Theresa Boyar three poems in Literary Potpourri

It used to be counting quarters, measuring
detergent like snow into sealable sacks.
Now it's pulling lint through a trap door,
the basement strung with coated lines.

We use clothespins left behind from the
family who used to live here. They've gone
soft and gray, as my mother's own abandoned
pins have no doubt done by now.

Still, I like to think they're clamping overalls
and spotted bibs to the outdoor lines
at the trailer court's central laundry facility.
As children, we wandered as if blind

through workshirts gone stiff with sun, knocking
against support poles, screeching when we blundered
into the impossibly large undergarments worn by
the woman at the end of Row D. In the basement,

it is winter. The furnace vent blows sweatpants and shirts
throughout the day. I remove them at night,
walking barefoot beneath the lines, moving like
air through the ghost arms, the briefly dangling legs.

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	Poems by Theresa Boyar AUTUMN WALK WITH KEEGAN You carry your lunch in a sack, swinging it from the pink curled knot of your left fist. The trail is damp, a swath of papery leaves blacken in the mud. Reckless, your fingers dart for what the trees have given up, the shrugged-off bits of orange and yellow. You clutch a worm-holed russet in your right hand. Its stem runs the length of your calf. Near the river, a half-frozen bee wrestles the air. The husk of a cocoon drifts in a puddle, turning in shallow circles. You reach for the bee and your leaf sails out on the water. It vanishes in foam while you stare. If I could paint you, then this: lips cold, glazed eyes reading the brutal coat of the river which swallows everything it is offered and cannot see you as I do: A passenger feeding on foreign vegetables, your sure breath misting the silent air. © 2003 Theresa Boyar
	LAUNDRY It used to be counting quarters, measuring detergent like snow into sealable sacks. Now it's pulling lint through a trap door, the basement strung with coated lines. We use clothespins left behind from the family who used to live here. They've gone soft and gray, as my mother's own abandoned pins have no doubt done by now. Still, I like to think they're clamping overalls and spotted bibs to the outdoor lines at the trailer court's central laundry facility. As children, we wandered as if blind through workshirts gone stiff with sun, knocking against support poles, screeching when we blundered into the impossibly large undergarments worn by the woman at the end of Row D. In the basement, it is winter. The furnace vent blows sweatpants and shirts throughout the day. I remove them at night, walking barefoot beneath the lines, moving like air through the ghost arms, the briefly dangling legs. © 2003 Theresa Boyar
	DUST The man who fell from the roof of the Pier Street Apartments left behind a pair of folded eyeglasses and the sight of his mother who would have driven her needle to pierce a cloud rather than let her hands rest in her lap: busy fingers are the psychotic's workshop. She couldn't stop. She turned her back when he begged her to slow the flood of endless tidying, – Oh, look, that's a spot! – discerning corners where cobwebs were sure to happen soon, patches of the terrace garden that needed to be dug out and replanted altogether. Crocheted blankets for the shelter, pastel caps for unloved newborns, potholders for the poor of St. Maurice all piled up clean and high near the bedroom window, where she paused briefly and watched the momentary shade her son's dropping body cast across the room like dust. © 2003 Theresa Boyar § § § Theresa Boyar lives in Helena, Montana, with her husband and two sons. Her writing has appeared in The Florida Review, Lynx Eye, and Red River Review. She was a 1998 Pushcart Prize nominee and was a finalist for the 2002 Katharine Anne Porter Prize in Fiction. She can be reached at boyar4@aol.com