Bill Glose

September 10, 2021

“Sasquatch” by Bill GlosePosted by

Bill Glose

SASQUATCH

Just picture him, eight feet tall, all hair and muscle, 
able to uncork a head from its body in one swift pop,
yet sly enough to hide whenever humans are near.

A vegetarian, perhaps, like the rhinoceros, 
which explains no carcasses found in his wake, 
no gnawed bones left behind as clue. The only proof 

is blurry footage, statements from eye witnesses 
branded as fools, and footprints 
large enough to swallow the moon.

Rachel and I once spent the night in a Bigfoot-hunter’s cabin 
on the border between Virginia and her un-seceded sister.
Our host led us into woods to camouflaged, 

motion-sensor cameras strapped to trees. We wore
thermal-vision headsets as he marched to and fro
in the distance, his red form glowing amid the green.

Inside, he showed off an ultrasonic airborne probe 
and other high-tech wonders, sheaves of data, 
and finally—best for last—plaster molds of feet. 

Leaning posture, wrinkled brow, urgency of voice—
all broadcast the need for us to believe his story.
Twenty years before, he saw the creature in these woods 

and has been chasing after ever since. 
Surely on cold winter nights, after another 
fruitless hunt, his logical mind must wonder 

if that glimpse had been a trickster’s hoax
and the past two decades a waste of time.
You’ve got to have faith, he crows 

from that perch no argument can knock down.
And what is there to say when a fawn proclaims 
it’s not a deer but a leopard? Just look at my spots.

I’m a hawk, says the robin. I’m a constellation, 
says the bear. I’m alive, say the dead, scratching
at their caskets’ pillowed linings. Once,

at a wedding in a cavernous, Catholic church, 
Rachel exalted at stained-glass windows, hymnals
with gilt-limned pages, tapestries that hung for miles. 

But all I saw were the pew’s hard backs,
the tithing envelopes, Jesus on the cross, 
his weeping eyes imploring me to run. 

Knowing how far I’d fallen, she was pleased 
I remembered the proper words, the call and response 
of praise, its rhythm worn into my knees.

What is faith but knowing something to be true 
when evidence tells you it is not? I’ve always turned
to science for illumination; Rachel turns her face

to the sky. It’s why, in our cabin room,
when I picked apart points of the Bigfoot myth,
she punched my shoulder and said, Shut up.

Just enjoy the moment. Next morning, as the hunter 
turned pages in a photo album, one wooded spot 
after another where sitings supposedly occurred, 

and Rachel danced sockless beside a white plaster mold, 
her red-toenailed feet like a toddler’s in comparison, 
I yanked the leash of the dog growling in my throat 

and felt warmer in the silence. 
Sometimes an answer only comes
when you don’t know the question.

—from Rattle #72, Summer 2021

__________

Bill Glose: “After serving in combat in the Middle East, I returned home with a lot of guilt and anger bottled up inside. Poetry provided catharsis, allowing me to explore my feelings and try making sense of the world’s senselessness without needing to rip someone’s head off. When my girlfriend was diagnosed with lung cancer, poetry gave me a haven to reveal my inner thoughts and fears during the dread-filled months that followed.” (web)

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September 8, 2021

“Second Opinion” by Bill GlosePosted by

Bill Glose

SECOND OPINION

Jackhammering woodpeckers search bark
for insects or sap; yellow-sleeved arms
of forsythia wave hello; a girl in pink shorts 
and pigtails chalks her driveway, 
a curious tongue peeking out the corner
of her mouth—each wonder noticed 
and reveled over on the long drive 
to the second doctor’s office.

We’ve dreamed this white-smocked sage 
will decry the first, sifting scans and charts,
shaking an error free from silt. He’ll point to it 
like I am doing now to the hummingbird
hovering impossibly at a feeder, 
lapping from a silver spout of nectar.

Not that we’ll remember it later, 
slouching up front steps, crossing
the living room and falling on the couch,
dogs with dire eyes lying beside us, 
the smell of something sour in the air,
and me, suddenly quiet, weight 
of every word like rocks on my tongue. 

—from Rattle #72, Summer 2021

__________

Bill Glose: “After serving in combat in the Middle East, I returned home with a lot of guilt and anger bottled up inside. Poetry provided catharsis, allowing me to explore my feelings and try making sense of the world’s senselessness without needing to rip someone’s head off. When my girlfriend was diagnosed with lung cancer, poetry gave me a haven to reveal my inner thoughts and fears during the dread-filled months that followed.” (web)

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February 14, 2018

“Phases of Erasure” by Bill GlosePosted by

Bill Glose

PHASES OF ERASURE: A SOLDIER’S JOURNEY

I. Phase Line Whiskey

“Love” was the first word uttered after “Mama” and “Papa,” 
who scratched your babbling language into a memory book 
to mark milestones from your childhood, a dictionary that grew
wide as distance between stars. The first time a new principle 
was introduced—gravity keeps us down; it’s impossible
to disappear—you always questioned why. Your parents 
encouraged you to walk, to run, to leap. Your mind knew 
nothing of boundaries, the barriers preventing fantasies 
from becoming real. In your world, matters of the soul 
harmonized with crickets’ heartbeats. When neighborhood kids
trampled the line of daylilies by the duck pond, you cried,
confused by cheerful shows of power and dominance.
Your lust was for all things green and growing. Not a thing
flew in the blue sky that did not make you want to soar.
Fireworks on Fourth of July made you think of kaleidoscopes—
the sparkled bombs exploding high up in the black—and 
the tattered, tumbling, cardboard shrapnel of falling leaves.

