.

They often cried in church.
Like the nights >'d hear my mother weep

and open my bedroom door,

and I'd pretend I was asleep
as she slowly crossed the iloor.

9
She d place her hand upon my head,
her fingers light as air,
and whisper in a voice like lead
a
single, shaken prayer:
"Dear God, please let my child stay.
I know that you are just.
I need him to survive the day.
Take others if you must."
Confession: Silva's Quarry

It seemed we were doing some good

by dumping the body in the quarry:
that each ballast we stuffed down her throat
to pull her toward the bottom
was a good intention approaching salvation
not for ourselves but for others, say,
her family, or friends, who might be haunted

by the sight of her for lifetimes to follow.

We brushed her nails clean and never

undressed her. We wrapped her in a sheet.

When Vaughn rolled her down the hill toward
the mossy rocks, with Sid out in front,
walking backwards, stepping over roots
to control her descent, her arm lolled out,
got spotted with stopped
leaves, and we

to wrap her up again.

VWe picked debris

from her forearms, hair, thighs, and wrists.

It was a wasted effort, we all knew that,
had to say it as we stood
and so no one

the black water

by the quarry's edge. Out
on

a small snake swam, made ripples

as approached our shadows,
it long.
which were

and an owl,
The water lapped at the granite,
moved beyond the branches
of a tree,
or something,

I'm the one who nudged

her
me to stand.
prompting
she sank,
edge, and we watched
as
over the
the water bubbled, and her shadow disappeared
as though ink had spread
about the pool."

II
 Boys

The fall of'93. Red leaves

driit, spinning toward the
ground,
and pile beneath the
schoolyard eaves.
Once struck, he just stays down,

swallows back his shock and tears.

It's me who picked the
fight,
and I'll carry on this way for
years.
I pack a solid right

left bloodied by his broken

lips.
Ilift my arms to play
the victor, satisfy the script.
But beforeI
walk away.
back home where my dad swills
gin,
curses game-show hosts,
and trucks of smuggled Mexicans,
I know I've made the most

of fear. Today I am a man.

My dad will sure be proud.
The rest, stunned silent when this
began,
are cheering, wild and loud.

12
Found Dead in the Sequatchie Valley

They found her body lying here

between the skeletons of pine.
Likeby some designn
she died in fall, the time of year

when shadows kissed her thin wrists,

and the sun, at last, turned cold and white,
a ball of frozen light.
The talk is vague, but most insist

her boyfriend led her to the hollow

at night, they had a fight, she
was newly pregnant, and he
was mad, and madness is what followed

The stories try to get at reason,

but the local papers let it go,

leaving these woods to know

or to forget. Now's the
season

when the dead wind mimics the desperate cries,

the purple clover turns to brown,
and all the lights in town
look far away, like listless eyes.

here to learn
And I wonder what's out
hills
besides the silence of these
once final sunlight
flls
urn?
the valley like a broken

13
 cannot hold.The light escapes
as though its liquid through a sieve,
and I want to believe-
as all gets tangled in the drapes

of night-in wholeness, if not peace.

The girl is dead. Her voice is lost
in all the stories tossed
like leaves when autumn strips the trees.

What happened here, we'll never know.

These secrets make the kudzu grow.

14
The Dive

A busted exít sign above the door

invites no one to leave. The windows are barred,
and the panes themselves are painted over with
tar.

No question as to what this place is for.

The regulars all stare into their drinks,

Bar stools
lamenting futures, torgetting pasts.
Tavern Rules
are split at every seam. The
say No Cussing, though mostly
no one speaks.

think. But here

They're married to their grief, you
worries. The same
you are: Jack Daniel's and your
as any drunk
who will lay the blame
not

instead in whisky and beer.

on himself, drowning

A man roadmap eyes searches his pockets

with
short. Instead,
for jukebox change and comes up
the fan
ceiling rhythm while cach dead
keeps
off the Highlife clock. "It's
minute tumbles

another drink.
closing time!" Time for
snatches the cash,
The barkeep brings it over,
flicks his cigarette and drops the ash
into the rusted pit of a clogged-up sink.

