The Abscission Zone: Collected Poems

By Jeffrey DeLotto

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 28, 2021
• ISBN: 9781664154636

Jeffrey DeLotto

Jeffrey DeLotto teaches and has taught writing and British literature at Texas Wesleyan University, Texas Tech University, Irbid University (in Jordan), and the University of Plovdiv in Bulgaria. His poems, essays, and stories have appeared in numerous magazines, journals, and anthologies, and he has published Voices at the Door (the Southwest Poets Series winner), Days of a Chameleon: Collected Poems, and Voices Writ in Sand: Dramatic Monologues and Other Poems, along with his historical novel, A Caddo’s Way, from Lamar University Literary Press. He is also a grower of herbs and vegetables, a sometime goatherd, and skipper on the mutinous family sailboat.

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Copyright © 2021 by Jeffrey DeLotto.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Cover photo and author photo copyright 2021 by Jeffrey DeLotto

Rev. date: 01/25/2021

Xlibris

844-714-8691

www.Xlibris.com

823657

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Selves

Smelling salt in an on-shore breeze

Storehouse

Through my eyes

The Eye,

On Seeing a Snakeskin Shed in Hurd Cemetery

On the Point

Soldiers

In the Bathtub

Duco Cement

Islamorada

A Cardinal’s War

Thoughts of Grape Soda and the Keys

As A Boy, Near Lake Lanier

The Ant Lions

Daddy’s dry now

Ebb Tide Quiet

The Old Literature Professor

Iliana, In Southern Bulgaria

On Shaving

The Fourth Sunday of Easter

Glouchester Cathedral

6973

Dupuytren’s Contracture

A Great Blue Heron

Faces

Route 35

In the Parish Churchyard, Westbury-on-Trym, During a New Year

Baby Land

Karankawa

A Trinity Flood

Two Hawks Kindles a Morning Fire

A Voice from the Chapel:

Black Peter

The Wilderness,

Gilbert

Missed, Finally

Gary

A Confederate on the Square

Returning the Colors

Geronimo

Rooster Bridge

A Stripper’s Surgery

A Voice at the Corner Store

Brother Ray

City Pigeons On the Wires

Estelle Turner, Age 94

More Papers

In traction, Basma Hospital:

Rousse

The Singing Road

Ted Renner - at Jerry’s Restaurant

Moncrief Radiation Center

Signs

Clothes in the Road

Dung Beetles

Uncle John

Al-Husn, in Northern Jordan

At the Pond’s Edge

A Moneychanger Outside The Temple,

Away from the Baby

The Coachwhip

Waiting

Eleven weeks along

On Finding a Grey Fox

Going to School

Joint Custody

Lost and Found in Mazatlan

For E.D. Hirsch

A Mockingbird Near Elizabeth Hall,

A Morning in Yorkshire

Near the Suq

William T. Harrison, Thou Eye among the Blind

Cicadas

Places

A Brown Pelican

A Memory Among the Islands

Ephemeral,

A Morning Start,

The Whistle Buoy

Ruined Vessels

Mio-Qua-Coo-Na-Caw (Red Pole)

The Squaw Creek Indian Fight, Glen Rose, 1862

The Ruins of Pella, a Roman City:

St. Archangel Cemetery

The Suq at Irbid

Acoma Pueblo - The Rooster Pull

A Well Dressing—Pilsey, Derbyshire

An Unfortunate Encounter with a Lady

At the Zoo

Another Day

Sandy Lane

Autumn, 1992

The Gathering,

Malachite Beach

Lines

Moving the Herd

A Bright November Day,

Outside An Old Barracks in Fort Worth

The Bat Room

The Sheep Docking

William Blake’s Marker

To a Hornet, on Mowing over the Nest

Simplicities

A Box of Crabs

The First Snow

And I Had Not

Little Man

A Lazy Reach

English Sparrows

A Bee in Early Fall

A Sailboat’s Spiders

Cormorants

Geckoes,

Grackles

Ground Snake

Kin

The Mallards

A Morning’s Peace

Mud Daubers

One April, early

Oh, Sunflower

The Monarchs, on the way back

Yellow Jackets

Three Grackles

Rapture at the EZ Pawn

Abscission zone: "The region at the base of a leaf, flower, fruit, or

other plant part, containing specialized cells that release enzymes

resulting in the separation of that part from the plant body."

Also: "the intentional shedding of a body part, such as the shedding

of a claw, husk or the autonomy of a tail to evade a predator."

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am grateful to the following for their publication of individual poems in previous versions:

A Confederate on the Square, Columbia, Tennessee, Descant: Lone Star 2000

A Memory among the Islands, RiverSedge 8:1 (Fall 1993)

A Moneychanger outside the Temple, Days of a Chameleon: Collected Poems

A Morning Start, Sage Creek Ranch, New Texas 2001

A Stripper’s Surgery, Dallas, New Texas 2000

A Voice from the Chapel, Mission San Antonio de Valero, Connecticut River Review

An Unfortunate Encounter with a Lady, Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas (2009)

Iliana, In Southern Bulgaria, Alacran: A Literary Review 9 (November 1996)

In the Parish Churchyard, Westbury-on-Trym, CCTE Studies (1992)

Islamorada, RiverSedge 6:2 (Spring 1992)

Geronimo, Fort Pickens, Pensacola Bay, Florida, July, 1887, SouthLit.com (June 2006)

Gloucester Cathedral, Terrapin: A Literary Review 8 (November 1995)

Mio-Qua-Coo-Na-Caw (Red Pole), Village Chief, Shawnee Nation, Voices at the Door

Moncrief Radiation Center, A Book of the Year 1991, Poetry Society of Texas

Moving the Herd, he Busenitz Place, Wyoming, CCTE Studies (September 2007)

