October Harvest
NICOLE EMMELHAINZ
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Dust kicked up by this & hundreds
of harvests hugs heavy the wheel wells & the rest of the machine’s green body. A finger dragged through leaves a semi-permanent interruption. Bits of stalks & soybean shells litter this beast’s hollows, linger for years, measure the decades in depth & decay. Would you remember the harvests from six or fourteen years ago? No. Their leavings layered together & left in the barn for a winter’s rest with many seasons’ worth of exhaled air. In the fields, the frozen mud holds the presence of the combine’s tires in imperfect sculptures. For some time now, my feet have been caught in these dimples of the earth, lungs filled with barn breath inhaled & held. For some time now, the wait of weather & worn machines has slunk forward & I’ve watched you standing in the garden rows, kicking dirt clods as another autumn evening turns cold. |
Night Dreams & Daymares
NICOLE EMMELHAINZ
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These hours before you wake
night hangs above you like some heavy, damp cloth on a line & trickles tiny drops between your pressed eyelids. You soak them up like dry leaves. Now, everything leans back, curves, captured as if on a globe. You are Chile, long, narrow, full of climates: lonely deserts, clingy jungles, distant glaciers. In sticky sleep speech, you say “Dad.” You ask him to softly creep across the kitchen, to crack chicken eggs in a green bowl & leave them for the big brown & black cat. You roll over, twitch, legs spasm then all still. I need to drop down to the bedside to watch that slight rise & fall of your T-shirt. Nothing ever leaves us, these night dreams & daymares. Our thoughts ghost outside the corners of eyes, linger in the ceiling corner’s cobwebs. Three more hours then I’ll catch you glancing through the pantry cupboards, palming eggs like a child with a buffalo nickel. You won’t know what I saw before a timid sunrise, sleep like sweet dew still sliding off the roof of your mouth. |
Nicole Emmelhainz is part of the 5th generation to grow up on a family farm in central Ohio. She lives in Newport News, VA with her husband and cat, and is an Assistant Professor of English at Christopher Newport University. She spends most of her time teaching, talking, and writing about writing.