I.
The moon passes between Earth and sun,
its shadow crossing the crust of our lives.
History eventuates into now.
The sun shrinks, dies away—
the dark’s aperture swallows us
whole. This passing into blackness
completes itself in scalding light,
ringing the disk with torrid flame.
Spectacle of story, recollected
by belly, retina, brain—indelible as pain.
II.
A box truck stalls on the hill.
A dump truck tows a trailer up,
a planned rescue. A pick-up above
the box truck begins to push it
onto the trailer, its tongue popping up
from the cargo’s weight, the dump truck’s
back wheels leaving the ground,
its brakes helpless in mid-air. The box
truck, only half loaded, and the trailer,
the dump truck: all lunge downhill,
a parked forklift straight in their path,
the back wheels and tongue still raised
high—a triangular cavalcade skidding,
barreling, a dreadful behemoth on the lam.
III.
The son rushes to mount the dump truck.
His panicked father hastens down front,
angles his pick-up to halt the sliding
mass of steel. Unable to see his son
hurtling for the door, the levers, he crushes
him between dump truck and pick-up.
His son’s body crumples under the trailer.
The hoisted wheels drop from the sky, pinning
him again. He is broken. The silence
is staggering, shrill. The damage eclipses belief.
IV.
The piercing scream of metal on asphalt,
the father’s lurch of knowledge, riot of gut.
His spiraling agony—cataclysm of seared
retina, sun effaced by a fractious moon.
This father treads a relentless crepuscular
earth. His light passes each morning.
The shroud slips over him, envelops
him, nullifies thought, seals him up.
Annette Sisson lives in Nashville, TN with her husband, dog, and a small flock of hens. She is Professor of English at Belmont University, where she teaches and mentors students. In her free time, she enjoys baking, hiking, supporting local theater, watching the birds at her feeders, reading, and writing. Her publications include Zone 3, Rockvale Review, and Nashville Review, and she has poems forthcoming in Passager Magazine and The Blue Mountain Review. Her chapbook, A Casting Off, was published by Finishing Line Press in May 2019. She recently won The Porch Writing Collective’s poetry contest and was awarded honorable mention in Passager’s spring 2019 poetry contest.