This dive, this glass, these greasy tingerprints,

old:
theyre each a part of something very
a need to slow the way a story's told
too much sense.
to keep it all from making

15
The Future of the Past

We thought we would, by now, retire the wheel;

that we could lay to rest that early invention.
Instead, the sidewalks just became more cracked,
more broken apart by wild vegetation
pushing through fissures in worn-out roads.
The movies lied. They promised us new modes
of transportation, but science fiction lacked
the science frame by frame and reel by reel.

Our stories rarely end in slow dissolve,

a fleur of music, credits, special thanks
to all of those that made this possible.
There are no squibs, no CGI, no blanks.
Our futures stall, our cars will never fly,
and when our loves begin to die, they die.
We always want what's most improbable.
Our hearts, like the first machines, do not evolve.

16
To Speak of Woe That Is in Marriage

When his drinking gets bad, she cannot meet his eye.
He stays out late. Out where? She does not know.
He sweats Manhattans, answers slurred and slow,
and staggers while he's conjuring a lie.

She hides his keys-the wreck not long ago

then holds him shaking in the upstairs hall
as he talks her into "one more drink, that'sall."
The years of bargains wore her down, and so

fall
tonight she listens for his breath to
into a raspy sleep. When the powder gloww
of not-quite-dawn falls on her naked woe,

she writes a note (!'ve gone-PLEASE DO NOT CALL)

then tears it up, resigned to quantity

the endless nights it takes for him to die.

17
Cheating in a Small Town

lt was dim enough to eall it dark,

amber bulb the only light.
The Jameson had done its work
to complicate the wrong and right.
Her wedding photo on the shelf
looked down on us. We didn't quit
We got undressed in spite of it,
as though we couldn't stop ourselves.

I wanted this. I wanted to know

the harm we'd causc, the damage done
by giving in, by letting go.
I knew her daughter slept just down
the hall, her husband was on a job
in Memphis. I had so much less
to lose, my life already a mess.
After, when she began to sob,

Ileft. The light was creeping in

to expose our nakedness, our sin.
On my way out the door, I said
that l'd come back. I never did.

8
Ghazal

We packed our clothes in garbage bags, rented filthy rooms.

How many cheap motels line the highways of the desert?

19
Again

She's bleeding from the mouth again.

Each drop that slips between her fingers,
spatters the countertop, and blooms
like tiny poppies on the tile.
He's split her lip with the backhand
I've feared as long as I can remember.
But she is not afraid. My mother
provokes him. Spits his name like poison.
She smiles wide, the words swelling
to cancer, toxic, eating her guts.

Tomorrow, she'll drive miles out

of town to shop where no one knows
her face. She'll laugh when the
pretty cashier
asks if she got into a fight,
when loading up the car she'll save
the frozen peas to press
against
the cut that weeps beneath her cheek.

20
Layover after Visiting My Father

A woman dressed in black pajamas

waiting to fly to Houston grips
her cell phone like a bludgeon,

speaks in silent wisps of teeth

and tongue, and stumbles when she shuts
her eyes. She's telling him, the one

who isn't worth forgiveness,

he is forgiven once again.
She's holding back what's left of love.

When we meet eyes across the gate,

I know what keeps her up at night
like splintered ribs that will not mend.

2
 Poem Begun in a West Texas Corn Maze

I listen for children shouting through the dried

up stalks, but all I hear are whispers and crows,
what few remain. For over an hour I've tried
to solve the maze, navigate its rows,

and now the comforting smell of funnel cake

has faded. In the crisp, October cold,
the families have started home; their brake
lightsburn beyond the field. I shiver and fold

translucent moon rises,

my arms. A cool,
and I quicken my pace to reach some final gate.
Is it left? Or right? The sudden dark disguises
the way, and I halfremember another late

autumn, when I was nine and playing here.

The sun fell soft behínd the stalks and I ran
further into the dark while closing time grew near.

I recall it strill, but no longer understand

the thrill of bolting, blind and breathless, deep

into the maze. I know those days have run
their course, since now I cannot help but keep

the end in mind, the setting of the sun,

the fallen ears of corn gone soft and rotten.

It works against these paths and how they're erOssea

to spark in us, again, the long forgotten

joy of the deliberately lost.

22
Ghazal

I wrote him a letter once but left it in a motel drawe.

To where could I address it? The envelope said Desert.

23
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their

and portion

with the waterfall

as

one

more engaged then