Night Figure Skater
by R. Gerry Fabian
On Lake Ellyn, floodlights drenched the ice
with enough luminosity to let
wives leave dishes in the sink,
husband with the chores,
to lace up their figure skates,
and to skate out
past long-bladed boys, crouching down,
streaking in wide loops for more speed,
past couples holding hands listening to Bing Crosby,
to the center of the lake,
a spot reserved for them.
One lady in a pink skirt
and white skintight blouse made figure eights,
forward, then backwards,
careful, exact, extending her arms, cutting
the eight over and over like an incision,
as she always did to
burrow into the core of the lake
her mark, the fact that she was there.
When the eight was indelible, she’d swing outward,
her legs quick on her skate’s edges,
easily speeding past
the boys, widening her circle, once,
twice, building up speed until
she leapt—suspended
in the night—turning twice and landing,
whipping around in a spin,
arms folded across her chest,
whirling, her body a blur, round
and round and
round,
accelerating, as if nothing
could stop her, as if propelled by a turbine.
If she had extended her arms,
she would fling her off the lake,
affix to the sky.
With one arm out, then another, one skate loosened,
she stuck it in the ice and
stopped.
Her arms raised, she’d stand, her head back
and everyone else, all skaters having stopped
to gawk, would applaud,
the floodlight seemingly drawn to her alone.
Whatever was at home—the vacuum, laundry,
dust, husband, kids, migraine—would spin away from her
for she was the master of the moment
and no one could deny it.
The Smell of Light
by R. Gerry Fabian
Midnight’s paw presses on my shoulder. 12:56. In a dream, I’m speeding down a superhighway glazed with ice. There’s no steering wheel. My foot is on the pedal. She sits like a black sphinx. Do you really need to go? I pull on my shirt and pants, follow her down the dark stairwell into night that doesn’t seem like night. Daffodils drift on the hillside under the full moon with an unearthly translucence. Far off, there is the steady blasts of a foghorn in the bay, “Not here! “Not here!” warning whatever may be caught in the unseen. Midnight sniffs and tugs at the leash. She pees, lifts her head, alert. The creek slides under the roots of fallen ash. The sky is clear. The air seems brushed and cleaner, less imposing than in daylight. I could spend my life in its godlike calm. Traffic’s diminished, done with getting here and there to nowhere. There’s a tug on the leash. We’re under braided tangles of willows. She stalks by shrubs and daffodils attending to each. She sniffs from shrub to grass, the whole hillside, bottom to top, undreaming my life.
About the Author
Bruce Spang, former Poet Laureate of Portland, is the author of two novels, The Deception of the Thrush and Those Close Beside Me. His most recent collection of poems, All You’ll Derive: A Caregiver’s Journey, was just published. He’s also published four other books of poems, including To the Promised Land Grocery and Boy at the Screen Door (Moon Pie Press) along with several anthologies and several chapbooks. He is the poetry and fiction editor of the Smoky Blue Literary and Arts Magazine. His poems have been published in journals across the United States. He teaches courses in fiction and poetry at Ollie at University of North Carolina in Asheville and lives in Candler, NC with his husband Myles Rightmire and their five dogs, five fish, and thirty birds.