by Phillip Sterling
First Day of School
I go to let the dog out first thing and here’s September on the other side of the door. Kind of yellowish pink, like the inside of a peach—the kind that doesn’t grow very well in Northern zones. It’s the first day of school, says September, by order of the Governor. Which means it’s time to clean up the yard.
I take a shovel to the dog shit, a rake to the garden. I deadhead the daisies and coneflowers. The bees shun me—honey and bumble alike. They’d rather tease the eaves, which, I notice, need paint. So I go back in, to see what I might have in the basement.
On my way through the kitchen I find the Governor on TV, visiting a local school. This year you’ll be safe, she says; she demonstrates how to lock down the classroom, how to crouch beneath the computer tables. Stay away from the windows, says the Governor, and when the camera pans that way I can see September in the background, leering.
This year you’ll be safe, repeats the Governor. Dodge ball is prohibited during recess. There will be no recess outside. This year will be different than the last eight—the last sixteen years—she corrects, emphatically. No more bullying. No more partisanship.
I find it hard to believe, so I flip through the channels. Coming this season, says a pert, wide-eyed woman on PBS, we’ll discuss The Book of the Dead.
Sure enough, there’s all kinds of painting stuff in the basement. I decide the stain called "Autumn Leaves" would be a good choice, so I grab a two-inch polyester brush that still seems pliable and am headed back out when—you guessed it—September’s on the other side of the door. It’s the first day of school, she begins—but I’ve decided she’s got nothing to add that I haven’t already heard.
I’m not ready, I say. Leave me alone.
I return the stain to the basement to make a point. And now "Autumn Leaves" sits among the Mason jars and paint cans assembled there, silent and safe, on the sturdy metal shelves.
Under the Stairs
We have been known to keep storage under the stairs; the storage under the stairs is removable.
Mostly it is dark and quiet under the stairs.
Mostly we keep our sap buckets and spiles under the stairs.
I first learned of love under the stairs.
We have been known to keep tabs under the stairs; we have been known to hide things under the stairs, for safekeeping. We have self-abused under the stairs. We have prayed for forgiveness under the stairs.
Remember the day we found a trombone under the stairs, with an odd silver bell and small mouthpiece? (Your nephew’s, you thought, who stashed his high school yearbooks under the stairs.)
I love the dark buckets and the damp memories, the first lick of dick under the stairs (slicker and smaller than expected, not unlike a trombone mouthpiece). We were boys of ten under the stairs. We were children again under the stairs.
Mostly it is dark and quiet under the stairs. Mostly we feel safe under the stairs.
The soldiers will not find us under the stairs. The police will not think to look under the stairs.
We have sheltered sad ghosts under the stairs; we have filed our sorry wills and testaments; we have boxed our parents’ heirlooms and ashes; we have added electricity, a forty-watt bulb.
The fire, it was believed, began under the stairs, where incendiaries were left by the previous occupants. We blame the previous occupants, their carelessness. There were dozens of dry phone books under the stairs, rare home movies in sixteen-millimeter format; our jars of pickled beets under the stairs exploded.
What accounts have been lost! What star-darkened histories! What flush of stark flesh! What gaunt memories will no longer be recounted under stairs!
Phillip Sterling’s books include Lessons in Geography: The Education of a Michigan Poet (essays/memoir, Cornerstone, 2024), In Which Brief Stories Are Told (short fiction, Wayne State U Press, 2011), Amateur Husbandry (microfiction, Mayapple, 2019), and five collections of poetry, most recently Local Congregation: Poems Uncollected 1985-2015 (Main Street Rag 2023).