Nairac
Did you rest easy, captain,
your bearskin left behind as you sang
old rebel songs to prove your worth?
Even the kidnappers called you brave,
marveled at your strength, one kick
to open the car door, a futile act of resistance.
Whatever you said, you said nothing
even as they worked you over,
a rough tuning-up in the quiet barn,
a night of cracked knuckles and split lips.
Did they, that luckless band who picked you up,
know your name before the end?
Before they took you out into that field
in Louth, or some bog to join the other
bodies, Iron Age sacrifices to please
some deity or another, a king’s death
to bring the crops once more to life:
strangled and pinned to the fallow soil
or dispatched with a single shot behind
the ear, blindfold and cigarette exempted
for an evening’s expedience.
“This is not the brown crap
of the mouth-washed English,”
says the teacher, her four teeth
stained with age, “Today you
will learn to brew as we do in my country.”
Steam hissing from the goose-necked kettle,
she pours over the loose leaves in the gai wan,
her hand shaking from the effort before rising
to prowl the low tables and sweating students,
correcting our form and poise, precise in her critiques.
My mind wanders as the kettle comes to boil,
a whiff of incense as the plastic fan whirs.
Is she a fraud? Some grandmother paid
to play the part, or the real deal: a cave woman
from Henan as the advertisements claimed.
I muse beneath the pipa’s artful twang,
streamed on Spotify, and cringe at the advert, wondering,
but I’ll never know for sure; the kettle beeps,
just as she looms in the smoky room.
Standing over me as I fill the lidded cup,
my fingers frozen in a claw, she stops me:
“You are too young to be so crippled,” she says,
“but that is the way of things. Pour it out
and start again.” No sympathy, just tea.
Gong Fu Lessons
Close the oak door and lock yourselves in tight.
Gripping your scissors overhand, now wait.
Consider if you make a pretty corpse,
then purge that from your mind: focus, listen.
Take the office pets and hang-arounds with
you. Watch them mill all about, panicked---
but you must pay these few no mind at all,
and be ready for what may come downrange.
You know, this is the only chance you get;
last stand, here in the poetry room. You,
some undergrads, and the Bard's collected
works against some fucked up teen with a gun.
When the all clear comes at last, take down your
barricade. Change your green coat and go on
about your day, your business is your own.
Call your mother, go home and drink some wine.
False Alarm
John Rutherford is a poet living and writing in Beaumont, TX. Since 2018 he has been an employee of the Department of English at Lamar University. His work can be found in The Concho River Review, Texas Poetry Assignment, The Basilisk Tree, and his 2023 chapbook Birds in a Storm from Naked Cat Publishing. He is an MFA student at the University of St. Thomas.