Robbie Gamble

​Matter
 
I was clattering around the kitchen this morning, and a pronouncement fell from the radio above the sink: “So, we don’t have much agency over the thermal death of the universe.” Something in the speaker’s weary voice compelled me to copy the phrase on the back of my grocery list, below mirror images of “peanut butter,” “feta,” “celery,” and “Chloe’s cold cuts” bleeding through in black Sharpie ink. It was just after New Year’s, raw and overcast outside for sure, but not exactly a harbinger of impending thermal death. The radio droned on about the Higgs boson, that “God-particle” responsible for the creation of discrete matter in those first Big Bang micro-moments, all the stuff that could coalesce into nebulae and tectonic plates and the flesh on my bones and a fibrous celery rib. Geez, NPR expects a lot of heavy lifting before first cup of coffee! Whatever pull I might exert upon the universe’s longevity, I don’t quite fathom, but I do love the word “agency,” such an exhilaration of power and autonomy.  Although these days I associate it most with women and their bodies, hard-won rights disintegrating into the current political maelstrom, much like the apparent fade of energy across the firmament. Everything gets flipped. If Leonardo Da Vinci wrote down his groceries, I could read them perfectly on the other side. What tissues of time and matter separate us from comprehending our purpose? What if I forgot to add “dish soap” to the list? 
 
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Reliquary for a Dog
 
Roscoe was no saint. Shitter of carpets and shredder of backpacks left unattended on the floor. He once courted death by nipping at the heels of a State Police horse, a patient behemoth who could’ve decapitated his little Jack Russell head and golfed it halfway across the park with one hindquarter clip. But here’s the thing, his actual death was miraculous. I woke to find him half-paralyzed on the one morning of the year my grown kids and my ex were in all town for Christmas, and my step-family was away. We convened in my kitchen, and once he realized his original rescue family had all come together one last time, he peacefully checked out. How that rascal was able to time it like that, I’ll never know. His ashes are bagged in a baby shoebox on my bookshelf. I’ve thought of sprinkling him in that stand of pines on the coast of Maine where he once staggered out dragging a desiccated deer leg longer than he was. O how he radiated his inner wolf that day! Should’ve kept that leg, cremated it along with him as an accompaniment to whatever further scavenging grounds he might ascend to. I don’t believe in Doggie Purgatory, no seven-story obstacle course to climb in refinement of the canine soul. Even if there was, he’d probably dig his way out under the perimeter fence, looking for something nasty to roll around in and eat. 
 
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Blame
 
The first pedestrian fatalities caused by automobiles were called “car murders.” Auto companies hated the term, and eventually they devised the misdemeanor “jaywalking,” to shift blame onto the walking public. How to arbitrate the interactions between ambulating flesh and fast-moving chunks of steel and glass? No one wants to accrue blame for a child’s brains dashed out against the curb. My brother died in his bedroom, and I was relieved to hear he was at home; that he hadn’t been ejected, drunk, through the windshield of his Porsche, and that he hadn’t taken anyone with him. This is what my gratitudes consist of nowadays. And really, blame is not a sticky-trap dragging one down into a morass of remorse, not unless it’s accompanied by a hefty jail sentence, and even then, you can play the martyr card, raise defense funds from your base, or lean into that great American tradition where everyone loves a good comeback story. My brother did several months in county lockup, and when he got out, he built three good years of sobriety. I am most grateful for that time with him. Set your mirrors with care, wear a seat belt, use your blinkers, use a designated driver. What do jays have to do with traffic flow, anyway? When I approach my polling station to vote, I always look all ways before I cross.    
 
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This poem was previously published in Atticus Review.
 
