Sign Wars
Each autumn brings the Sign Wars once again.
MUSSELLA versus TAYLOR for the crown
of Village Mayor. All the Councilmen
will pick a side while whispers spread through town.
The current, lifelong Clerk will lead a charge
against the young brash Super with a mouth
agrestic. He’s a contractor at large
with trucks that pull his banners. On the south
side of the town he’s landed leery jobs
that hurried through the Zoning Board Appeals.
The pumpkins ripen. Corn frosts on the cobs.
We’ll soon see how the voting body feels:
whether or not they deem their roads too rough
or if the Whaley Dam is up to snuff.
Super: Town Supervisor
Whaley Dam: a dam in England that partially collapsed in 2019 due to lack of maintenance, leading to the evacuation of thousands of people.
Stray Boy
I won five-bucks at nickel-pitch.
_I played a little bingo.
The craft-fair vendors weren’t rich.
_I bought a tchotchke dingo.
I chucked a baseball at a plate
_and dunked a fireman.
He took it well, was not irate.
_I rode upon a tram.
I sprayed a pistol in a race
_and won a Golden Fish.
The carny had a tattooed face.
_I craved a deep-fried dish.
But all my money I had burned
_on normalcy and fun.
I’m such a dope; I haven’t learned.
_But what is done is done.
I found a dumpster. Like a snake,
_I slithered right inside.
I found a last-night’s funnel-cake
_and gobbled it with pride.
All of the kids are heading home.
_They probably have a fridge.
But I will spend the night alone
_beneath a highway bridge.
Reid McGrath lives and writes in the Hudson Valley Region of New York.
The “Whaley Dam” in England was not the Dam I was thinking of, but I suppose that works too! The Whaley Lake Dam in Holmes, NY, and the water-level of said lake after the dam’s restoration, has been the matter of much controversy in my small little town.
The two poems are cleverly paired, Reid. “Sign Wars” creates the feeling of fall in a small town, where local elections do (in terms of contractor hiring) and don’t (in terms of longstanding ways of agricultural life) make much of a difference. This is the scene where you place “Stray Boy.” It’s heartbreaking to think of a child lacking home and food, slipping through whatever community help networks there are. Where I live near Los Angeles, he would not be alone: under-the-bridge encampments tend to be populous and dangerous for children. Your stray is living by a country boy’s wits: using a nickel to win five dollars, then spending it all on boyhood “normalcy and fun” but forgetting he needs to eat. His solution for that in the dumpster works for the moment, but stray dogs and cats lead short lives. God help the independent-minded boy!