Jane Ann Fuller
Jane Ann Fuller is a retired writing instructor and graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. Her book, HALF-LIFE (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, 2021) was a finalist for the National Indie Excellence Awards. Her poems appear in many journals, including Calyx, Blue Earth Review, Shenandoah, Verse Daily, Main Street Rag, On the Seawall, and in the Anthologies I Thought I Heard a Cardinal Sing, and All We Know of Pleasure: Poet Erotica By Women. She lives in the Hocking Hills of southeastern Ohio.
ISBN: 9781735400242
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QUESTIONS OF MEMORY
There was a tire swing in the Mulberry tree and a few boards you nailed
against the lowest branches. A pulley with a basket for their lunches.
Morning glories were blue, deep, deep, deep.
A side porch with a door we never used, afraid we’d break the stained glass panel,
but the stoop was good for a cigarette.
You showed me where the stink pipe hid in the bamboo.
The kids hid there too. The perfect place for losing gloves or finding them
when the snow was gone in spring. I planted irises along the sidewalk.
Their stalks stood brown long after they bloomed. Solomon
seal. Butter cup. Mexican hat. Calendula that bloomed in December,
once. There had been a fire. We never knew. The charred remains of rafters
not burned through, so it didn’t matter. I wondered how that could possibly
be true. I wondered if we could make a pantry under the stairs. I wondered
whether the bats we found beneath the wainscot were as safe there
as they seemed. Would you just let them go? I helped you level floors and lay tile.
I helped you salvage porcelain knobs or were they marble?
Purple hyacinth. Verbena’s tiny little blooms. Rhododendron big enough for the kids
to climb. They rode bikes around the block. Built snow forts just outside the door.
And when we got a lot of snow, they drug plastic sleds to the cemetery,
the steepest hill in town. The radio played that Cars song you loved, over and over.
Your slight overbite and your complete inability to carry a tune.
The way you ducked when you entered a room.
The porch door that squeaked and slammed, on a worn spring. The blocks
of opaque glass you found for the bathroom wall. I didn’t know you at all.
