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Category: Poetry

POEM: Marge

Published 29 July 2023 by Jason Crane

Marge

My “lunch lady” voice is, to some degree, channeling her.
Other than FDR, and Burgess Meredith as the Penguin,
she was the only person I ever saw using a cigarette holder.
I remember her with a perm, with deep crinkles around her eyes,
and with oversized glasses on a chain around her neck.
(Uncle Jack would be in the next room,
monitoring the local first responders on his scanner.
In his younger days he’d wake the kids when the fire bell rang,
and they’d all rush off in pajamas and jackets to see the fire.)
She was a housekeeper at a swanky resort
in the swanky town our non-swanky family called home.
And that’s it, really. She worked and married (twice)
and raised kids and had thoughts and feelings and dreams,
but to me she’s a brief series of half-remembered sketches,
as I will be someday to people I can’t yet imagine meeting.

/ / /

29 July 2023
Charlottesville VA

This is poem 8 in a new series, 50 Days Till 50 Years. I’m writing a poem a day between now and my 50th birthday. I’m going to try to focus on memories of my past, and the people who inhabited it.

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POEM: Our Bodies, Ourselves

Published 28 July 2023 by Jason Crane

Our Bodies, Ourselves

I came back from a week in Plymouth,
where my grandparents had been plying me
with Ring Dings and unlimited TV.
I got out of their car and saw
the look of horror on my mom’s face.
Every night for weeks she made me
jog around our neighborhood
to lose the weight I’d gained on the trip.
I was six, maybe seven, years old.
I finished lunch before writing this.
I logged every calorie into an app.
In six weeks I’ll be 50.
It never goes away.

/ / /

28 July 2023
Charlottesville VA

This is poem 7 in a new series, 50 Days Till 50 Years. I’m writing a poem a day between now and my 50th birthday. I’m going to try to focus on memories of my past, and the people who inhabited it.

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POEM: For KB

Published 28 July 2023 by Jason Crane

For KB

August 1987, in the parking lot outside Canandaigua Academy.
That sounds posh but it wasn’t.
It was the summer before my freshman year.
I was waiting for marching band practice to begin.
I had just learned that I was going to be playing saxophone;
an instrument I’d never even held, let alone played.
A small group of guys were standing off to one side.
One of them was dividing up the drum machine parts
from the beginning of “Mama” by Genesis.
Each person was given one to sing.
I had never heard the song.
It’s quite possible I’d never heard of Genesis.
I wandered closer. He gave me a part.
Maybe the hi hat.

July 2023, on a bench in Canandaigua.
I don’t live there anymore and neither does he.
We’re sitting outside the old music store,
telling stories about days gone by.
His wife is there, his teenage child is back at his parents’ place.
One of my boys is working in DC before his senior year of college,
the other is working in PA before his senior year of high school.
Neither of my kids joined the marching band.
His kid plays cello, so the odds don’t seem good there, either.
We both still listen to Genesis, though maybe not as often as we used to.

/ / /

27 July 2023
Charlottesville VA

This is poem #6 in a new series, 50 Days Till 50 Years. I’m writing a poem a day between now and my 50th birthday. I’m going to try to focus on memories of my past, and the people who inhabited it.

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POEM: Roll To Me

Published 27 July 2023 by Jason Crane

Roll To Me

We had the three networks and PBS and UHF
and the nearest music store was 45 minutes away.
The late shows had musical guests, so once we got a VCR
I started taping the bands I liked, or the bands I wanted to like.
10,000 Maniacs & Del Amitri & Black 47 &
Go West & Blues Traveler & & &.
The tracking was bad on the tape and the reception
had never been good to begin with, but I watched those songs
again and again until the artists were no longer even visible,
and then I just listened, until even the sound went.
I backed into a lot of music in those days.
It wasn’t about searching. It was about chancing upon;
accidentally getting a copy of On The Corner before
ever even hearing Kind Of Blue. Most of my music
was on records from my grandpa or dubbed cassettes
of things in my friends’ collections. In the mid-80s
I went to the tape shop in the mall and bought the first music
I’d ever paid for with my own money: Chuck Mangione’s
An Evening Of Magic — Live At The Hollywood Bowl.
It was a double cassette. A thick brick of brilliance.
When I learned to drive, I always wanted to borrow the Escort
because it had a tape deck. The Soul Cages & Signals &
Seconds Out & Bring On The Night & Brain Salad Surgery &
Running In The Family & Love Over Gold & The Final Cut,
all blasting out in the Ontario County night.
When it snowed, I’d put on a tape of the Star Wars soundtrack
and drive the deserted back roads with the brights on —
the poor kid’s hyperspace.

/ / /

26 July 2023
Charlottesville VA

This is poem #5 in a new series, 50 Days Till 50 Years. I’m writing a poem a day between now and my 50th birthday. I’m going to try to focus on memories of my past, and the people who inhabited it.

