Tom Chandler

September 25, 2017

“The Chandlers” by Tom ChandlerPosted by

Tom Chandler

THE CHANDLERS

The day my sister was born
my father stayed away from the hospital. 

A rocky pregnancy, laborious labor and it was 1962
and fathers were told to keep clear. 

Besides, I needed him here to heat cans of Chef Boyardee,
stir the silted Tang in my glass, frown over the sports page

and hold a needle to the match flame, squeeze my fingers too
tight and pry the splinter from my palm. 

Next day at school I found forbidden chips in my lunch bag,
a tuna sandwich with too much Miracle Whip, Twinkies and 

a bit of ash from his glowing Pall Mall and my baby sister
came home squalling that same afternoon and after that

we got old and much later he died, all of it just the way
it was supposed to go though nobody thought so at the time.

—from Rattle #56, Summer 2017

[download audio]

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Tom Chandler: “I set out to write ‘The Chandlers’ as a story about how my dad took care of me while my mother was in the hospital having my sister. It didn’t seem complete, though, until I summed up everything else in the last lines: ‘And then we got old, and much later he died,’ which is, of course, what happens to everybody, though we tend to think that’s somehow unusual when it happens to us.” (website)

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December 12, 2013

“A Kind of Lincoln” by Tom ChandlerPosted by

Tom Chandler

A KIND OF LINCOLN

Even now more eloquent
than those long April twilights
we’ve spent with our American cousin,
where over and over the finest actor
of his time catches a spur on the bunting,
limps to the fresh horse waiting forever
by the backstage door and yet again
a nation mourns, pushes grimly on
through the centuries watching you ride
that stone throne, your face a country
of sharp angles where irony
meets sadness, staring out.

—from Rattle #40, Summer 2013

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Tom Chandler: “I visited Ford’s Theater in Washington, DC, last year. Like everyone, I had been fascinated by the events of April 1865 ever since boyhood. Seeing how small and human-sized the theater is, and seeing the blood stains still on Lincoln’s chair in the Presidential box, seared the reality of that violent night into my heart. I knew I would have to write about it in order to know it clearly.” (www.tomchandlerpoet.com)

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February 7, 2010

“Ghosting” by Tom ChandlerPosted by

Tom Chandler

GHOSTING

He spread out his life which I sliced into words,
for although he had long owned the script rights
outright, his tweaking needed twisting:
change he would say when he meant desire;
love he would say when he meant desire.

Long down the languid afternoons he’d watch
flies buzz in terror at the screens, trying to escape
his dolor. He’d tell them his heart was an orange,
a tiny chipped cup locked deep in a dungeon
in France, then glance over to make sure
I’d scrape off the cheese:
all that failure and reward endured,
the midget uncle who’d fondled his knees.

Much later, as evening swelled to burst
before spilling its black ink so no one would see,
he rose up like smoke into roseate sky,
cloaked in the eloquence of his silence
with me choking back on the dust he dissolved to,
still clacking out the money-shot adjectives.

—from Rattle #31, Summer 2009

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