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Cause
 
I’m shivering under the filling station awning as a light wintry mix falls, watching gallons and dollars swell on the register of Pump #5, when a prompt appears on the screen: “Would you like to make a donation to St. Jude,” not specifying if the funds would go towards research for cancer-riddled kids, just Saint Jude, that unremarkable apostle pushed to the periphery in most Last Supper tableaus, the chump who got tagged as Patron Saint of Lost Causes, which doesn’t bode well for the cancer kids, and I start thinking, all right Pump, what is your lost cause; are we talking about our current hydrocarbon-burning transportation system, or more broadly, is the Grand Experiment of Humanity coming to a close and this is the only sign I’ll get that the Rapture is at hand, and if I don’t drop a healthy tithe into this gas pump card reader right now, I’m not going to make it skyward; instead I’ll get hung up on the underside of this filling island awning, my ankles tangled in a hose spewing gouts of economy grade octane all over, the fire-retardant foam nozzles kicking in too late to keep my Subaru from going up in an apocalyptic fireball; oh jeez Pump, give me a just a sec, but nothing much happens, just a slight shift in the wind pushing sleet down my neck, and I hop back in the car, buckle up, and pull out onto the highway toward home and my beloved.
 
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This poem was previously published in Hole in the Head Review. 
 
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Maine Aubade
 
Dawn unfolds, with rose-capped breakers murmuring the shoreline, and I am haunted out of sleep by a specter wafting in from across the ocean, tumbling into my newsfeeds and dreams, images of shredded, amputated arms and legs, many of them tiny; huge horrific piles of them accumulating, crusted in pus and dust, and as the sun shatters the horizon onto this outpost edge of America, the remaining trunk of my empathy squirms a question: does a phantom limb feel the agony of its lingering phantom pain in proportion to the butchery inflicted on the severed appendage?  
 
slack tide
crab carcass
drifting 
 
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Pinsky

I was waiting for a train in Penn Station, maintaining my little island of space within the flow of humans on the move, and I looked up from my book to see, right in front of me, the unmistakable profile of Robert Pinsky, staring up at the trackboard, trying to locate his train, and for a brief moment I had this urge to introduce myself, which flared and snapped shut like a Zippo lighter; I mean, what was I going to say?— “Gee, Mr. Pinsky, I’m not just a fellow traveler, I’m actually an emerging poet, and I love your work; in fact, I was thinking about the strings of inventory in “Shirt” just the other night, such an awesome poem!” – and he would have to shake himself free from the anxiety of missing his connection, tuck away his formidable mental to-do list, mumble some gracious pleasantries, maybe ask a question or two about my own influences and trajectory, all while keeping an ear out for the overhead PA track announcement, as commuters shouldered by us all around; all that work I did for him in my head before returning to my book, staring down at some random phrase until I sensed he had moved on into the cavernous bustling, just another guy trying to get to somewhere else. 
 
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This was previously published in Complete Sentence.  
 
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Post-Election Postcard: Montreal
 
By chance, we had planned a short getaway to Montreal for the weekend after the presidential election, and the lingering grief for the just-deceased Leonard Cohen was as unavoidable in the raw swirling November air as the post-election turmoil that followed us north across the border. The Canadian newspapers held a generous balance between elegies for Leonard, and tremulous projections for the impending Trump era and its sinister ripples the world over. We heard that the entryway to Leonard’s ancestral home in Westmount had been transformed into a shrine of treasured lyrics, but we didn’t visit. This morning, I walked the few blocks down from our hotel to the chapel of Notre Dame de Bon Secours, the sacred space where Leonard was reputed to draw inspiration for his first successful song, “Suzanne.” The Sunday streets were peaceful in the absence of weekday road repairs, the usual Old Port crowds were reduced to a few early wandering tourists like myself, and a scattering of well-bundled homeless folks circling while waiting for a food pantry to let them in. The chapel was open, and a sparsely attended Mass was underway. I slipped into a back pew and tried to mark my place in the liturgy with my minimal French. The famous ship models hanging from the chapel vault were pointing aimlessly every which way, as if they had been tossed in a recent storm. Brilliant diagonals of colour beamed down through the east transept windows. I offered a prayer of gratitude, and a plea for guidance in the coming turbulent times, then re-emerged into the ripped-up cobblestone streets and the cold cloudless morning light. 
 
Later in the day, sitting in a line of cars at the border, creeping through Customs to pass back into the States, we saw the Canadian flag, flying at half-mast. For a moment I lost it, and wept behind the wheel, as a tender bubble of hope welled up in the realization that we are still neighbours with a nation that can publicly mourn a singer and a poet. 
 
