Read Excerpts from The Chaffin Journal

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The Chaffin Award

Read Excerpts from The Chaffin Journal

Poetry

"Some Memories of Cincinnati"
by Larry W. Moore

In '37, of course, the Ohio
Came up those six blocks to our house
So fast you could watch it rise.
In the morning there were boats
Moored to the brick piers of our porch,
But we were spared when it crested there.

All this I could watch from my window
On the street, our Christmas tree
Still standing plastered
Into the lard tin in my room,
Awaiting the spring, an indulgence of
My father's heart, lacking the strength
To be broken again for the memory of
My brother, carried off when a different sort
Of flood engulfed the world in the wake of the War
And defied his doctor's skill to save even his own.

The winter before was hard, but harder still
That summer, hottest of my recollection,
Nights heavy with wet and sleepless,
Lying with my pillow on the window sill
Seeking any hint of air, while below
In the street at 3:00 AM there was
A shambling of fold descending to the river
In search of any respite, all around
The murmur of voices from every porch
Like so many urban cicadas.

No escape in those days except into
The dark fantasies of the icebox movie palaces,
And then only for an interval, while outside
August awaited just beyond the chill,
Tripping patrons at the door, staggering them
Into "The Genius of Water" in the Square.

Walking home, long past the Fauntleroy short breeches
Of my prosperous childhood, I felt the cardboard
Rubbing between my feet and what was left
Of the soles of that year's shoes, knowing
It would not keep out the damp when winter came again.
Hard weather for hard times, in those years
As if Nature too could not resist the urge
To get a boot in while we were down.