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Best Poems Written by Emerson Adkins

Below are the all-time best Emerson Adkins poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | Emerson Adkins Poem

The Bottomless Pit

From the bottom of an abandoned gravel pit
behind my childhood home, seated, 
leaning against its hardpacked sandy side,
he watched the July sun set,
the empty prescription bottle at his side.

Did he walk that day to his unnatural fate
slowly, shoulders rolling like a big cat,
alternating first one, then the other, 
forward, head bent, one black errant
curl tumbling across his troubled forehead.

Did he hesitate or did he hurry
and did he think of me, just 12,
soon to be fatherless, before he
began his two weeks of decomposing
in the hot Texas sun until
the man on horseback found him
while looking for a lost calf. 

I couldn't blame my mother 
for the divorce she filed.
I had wanted him to leave, too,
and hadn't I prayed he would die
when he dragged her over the yard,
by a handful of her hair clasped
tightly in his fist,
because she had cut it without his permission.
		
Especially the next day when I found
the clump of auburn hair caught in the lush 
purple blooms of the wisteria bush,
I wanted him to die.

He played his harmonica for me,
and I sang, "Daddy's Little Darling, 
Don't you think I'm sweet?"
But I prayed my dad would die,
and though I asked God to ignore those
prayers of terror, I will never be able to
love enough wayward men to save my dad.

Details | Emerson Adkins Poem

Grandmother

"A child, more than all other gifts
That earth can offer to declining man,
Brings hope with it, and forward-looking thoughts."

			W. Wordsworth
								

I am your grandmother.
I spent 24 years making
parenting mistakes, so I think
I'm pretty well trained now,
pretty worn down, open-minded
and accepting.
I think we'll be good friends.

At sixteen, your mother 
said she was having a baby 
and held up to me the blue pastic
device that tested her urine stream
like when she held up the blue ribbon
she won in kindergarten for the best
easter bunny nest made from marshmallows 
and dyed yellow coconut.

Then she threw the blue device out 
into the space between us on the bed, 
like it was the best card in her deck, 
her ace in the hole.
Your father waited in the other room
sitting in the thick silence,
afraid to breathe and miss
my response.

You and your mother did all the work,
but I was there at your birth, 
Standing alongside, coaching your
mother to good contractions until
I was exhausted from gritting my
teeth and pushing too.

And your dad was there, too,
but closer to the business end 
so he could be the first to know the sex.

 
An unsolicited psychic had told us
you would be a girl, 
and when your dad was told,
he sulked all day 
like it was a conspiracy 
between the women to produce 
only other woman.
He wanted another guy, 
someone to give the men the edge, 
a male child.

When your mother's body could 
keep you from the world no longer,
your head appeared, eyes tightly
shut and a pout on your lips.
Your dad was watching closely,  
the shoulder, the belly and then
his arms flew up in the air 
like he'd made the touchdown
and he cried, "It's a Boy, 
I told you, I told you,"
like he and I had placed a bet.

But then he saw how much
I could love the boy child.

I'm a pretty good grandmother, 
and I think we'll be good friends.

Details | Emerson Adkins Poem

The Leftovers

I was cleaning my room tonight  
and came across a guitar pick,
one of your used.
		
A further search 
among broken staple cartridges,
multi-colored plastic coated 
and classic metal paperclips and 
pennies, produced  
five other picks, 
worn down from their
original rounded triangles
to somewhat odd circles.  
		
I laid the picks out in a circle
like flat quartz rocks against
the sand-colored formica of my desk.
Two sky blues, one pink 
and two tortoise shells.
I close my eyes and hear your blues,
and mine surge like a wave
until I gasp for air.  
		
I treasured away your discarded picks
in a heart-shaped ceramic dish 
that got broken somehow
in the move at the separation.  
There should be more than this,
but I became unsupportive, you said,
when I tired of the smoky bars,
and then I wanted a degree,
which absorbed any extra energy,
so you no longer pitched me your picks
or thought I cared.
		
Maybe someone new gets your leftovers,
But I'm better off not knowing, 
just in case there is a limit past
the pain of which I couldn't take.
But I'll keep living anyway,
As long as there is a sun in the morning 
and the moon at night,  
I'll live for the rises and sets
if that's all I get.