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POEM: Solidarity

Published 25 July 2023 by Jason Crane

Solidarity

We were in one of those restaurants that had decided
the 70s were plenty modern enough, thank you,
and had kept their fake wood paneling for thirty years.
One by one the hospital workers filed in,
dropping their folded pieces of paper into a box
while the union staff and the bosses watched.
It was my first campaign. My first time seeing
people decide whether to take back control of their lives.
Earlier that afternoon I’d been on the phone for hours,
making sure people came out to vote, reminding them
why it mattered, why they’d ever wanted a union.
As the sun set and darkness came on, the line slowed.
Finally it was over. The time limit was up. All that was left
was to dump out the ballot box and answer the question
we’d been working months to pose.
The counting felt like an eternity. Then:
A victory – the workers had voted to form a union.
I ran outside and burst into tears, then called Julie,
the organizer who’d trained me, to tell her the news.
I could hear cheers from the restaurant.
They got louder as I headed back inside.

/ / /

25 July 2023
Charlottesville VA

This is poem #4 in a new series, 50 Days Till 50 Years. I’m writing a poem a day between now and my 50th birthday. I’m going to try to focus on memories of my past, and the people who inhabited it.

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POEM: No Ice Cream

Published 25 July 2023 by Jason Crane

No Ice Cream

I am walking on a sidewalk
down a hill
toward an ice cream shop
that has a wall of glass brick.

I am holding the hand of a woman
whose face I can’t see.

I am very little.

My arm is upraised
because we are holding hands,
as if I’m asking to be noticed.

When we arrive at the ice cream shop,
the glass brick fills my field of vision.
It is both mundane and magical,
like the wall of a ruined castle.

This memory contains no ice cream.

After years of tests and probes,
it turned out it wasn’t the dairy
that was the problem.

/ / /

24 July 2023
Charlottesville VA

This is poem #3 in a new series, 50 Days Till 50 Years. I’m writing a poem a day between now and my 50th birthday. I’m going to try to focus on memories of my past, and the people who inhabited it.

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POEM: Charles Street

Published 23 July 2023 by Jason Crane

Charles Street

That’s me at the door, crying,
watching my mom and her boyfriend
walk across the street to the car.
Maybe I didn’t understand
that she’d be coming back.
Or maybe I understood
that she wouldn’t be.

/ / /

23 July 2023
Charlottesville VA

This is poem #2 in a new series,
50 Days Till 50 Years. I’m writing
a poem a day between now and my
50th birthday. I’m going to try to focus
on memories of my past, and the people
who inhabited it.

Leave a Comment

POEM: Watching The Golf

Published 22 July 2023 by Jason Crane

Watching The Golf

I have the golf on in the background.
This is a very surprising way
for me to begin a poem.
I am not, by nature, a fan.
But the sounds remind me of my grandpa,
who liked nothing better
than to watch the golf
on a weekend afternoon.
Even then, as a kid,
I remember thinking it was boring.
Calming, in its way,
but odd to watch on TV.
He used to play, my grandpa.
He and his friends used to spend
weekends dressed in argyle and knickers,
walking around the manicured courses
of western Massachusetts.
In the few photos I’ve seen
they look very happy.
My grandpa stopped golfing
as a younger man. Maybe my age now.
Which is odd, come to think of it.
During his retirement,
when he had all that free time,
he stopped using it for a thing he loved.
Instead he tuned in and listened
to the whispering men.
My grandpa was a quiet man.
But in those photos he looks different.
He looks like he might have been a man
who liked to laugh, liked to tell jokes,
liked to throw an arm around the shoulders
of another man in knickers.
I think about my grandpa a lot.
About what he knew. And when.
And about why he kept on, and why
he stopped.

/ / /

22 July 2023
Charlottesville VA

This is poem #1 in a new series,
50 Days Till 50 Years. I’m writing
a poem a day between now and my
50th birthday. I’m going to try to focus
on memories of my past, and the people
who inhabited it.

Leave a Comment

POEM: Everybody Loves The Sound

Published 21 July 2023 by Jason Crane

Everybody Loves The Sound

The toy train at Wegmans
goes around a track on the ceiling
and makes me think of your dad,
which then makes me think of you,
and of grocery shopping with your parents,
and how the three of you
would always talk about prices,
and sometimes I’d make jokes,
but I loved it, loved listening,
loved being inside that
little world of yours, under
the toy train at Wegmans.

/ / /

20 July 2023
Charlottesville VA

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POEM: North From Prattsburgh

Published 16 July 2023 by Jason Crane

North From Prattsburgh

I really do get
that an infinite
number of monkeys
would eventually
write Hamlet,
but driving on
a country road
with an empty
passenger seat
I saw three signs —
OWENS
BEAN
WOODRUFF
— within 60 seconds
and my heart jumped
in my chest
and even Carl Sagan
would give me a pass on that.

/ / /

15 July 2023
Farmington NY

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POEM: I Waited

Published 9 July 2023 by Jason Crane

I Waited

On the couch today I slipped between dimensions.
You were just in the other room. A few feet away.
I stayed very still, waiting for you to come back in
There was space on the couch for both of us.
The fan was making a little breeze and perhaps
just enough noise to mask the sound of you.
That must have been why I couldn’t hear you.
So I waited. Breath held. Hands at my sides.
Anticipating your return to the space where you fit.
But you didn’t come.
I felt myself slip back into this world.
The one where you’re not here.
Where it’s just me in this apartment.
Where it’s just me every single day.

/ / /

8 July 2023
Charlottesville VA

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haiku: 5 July 2023

Published 6 July 2023 by Jason Crane

six minutes to midnight
sending out ones and zeroes
a fox darts into bushes

/ / /

5 July 2023
Charlottesville VA

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