Vanishing Point

William Trowbridge

• Publisher: Red Hen Press
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781597095037
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Poetry
• Index: Literature

Vanishing Point concerns memory, cognition, history, and morality, as experienced through the process of aging and as seen largely through a seriocomic lens. The range is wide, from arrestingly dark to downright hilarious—sometimes both at once—and all stages in-between. The poet Jim Daniels has said about this book, "With profound wit and humility, with a purity and clarity of language that defines our best poetry, [Trowbridge] takes us on a wild ride and gives us our money's worth." The last section contains poems from Trowbridge's graphic chapbook Oldguy: Superhero, with several new poems added to that series.

I

TILT-A-WHIRL

It speeds you in a circle on a wavy platform

and, at the same time, whips you around

inside that circle: wheel within a wheel,

to quote Ezekiel. Each year I tried to master

its gyrations, only to regurgitate,

with my corn dog and cherry Coke,

my youthful self-assurance. This dated,

wry contraption, I now read, can be

a model for chaos theory, the spins

of that inner circle erratic as the bully

summoned by some butterfly wing

to beat me up three days in a row

on my way home from school. “Guess,”

he smirked, when I asked why. “I thought

he was a nice man,” said killer Perry Smith,

“right up to the minute I cut his throat.”

In Italy, a guy was killed by a pig

falling from a balcony two stories up.

Neighbors dined on free ham afterwards.

Some zealot plugs an Austrian archduke,

and the world heaves up eight million corpses.

“Hang on tight,” the attendant shouts,

as we brace for gravity’s blindside.

WELCOME HOME

Large sign in many American

ports at the end of WW II.

All I have is a black-and-white photo,

taken in our yard, my father holding me,

him still in his khakis, me dwarfed

beneath his service cap, both of us

looking as if the other might bite,

warrior and war baby joined

by biology and chance, him smiling

stiffly for Mother’s camera. He brought

souvenirs—his bayonet, a Nazi pistol—

and a taste for Luckies, bourbon,

and rage. When he hugged, his cheek

scraped like sandpaper, how I thought

a hero’s face should feel; his slaps

could blur my eyes.

They say three months in combat

fractures a normal mind. He’d spent

almost a year, the details of which

would stay off-limits. We must have

looked like aliens, my mother, sister,

and I, so plump and washed and green,

our neighborhood hospitable as Mars.

“Welcome home,” one of the Martians

must have said.

FIRING THE M-1 GARAND

In our backyard, my father,

who never talks about the War,

demonstrates the proper way

to use the sling on the .22 rifle

I bought with my allowance

to play soldier with my pals

in the dump off 95^th Street—

cans, bottles, maybe a rat or two.

He winds the strap tightly

around his left arm, puts the butt

up to his shoulder, then raises

the rifle to firing position, keeping,

he notes, the right elbow high,

taking a deep breath, then

holding it. When I try to follow,

he adjusts my elbow, tells me,

“Remember: never aim your rifle,

loaded or not, at anyone you’re

not prepared to kill.” He lets go

of my arm and, to fill the sudden

hush, adds, “I meant just don’t

point guns at people,” then turns

and walks quickly away.

BATTLEGROUND

It showed the War was as my father said:

boredom flanked by terror, a matter of keeping

low and not freezing. “You wore your helmet

square,” he said, not “at some stupid angle,

like that draft-dodger Wayne,” who died

so photogenically in The Sands of Iwo Jima.

Those nights I heard shouts from the dark

of my parents’ room, he was back down

in his foxhole, barking orders, taking fire

that followed him from France and Germany,

then slipped into the house, where it hunkered

in the rafters and thrived on ambush. We kept

our helmets on, my mother and I,

but there was no cover, and our helmets

always tilted. He’d lump us with the ones

he called “JohnDoes,” lazy, stupid, useless.

We needed to straighten up and fly right,

pick it up, chop chop, not get “nervous

in the service.” We’d duck down like GIs

where German snipers might be crouched

in haylofts, their breaths held for the clean shot.

“Bang,” my father said, “the dead went down,

some like dying swans, some li...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Acknowledgments
• Dedication
• Contents
• I
• II
• III
• IV
• Biographical Note