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What Happens When You Combine Aslan, Lawn Art, and Steam Shovels?

May 24th, 2007 | poetry, speculative fiction

You get a poem called “Garden of Stone and Flesh.” My attempt at blank verse for the time being.

Garden of Stone and Flesh

Frankie and Fran divorced and left a villa
in a culdesac. Fran’s weekend work bought the wrought
iron fence, each bar topped by a bulbous spike.
Frankie’s commission checks purchased a garden
of gray concrete statues, a Parthenon mass-
produced for discount home improvement stores.
Lions flanking the driveway sphyxed Aunt Jane
walking by, her dog pulling at the leash to escape
the strangle of concrete riddles. Benches
like empty thrones sat in the yard waiting
for some gardening god to rest, the cold stone
a shock to any divine backside. Concrete
deer and elephants, frogs and gnomes, and a mermaid
and children with stone stares missing pupils,
lacking focus. Static gods, immutable, hard.
Not like Fran’s children who changed despite her love.
Not like Frankie whose heart wandered where his eyes looked.
Not like Fran whose eyes turned to stone, pupils empty,
cold and alone in a garden of mass-produced idols
where no children played, where no couple loved
to imagine new figures filling each patch
of empty grass so the house sold in settlement.
The new owners’ children play “father time”
with hammers, knocking off noses and arms and heads
until dad wraps a rusty chain around each
statue’s neck and drags them one by one
behind his riding mower out to the curb
next to the trash cans and recycle bins and mail.
A week later his kids watched bulk pick up
park and scoop the pile with hydrolic jaws
“Like Mike Mulligan’s steam shovel,” said their dad.
“Or Aslan,” said his oldest. “An evil Aslan,” thought dad,
“who holds his breath and eats Narnias dead.”
The youngest son’s wide brown eyes watched each gray
body fall in the truck with a crash of dust.
And dad wondered what life could hide in stone.

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