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Ars Protectica: A Monosyllabus

We will need lots of words, big words. Not big as in long, but big as in words that feel big, words that are clear, words like “strong” and “win” and “fight back” and “they will pay.” Don’t say “black” or “brown,” just say “them,” and we will know what we mean. Save the weak words for them, words like “fail” and “thug” and “sad.” Words that will keep them far from us. For they are not like us. No, not at all. Think of the words that will keep us safe from them: “lock ‘em up” and “lock and load” and “stand your ground.” Great words. And “safe,” such a fine word, too. One of the best. Now then, think of things we need to buy more of: bombs, jets, ships, tanks. We can buy more of them if we don’t pay a lot for things we don’t need so much, like health care and clean air and meals on wheels and the arts. These things won’t keep us safe, so why waste funds on them? Think of all the threats in the world. The world is not a safe place now, but we can make it safe, just for us, if we stick to my plan. Trust me.
 
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This poem was previously published in What Rough Beast.
 
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There is an “I” in “WHITE”

right at the centre, all sounds radiating outward from its core, the long vowel sound creating proud space for the architecture of the word. Tall and slender, lucid, perfect in its upright stance at the hub of all things. The word could not exist without the voweled sonic reach of the “I,” as the remaining letters on their own would just eke out a damp puff crossing the lips with a “whtt!,” barely audible. Notice the letters relegated to the periphery, the “W” and the “E,” which could spell out the collective “WE” if they were not separated. These letters are complex, with angles and branches facing out in many different directions. The components of the “WE” are barricaded from the “I” by the henchmen letters “H” and “T,” erect and vigilant, vertical strokes protecting the “I,” with horizontal spacers to keep the outside world at bay. There is potential here: the “H” introduces a turbulence, a sense of living breath to the word; it could be moving into the profound question, “Why?” But the “T” cuts off that possibility by dropping its consonant chop. It might just have concluded a “Whit,” an inconsequential trifle, were it not for the unappreciated labor of the trailing “E” straining to hoist the “I” skyward into all of its long-vowel glory. And the “I” just stands there, insulated from the tensions swirling all around it, blissful in its singularity. “I” does not feel alone, attended to by its acolytes, but I will never know the “WE” in all of their painful complexity, and they will never be able to reach through and disturb my safeguarded ego. 
 
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This poem was previously published in What Rough Beast.

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Bonerville
 
When I wake up in Bonerville, my watch announces it’s only three a.m., while my crotch insists I’m thirteen again, endowed with an organ that drives through my days by announcing its desires at the most inconvenient moments, say, right at the end of math class. And I’d have to crabwalk my way between classrooms with a textbook wedged across the tent of my jeans, knowing the whole world must know how incapable I am of owning my feelings, as if I could ever articulate what wells in my heart and elsewhere, intimacy being a world as alien as the scarred and seething surface of Venus. The penis wants, it wants, oh how it wants, and yet brooks no responsibility in mixed company. Freud is unhelpful. Playboy explains nothing. So, I am left to rotisserie through these sweaty sheets, a pouty engorged bewilderment. 
 
Now I’m deaccelerating down the onramp of my Medicare application when a routine blood test flags something tumorous permeating my prostate—erectile prospects pending—which might or might not be a big deal because who really cares about the antics of a graying cis-het retiree, and indeed it’s nobody’s business what goes down in our bedroom, only I will tell you this: we are generous and by times glorious and always grateful for good enough, good enough being the miracle that our hearts washed up on each other’s shores some fourteen years ago when we each thought we were submerged and sinking, and the world right now is metastatic with hate; there is so much burden to shoulder and we will try to heft our part, but we also have by times the blessed bedroom and spring is wheeling round again with its bone-warming swaths of sunbeam on the deck and rafts of daffodils and a beurre blanc lingering piquant on the tongue longer than we ever would have imagined possible.
 
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Robbie Gamble (he/him) is the author of the chapbook A Can of Pinto Beans (Lily Poetry Review Press, 2022). His poems and essays have appeared in Pithead Chapel, Post Road, Salamander, The Sun, and Tahoma Literary Review. He is the poetry editor for Solstice: A Magazine of Diverse Voices, and he divides his time between Boston and an apple orchard in Vermont.