On Finding a Grey Fox, Days of a Chameleon: Collected Poems

On Seeing a Snakeskin Shed in Hurd Cemetery, Seams: The Cultural Arts Journal (1990)

On Shaving, St. Joseph Peninsula, Florida, New Texas: A Journal of Literature and Culture

On the Point, Plantation Key, Florida, Alura Quarterly (Summer 1991)

Rooster Bridge, Demopolis, Alabama, 1919, Horny Toad (November 1993)

Route 35, Texas Gulf Coast, Days of a Chameleon

Ruined Vessels, RiverSedge 6:2 (Spring 1992)

"St. Archangel Cemetery, Plovdiv, Bulgaria," Preying Mantis (November 1994)

The Fourth Sunday of Easter, Voices at the Door

The Suq at Irbid, Jordan, 1981, Aura Literary/Arts Review 26 (Spring/Summer 1989)

The Whistle Buoy, The Anthology of New England Writers 1997

The Wilderness, Near Spotsylvania Courthouse, Spring, 1864, Voices at the Door

Two Hawks Kindles a Morning Fire, Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas 6(2009)

Waiting, Morongu, Tanzania, New Texas ‘99

SELVES

SMELLING SALT IN AN

ON-SHORE BREEZE

I remember eating spiny reef lobster

down on Plantation Key when I was a kid,

the creatures snapping and creaking as we

tossed them into a twelve-gallon pot, boiling

with seawater, and slammed down the lid,

holding it so they wouldn’t spring to safety

before turning spotted rust to sunset scarlet

in the steam. Then we’d slap each down

on a cutting board, lay a butcher knife lengthwise

between the haired legs, and hit that knife

with a hammer, exposing that flesh

to the world.

The yellow melamine plate held a laid-open lobster,

a cup of melted butter, and a quartered candy-

smelling key lime ready. Somehow I always

gashed a finger on a shell spine so that when

I squeezed the juice, part of a lobster bite was

the sharp sting of citrus in a cut, the rest the

flesh of lobster tail clean, smooth, springy under

dry teeth, the taste iodine and shrimp,

fire coral and cherrystone clam. I would

work my tongue over the shreds of flesh,

hear the cry of a great blue heron outside,

and want for nothing more.

I still don’t.

STOREHOUSE

World within world, it has always been,

Building cabins and storehouses out of

Marble-sized stones, stacking one on

Another into walls, roofed with broken

Sticks mimicking ponderosa logs

I would not see for twenty years,

But knowing, feeling in ancient bones

To shelter, to store and preserve;

Pulling clusters of yellow flower buds

That looked, stretching the mind, like

Bunches of bananas; seeded grass stems

Bound with thread, my wheat sheaves;

Red berries stored in an earthen bin

Like frosted apples tumbling down

A New England cellar--all waiting,

After harvest time, for winter,

For the cold grey times--

Oh, world within world,

Feed me now.

THROUGH MY EYES

Pray without ceasing—I Thessalonians 5:17

Praying with my eyes, through my eyes:

A morning sea mist, sun glaring, four

Brown pelicans swinging in formation

Over a rhythm of green waves, wing

Feathers skimming the water’s surface

On the leeward side; red clover laden

With the diamonds of dew at first light;

And not just the flaming strokes of a

Clouded set of sun but the grim gradation

From periwinkle blue to the soft violet

Presaging night, the first bright star in

The east; the swollen gum of a toddler

Before the teeth emerge, deciduous;

The crimson gash of a sliced tomato

From the garden; an aqua and carmen

Hieroglyph under a lintel at Thebes

Three thousand years old, the coded

Hieroglyph on a blue crab’s back, his

Claws the azure of a cold winter sky;

The lush shiny lobes of a spinach leaf:

All and each the sweep of creation,

My silent breath of thankfulness riding

Waves of light through oracles of iris

Into the depths of mind,

Without ceasing.

THE EYE,

In the Commonweal

Again what was an odyssey to me, the power

Of allowance coins dancing in my pocket to the

Tune of reading fingers, at five led by an older

Sister in Norfolk. Virginia, past tall Queen Anne’s

Lace and dark bitter weeds dense and high as a house,

Arriving at the corner store to cast my lot for candy

In the dim light, when a tall old man turned from

The head-high counter, looked down at my crew-cut

Head, and speaking low said, "Hey, kid, I got some

Thing to show you," as he slowly dug down into his

Pocket, in those capacious pleated trousers working

Men used to wear, drawing out his spotted bony hand

Wrapped around a velvet-covered box. Without a

Word, he raised the lid with his other hand, and like

Some macabre magician revealed a green-irised

Eye staring up at me, searching, it seemed, for some

Response, but I was struck dumb, as I am still. And

I don’t recall whether Kit hustled me away, whether

He then chuckled or grinned, or worse, but I did not

Cry, nor do I now—but why…why did he do that

To a small boy? With such penetration as a tiny

Needle pierces a fragile cell, he infected an adamed

Life with an outside world, an act that echoes still

In my earliest intimations that our worlds are haunted

By demons and staggering symbol.

ON SEEING A SNAKESKIN

SHED IN HURD CEMETERY

Sitting at evening, scanning the Times,

You rub heel against calf and feel the skin

Break loose; you reach later for a can of

Beans on a shelf and sense the slide of muscle

Free, by itself, beneath. You pause to scratch

Your back against the wall, and a patch of

Skin, palm-size, pulls free of the ribs,

And you know it’s time -- to be alone, and

Safe, and private, and born.

You take a personal day from work and tell your

Friends you’re out of town, and lock your

Doors and draw down the shades --

Things should be just so, you see, because

It’s pride, like peeling an apple, working it off