Bitter Sea :
Brian Nealon
My grandfather, a raconteur salesman, East Texas, Northern Illinois, anywhere,
Dropped propaganda and a female spy on Vichy
And his 1-A son in Vancouver.
Deadbugs, manic wheezy laughter, windy tales—
highballs, yeah, till he owns Winston-Salem,
And the samples, yeah,
Swell. One more. He tells most of it to her:
Driving for days, uncountable desperate Lo days
Man, sitting lonely in that goddamned
Pontiac like some fallen war chief
Racing the hatchet man bloody-minded,
Dry mouth. He drowns all through his last night,
Drowns upright in the wingback, insomniac and tired.
Magazine in his lap shares his name.
George consists in these pages now.
Runs his finger along the ciphers—not the last story—
Takes off his glasses, drops them,
Waits out the dark.
She gets up and sits with him for a time,
Smokes an Eve,
Silent as he coughs except We should call someone,
Goes back to bed.
Come morning he’s slipped off the chair, still awake,
Prone on the medium shag telling her
Better call someone.
Gives her one last squinty grin as they carry him out,
One more—
Swell, come along. Bring my eyes and my teeth.
And one more, Mara,
Tender teacher of Bronx untouchables and me.
On a late honeymoon nightswim in Acapulco,
Watches her paper-year husband
Crumple in the deep end—
Shield against the lightning
Bolt meant for both, Zeus-
Hurled from a leaky arcing lamp under the diving board.
She’s slashed by passover voltage
She can’t see, stumbles up the
Steps in the shallows.
Whirr of locusts, sapped fairy lights, and he floats there, still.
She screams, but there’s nobody, the way they’d wanted it.
Her hands folded, she’s flying down to her baby,
Prays the shock is still
Loose in the water—
That it might take her too or
Jump his blood back to rhythm.
Hooks her arms under his, surges back to the wall,
Her baby’s warm doll limbs.
The dead man’s float—her first romantic childhood trick,
Holding her breath, affecting oblivion.
No one ever saved her.
They pull her up, then him, wrap her in a terry mantle, and
Carry him away unshrouded, shout their way
Through the gathering shades of hotel guests.
No one, she’s thinking, ever saved anybody.
Brian Nealon received the 1999 Sinclair Award for Fiction Writing for "The Next Steel" from Miami University of Oxford, Ohio, where he earned a Master of Arts degree in Literature/Creative Writing. He taught high school English in Dayton, Ohio for nearly a decade, and recently completed an enjoyable two-year teaching stint in a small town of four million in eastern China. Brian now lives in Madison, Wisconsin, where he writes, catches up on junk food he's missed, and plots his next move.