appealing

The Maynard
Spring 2015

Allison DeLauer
0:00
 
 

“Hell is hot”

says the sign nailed to a tree
along the side of the highway
Remember—

My children! My children!
Grandfather called out in his sleep
while the world grew indomitable, strange, and lonely

Everything I touched has turned to salt, he said
So I told him, Taste this watermelon, sweet as kisses
but recalled the thin snake—; a bright green spiral in the road

Imagine: in 1945 they lugged a locked box
onto the USS Indianapolis. The sailors thought
it might hold Marilyn Monroe’s underpants

Instead,
Little Boy, beware the error in nostalgia
which is just desire calcified— torched
like sand to glass in the heat of years