top of page

poem



by Julie Hensley

 

 

Fire and Water

 

 

Nohl has spread his guns out

for cleaning, arranged weapons

across an oil cloth

on the kitchen table

where the two of them

eat meals.

 

Not unusual, this ritual

on a winter night with snow

trapping them in tight,

his worksite shuttered

for two days. Both of them

a little stir crazy,

 

they’ve been fussing

all afternoon over nothing

and everything—the empty

cans he leaves on the end table,

the smell of the dog wet

with snowmelt, the puddles

on the flagstone entry,

the rate at which they’re going

through hay.

 

She made the mistake earlier

of bringing up the girl

from last spring, made the mistake

of saying she had never

been unfaithful.

 

Tonight, she’s rough

with the dishes, clanking

the plates into the strainer,

Their argument now distilled

to little sounds. The click

of the Colt Python as he opens

the cylinder.

 

His tiny bottles of solvents and oils

have the look of expensive cosmetics,

little brushes like the wands of mascara,

the scent that rises off the greasy towels

is cloying like crabapples

fermenting in the sun. 

 

The power’s been out for hours,

and kerosene lamps cast small circles of light,

strange shadows. Wax is starting to pool

around the candles lit on the mantle.

 

She is nearly finished, stirring

the silverware in the soapy water,

when she hears the metallic rattle

of loose cartridges, the spin

of the cylinder, the solid register

of the weapon clicking ready.

 

She ticks her eyes up

to where the darkened

window above the sink reflects

his posture: arm extended toward the back

of her head. She doesn’t move,

doesn’t lift her chin

from the gray suds. She rinses

the breadknife in her hands,

rinses and rinses and keeps rinsing

as if something as pure as water

might make them clean.

 


 

Julie Hensley is an Appalachian writer and core faculty member of the Bluegrass Writers Studio at Eastern Kentucky University, where she teaches both fiction and poetry. She has been awarded fellowships from Jentel Arts, Yaddo, Hambidge Center for Creative Arts and Sciences, Hypatia-in-the-Woods, and the Tyrone Guthrie Center. Her poems and stories have appeared in dozens of journals, including Image: Art, Faith Mystery, The Southern Review, Indiana Review, Gulf Stream Magazine, Blueline, Mom Egg Review, and Willow Springs. She is the author of a collection of poems, Viable (Five Oaks Press, 2015), and a book of fiction, Landfall: A Ring of Stories (Ohio State University Press, 2016), as well as two poetry chapbooks, The Language of Horses (Finishing Line Press, 2011) and Real World (Artist Thrive 2019). Her new novel, Five Oaks (Lake Union Publishing), is forthcoming.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

bottom of page