Linda Neal

Fall Residue

There was a rope swing

in a live oak tree

and the peppermint scent

of carnations

when I was eleven.

I picked parsley in secret

by the light of the moon

saved it between two sweaters

in a dresser drawer

until it turned brown.

I can't account for this raggedy

residue of childhood.

I sit on my porch 

under the fall moon

and listen to my dog howl

her answer to screaming sirens.

Calling to them comes 

to her like Odysseus's response 

to the singers who lured him

onto those jagged rocks.

The roses are rusty,

my rank garden a riot of weeds.

Snails slither in the clivia

and giraffe-necked dandelions 

so rampant in summer

are gone. But the parsley

is still green and pungent

and the azalea and camellia 

blossoms have begun their wilt 

to brown. 

We all wait for rain.

I tighten my belt.

I loosen my belt.

The dog licks 

the sore on her ear.

I grow more parsley

than I can eat,

more than enough

for Thanksgiving roast garnish

more than enough for a green drink

more than enough to put in a stew

or chop on top of a salad,

and I can't account for

the years between eleven

and now, the decades filled

with children who yowled,

dogs who howled, my own

howling over the rocks I've

been navigating all these years.

Late one night

I follow my dog

on her rounds

and spy a family of skunks

eating snails and parsley

by the light of the moon.

It's not easy to admit

that my rapacious desires 

have come to this 

skunk feast in a corner

of my garden.

Falling Fall

It’s fall—autumn leaves in all their color  

You know, it’s not like

I give a rat’s ass if the leaves fall

or if wandering eyes look out

through portals of green leaves

painted on Evelyn’s placemat, placed

on her table next to the window.  

A neighbor's horn goes off, beeping

the arrival of this bright, dying season

and I watch Evelyn’s red-rheumy eyes

flicker as she fingers her food

and chews and chews and chews

as if it will get her somewhere.

I watch and wait for her.

Wait for her to—what?

I watch and wait

for flaming far-flung leaves to fall 

singly to the ground

because, after all, it is fall

and the flaming leaves

are meant to fall,

like Evelyn will, like she is,

falling past fall, past winter,

into that other dimension

that is endless fall, endless falling

down and beyond the table

and the food, beyond the bedcovers

and the fan, beyond the capability

of the heart. We are all falling

through flames of desire,

and I am falling further every day,

and closer to the end,  

failing to fill my soul.

I think too far into the future,

fall over into dream-dance,

watching ancient Evelyn

fall, like the leaves, 

like the red apples that

rot on the ground, their skin

bathed in autumn.

Slippage

My friend, Mo, fears forgetting. 

Afraid it's Alzheimer's. Slippage, she says 

when she searches for a word or forgets a tennis date. 

It's all slippage, I tell her, remembering tennis, 

wishing I could forget my dead racquet hanging 

from a hook in the garage, tight

in its plastic case. My arms remember 

my great two-handed backhand. My legs quiver

for that fast charge to net, the shuffle step

from forehand to backhand. 

Pitched into the ocean of age, I watch

the days turn over, one at a time 

like housewives at their chores.

Hours and minutes ply their way past fall

all the way to the end.

No one sees age's tsunami coming 

through the haze of plates

and gravy in the boat, no one hears age moaning 

like a harbor buoy every night when the stars swim 

behind the city sky, all lit up as if

for a holiday. I didn’t see it when I tossed 

the ball to serve an ace

so fast, it's autumn. Pumpkins on the porch. 

Kids carving jack-o-lanterns.

A slip of the knife, and there

where the teeth were supposed to be,

a gaping hole, a rictus grin.

Linda Neal's poems have appeared, or are forthcoming, in numerous journals, including Calyx, Chiron Review, Lummox, Prairie Schooner, Santa Fe Literary Review,  SLAB and Tampa Review. Her poems have won awards from Beyond Baroque Foundation, Palette Poetry and Pen Women Writers. Dodge & Burn, her first collection came out in 2014. Not About Dinosaurs will be out in the fall of 2020. She holds an MFA in poetry from Pacific University.