Hans

Hans, pronounced hands

in my case: my name. A
version of John, Juan, Evan,
Giovanni....Such school

nicknames as Fingers,
Hansburger & Hanzy
have caromed off it.

When I was 6, I asked
my mother if I could change
my name to "just plain Bill."
"No," she said. Parenting
by edict was in style then.
For years the tale of the request
made the rounds in the extended
family. (You're welcome!)

A Jewish professor
in graduate school, after I'd
known him a while, asked
me if my first name was German.
"No, Swedish," I reported.
He looked relieved. I felt
relieved he look relieved.
Neither of us named
what we felt. Now I wear

my Hans like an old
friendly flannel shirt.
Names! Like invisible
back-packs. Like signs
above the shops of us.
We answer to our name,
and for it.

hans ostrom 2023

Like People, We Converse

 We're conversing like people

who converse. A walking
commentary. Opinions
flourish like weeds.

"The way things should be"
and "the way things used to be"
become the engines
that drive our words. What if we
spoke of things we never speak of?--

And grandma said, "I'd like crows
to turn lake blue one year." To which
grandpa said, "I was never eager
to fall in love because I thought of
it as just another chore."

Instead we keep familiar packages
of words moving down
conversational conveyor belts.
Because we're tired. Because
we're accustomed. Because
we get together only a couple
times a year and just want
to get through the occasions safely.

The Son She Never Had

 

The son she never had visits her

one night.  He’s grown, a man

with stories to tell and scars,

 big knuckles.  At the table under

yellow light, she asks what it was

like to be a son without a mother.

 “Oh, I had a mother,” he says.

The lines on his face are rivers

of her dreams.  “She just wasn’t you.”

 He takes her hand and leads her

past fact to worn brown carpet

of the “family” room.  They dance.

 She lays her head on his chest.

Above her is the ceiling where

her husband’s cigar-smoke settled.

 Later they sit in the two big chairs.

“Do me a favor,” she asks, “and walk out

the door.  I want to know

 your manner of leaving.”  He

obliges, a good son.  Silence rushes back

into the house like winter air.

 On the porch she tells herself

he would have had such knuckles

and danced with her that way.

 He would have traveled far but come back.

In a factory he would have paused some

days in machinery roar and thought of her.

circa 1989/2021

 

Paying Respects

We found he iron garden-gate

linked to white pickets

hard and wondrous

to open. Ornamentation dated it.

Up the walkway then,

into her stifling house,

where she sat in her purple

dress and parchment skin,

saying what she thought

her whole life had taught

her. Almost too old to pity,

she was too austere to embrace.

The voice seemed to come

from years ago.

Our minds assured us

we would never grow

that weird if ever we

grew that old. Our minds

were confident we could

open the gate again, get

away. It stood out there

in advanced darkness. Inside,

the seconds of her clanking clock

ate the minutes of our patience.

Crop-Burning, Kansas

Dusk, and we're moving on I-35
through Kansas.  West of us, green
land dissolves into dissolving
available light. Sky flares

at the horizon. East of us,
flames razor yellow patterns
on black, burning undulating
land. In the car talking,

we weave a makeshift fabric
of family lore, wounds and
resentments, hilarities. One
of us glances ahead through

the windshield: rear lights
of cars burn hot and red
like lit cigarette tips.
Green land fades altogether.

Red sky goes pink, goes gray.

Night will arrive before Wichita
does. We're not anywhere very long.




hans ostrom 2017

Millipedes and Words

Those armored locomotive tubes,
millipedes, lived with us, resting
on cool cinder-block walls
in our tomb-like living room.

We left them alone unless guests
were expected. (You know how
guests are.) Otherwise, they stank
too much to mess with, excreting

hydrogen cyanide, and their
innards were too awfully, softly
much. (I killed one in the bathroom
once.) If we'd lived in Thailand, say,

where millipedes aspire to be snakes
then some frontier shit would have
gone down. Since they were only of
several purple-brown inches, co-

habitation worked satisfactorily.
This arrangement was decided
silently, no family discussion
(the horror). Words were to be spent
on work, hilarity, or arguments.



hans ostrom 2017

Return to Uncleton

Return to Uncleton

His uncle had named the town Uncleton,

served as mayor for fifty years.

Except to tidy up the dog’s grave,

he goes back only for the annual

Rust Festival. He owns snapshots

of the Rust Queens and their Oxidized Courts

from the last twenty years. The lake looks

different from before and smells.

His trousers slip off his buttocks,

and teenagers laugh, their goddamned

music thumping out of cars. He’s inherited

just a pinch of his uncle’s rage

but no property. The sun off the lake

makes him scowl. Where exactly is

the dog’s grave? He remembers how,

just a pup, the little bastard nipped him.

Uncleton, O Uncleton, I hate the way you

draw me back like english on a cue ball.

Copyright 2007/2017

"Men Who Leave," by Wendy Bishop