Dreams full of joy, a boy in your pajamas flying out of bed, 
no pain when you thudded to the carpet in a room filled 
with Matchbox cars and toy soldiers. Your last thought
on nights when the full moon swallowed your window,
wondering if tomorrow you might wake up on its foreign soil, 
wondering whether life would be cockeyed peering down through
your window like a mourner peeking into a grave or if 
your beating heart would still find magic among its craters.
God knows how many times you took apart toasters and clocks, 
having to know what slows the hour hand, which cog locks in
with which gear to combat the slippage of seconds.
And how many times you picked through trash cans, 
searching every nook, prying apart shadows until 
each hidden treasure becomes yours. The only enemy
you’d ever known was ignorance; the only mystery:
how every unturned stone did not ignite everyone’s curiosity.
“Who can hide the longest?” was your favorite 
game, the cavern behind your captain’s bed becoming 
an improvised fort in which you’d sit for hours, 
imagining devices that might make you invisible, 
that might make your ridiculous wants come true. 
You longed to turn the magic spinning through your body 
into something tangible, an overcoat you could drape 
over inanimate objects to give them life, to fill 
every empty space with ideas stitched from the fabric 
of your dictionary, until the last void stoppers with 
the very last word. Your parents took away your only pet, 
a turtle, after exploring fingers got stuck a third time 
in its shell. Asking, “But what is inside?” You hated 
not touching the answer, something so full of possibility.

 

 

 

II. Phase Line Alpha

“Love” was the first word 
        scratched 
                               from your                      dictionary
                                                   the first                   principle 

to disappear                                                 . Your parents 
                                                                                   knew 
nothing of                    the 
                          real              world, matters of the 
                                          heart
trampled                                 by
                                                  power and
         lust                                                            . Not a thing
flew in the blue sky that did not make you 
                                                               think of
                     bombs                                                     and 
                                                     shrapnel                          .

Dreams        of 
     pain                                                                     filled 
                                                            Your 
     nights                                                                         ,
wondering if tomorrow                                           foreign soil
                                      would be 
your                                                               grave
your beating heart 
        knows how           time 
                                   slows                                                    in
                               combat 
        how 
                every                                shadow 
                                  becomes            The         enemy

how every unturned stone 
          can hide 

an improvised 
                 device   that 
                                                    wants 
                    to turn                                              your body 
into                                  an 
        inanimate object                             , to 
          empty 
    your dictionary, until the 
              last word 

in its shell                                 is                       hate 
                                                                                         .

 

 

 

 

III. Phase Line Romeo

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

nothing 
                                                          matters 

 

 

                                                                             Not
             the blue sky              not 

 

 

 

Dreams        of 

 

 

                     tomorrow

your
        beating heart 

                                   slows

 

 

                                  becomes

                                 stone 

—from Rattle #58, Winter 2017

__________

Bill Glose: “For ten years after serving in the Army, I followed the example of my father, a Vietnam veteran, and kept my experiences as a combat platoon leader bottled inside. Then I started attending open mics where each time a poet shared his or her personal burden the crowd would lift them up. It was then I started writing my war, the long-kept secrets and the hidden pains leaking out one cathartic driblet at a time.” (web)

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November 24, 2016

“PTSD” by Bill GlosePosted by

Ekphrastic Challenge, October 2016: Artist’s Choice

 

Painting by Alexandra de Kempf
Photograph: “Family Matters” by Alexandra de Kempf. “PTSD” was written by Bill Glose for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, October 2016, and selected by de Kempf as the Artist’s Choice winner.

[download broadside]

__________

Bill Glose

PTSD

He loves these make-believe moments in the morning
when everyone pretends to forget the night before.

His wife, June, in her green dress gathering up papers
before heading into the office. His daughter,

cross-legged in front of the TV, a cartoon sponge
dancing on its plasma screen. Outside in the snow,

the flutelike whistle of an oriole hearkens the coming sun.
Too early and too cold for Janey to wait at the bus stop,

so they squeeze into this shared space like a mouse
pressing beneath a door jamb. For just a moment,

he almost believes that this snapshot, this image
pulled from Better Homes & Gardens,

is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but.
But then he notices           that the papers

June is fiddling with           need no organizing,
that Janey,           still as a cemetery monument,

has resurrected the teddy bear                     she’d outgrown
years before,           and a question slithers

through his torso,                     through the gaps
between organs,           those spaces

without names. The unanswerable Why?
whose tail he can never quite grab.

With each tick           of the wall clock’s metronome
resentment stacks another block

within his throat, a tower that begs
every black thought to climb up and leap out.

Knowing a mind can fracture
into a thousand-piece puzzle

whose seams                     refuse to snap together again
never stops the picture           from shattering,

knowledge buzzing like a mosquito in his head.
Buzz           buzz           buzz

and then           that familiar stab
into a juicy bit           of amygdala.

He launches           off the couch,           screams,
stabs the air,           wields the prongs of his blame

like a pitchfork.
When all he loves has emptied

from the house,           when the drum of blood
has slowed its cadence to a crawl           and silence

rolls over him like a fog,           memory will rise
like a zeppelin nosing toward a black clouded bank,

toward everything
he’s tried so hard to forget.

—Ekphrastic Challenge, October 2016
Artist’s Choice Winner

[download audio]

__________

Comment from the artist, Alexandra de Kempf, on this selection: “As an interpretation of my work and as a story with no end. No end to the PTSD, with which my husband, my child and I, are still struggling. It is not as dramatic as we have seen sometimes on TV. At least no blood has ran. But reality can be very subtle. There are no more weapons than words, a sharp tongue and the noise. But the wounds are visible, and the scar tissue too. Thank God, words can heal, too.” (website)

For more information on the poet, Bill Glose, visit his website.

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