Cider Press Review’s inaugural web issue, CPR Volume 14, Issue 1, is now online. Read new work by Aran Donovan, Mercedes Lawry, Daye Phillippo, Janet Barry, Athena Kildegaard, Luke Whisnant, Tim Suermondt, James Cox, Wendy Drexler, Jin Cordaro, Ronda Broatch, Julia Esacove, Stan Sanvel Rubin, Cory McClellan, René Char, Nancy Naomi Carlson, Wendy Taylor Carlisle, Sharon Olson, Jennifer Finstrom, Sandra Stone, Laura J. Martin, Doug Ramspeck, and Sara Dailey. Read the issue online today; download a Kindle version from Amazon next week.
Tag Archives: James Cox
The Flowered Shirt, by James Cox
The man waiting for the carpool ride to arrive,
standing in the hallway in the gray sharkskin suit,
tubes of Havana panatelas inside his coat pocket,
a starched white shirt, his wingtips shining, gray
felt trilby with a two inch band held by the brim
in his right hand—he looks the same as the man
who left yesterday morning and every yesterday,
all lined up in my mind like spotless edgeless
man-shaped dominoes, each one the same man,
the queue receding back through time, hundreds
of replicated sharkskin-suited men with cigars
and hats, thousands of them, reduced in shades
and sizes by a seemingly infinite distance, every
one starched white and stiff gray. Which one bears
the distinction that makes him mine? What would
that distinction be? All of them left to go fishing. They
sat on the stern seat of as many boats as they were,
at the helm of the outboard engines, steering out
to sea; the line of boats, the gray-suited men
with cigars and trilby hats, taking off in series
from the shore like synchronized divers in a show—
not one looked back or thought to give a sign. Thick
dark clouds rolled over the rapidly blackening sea;
all the boats and men vanished. Lightning strokes
plunged iridescent yellow bowls under the surface;
no shadows sinking, the whine of engines gone,
no sound but the distant storm. Flat silvery-backed
fish jumped out of the water as I walked the beach
going north. I came to a table set out at the edge-line
of high tide. I found the square gift box one of them
had left behind. When I lifted the lid and looked inside,
the obviousness of it struck me: the uncanny under-
standing; the absurd, perfectly conceived wisdom.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 14, Issue 1.