Details | Emerson Adkins Poem

A Little Crazy

I went a little crazy tonight,
a little over the edge.
Reading the natal
chart prepared for me 
by an astrologist in Poetry
class and it all rang too true,
the good
and the bad
was hard to take
sitting there so alone
without you
without anyone
I began to cry
but not for your return
or theirs,
another path draws me now
and good
or bad
I'll have to see
it through until the bitter end
or until it no longer matters,
until my mother's
creeping, bulging, bursting 
tumors take over the body
the breast I nursed
the cancer I imbibed
my own breast barely saved.
What is our goal? the surgeon
said, and I said 
Save the breast
and we did.

Now I'm in college,
at my age can you imagine
and I surely have some reading 
to do and this higher
education is almost too much
sometimes but I love
it and hate that 
I failed to pay attention
for several months and now
no one moves around in my
space except me and 
I must have driven away
everyone and thing 
has left me now but
I do enjoy my solitude
though not quite enough sometimes.

Details | Emerson Adkins Poem

The Voice

She hears the ring from half sleep,
and reaches out in the direction of
sound, fumbling, spilling last night's anesthetic wine,
something new she's trying to ease the loneliness.
The image of the red soaking into the carpet,
there for eternity like a blood stain, 
Fires her synopses and she grabs then the 
still ringing phone and a sock to soak the stain.
"Hello" she says weakly and a little breathless
in her attempts with the sock.  
"Hello" he deeply and resonantly returns
and time stops.

His voice is like honey covering 
and shielding her from the tiresome world
Like when his body covered hers in love all
those nights and days before he left.
And a pleasant tingle in her spine
and the sudden inability to breathe
Tells her she still loves him, no matter what she says.
But he has called to talk to her son
and "I've got it" the son says on the other line.
"Okay" she says breathlessly strangling now for air
and places the phone carefully back in its cradle.
The deep honey voice still hums in her mind,
and she basks in the afterglow, a secret pleasure,
And wishes she could feel at least this good forever.

Details | Emerson Adkins Poem

Hooked

He took almost everything he brought to 
Or ever bought in nine years 
It's hard to remember what is whose.  

He may have forgotten the cactus in the den 
	with its big pulpy stalk,
Was the first gift he sent me,
The one that fell on the receptionist at the office,
Leaking a white ooze from its injury,
And she a red one from hers,
	because he took it.  
And my birthday lamp, too.
He took it.

I'm liquidating what's left, 
and even though I love that maple table,
I'll have to let it go.
There won't be room in my smaller place.

I want to press my cheek against its cool shiny 
Smoothness and smell the wood one last time, 
But my daughter already feels guilty enough 
For the fight they had 
The final one, the reason she thinks he left.

So Goodbye, I say, to each piece of the puzzle,
Unraveling the years like so much yarn.
Stepping out now into uncertainty, 
I'm hoping the universe opens up to
Fill this void with something other
Than what I have filled it with too quickly in the past.

That's how they get you, you know
With that great wonderful hook.

Details | Emerson Adkins Poem

Good Luck

Walking a last inspection through the devastation of this home
		we once shared,
I find a small crystal on the carpet and pick it up.
Its surface is rough and cold,
but I would never have noticed it you were still here.

I try to remember where I first picked it up, and
I think it was that summer in the Grand Canyon
Where you kept violating the Danger! signs,
Just, I think, to hear me plead with you 
	to conform
for your own good.

I put the crystal in my pocket for luck.
I'll need it.

Details | Emerson Adkins Poem

South Rim North Face

I'm going to get a new subject
or an old one back.
All my poems are about him anyway,
And my poetry group might like to 
see something light out of me.
		
So maybe we could fall in love again.
We could descend together once more into
the canyon from the south rim,
deceptively easy and peaceful on the descent,
the return trip much, much the more difficult.
You could tell me again of your 
adventure that summer when your
friend slipped and you saved his
life with a twig and a prayer.
And we could drive again over the Rockies,
My stomach rising with the altitude
until it is at my throat at 14,000 cold 
feet in August, glaciers of black ice,
never thawed in thousands of years
contrast with our rented Ford Taurus.
In that place time changes nothing.
Down below, the only thing certain is change.

Details | Emerson Adkins Poem

Friday

Always Friday has been
my favorite day;
not Saturday with
its frantic pace, 
or Sunday with Monday's 
anticipation, 
but Friday with 
Saturday's full potential
awaiting, like 
standing at the door 
of Westminister Abbey,
not having any idea 
what will lie on the
other side but
feeling it will be grand.
But when inside it is
too much, too complicated
with its high arching
ceilings, too high
to make out the fine details.

When you were away, 
Wanting you was wonderful,
imagining a chance meeting,
a close warmth behind me 
and I would turn and 
smell your heat
not touching but standing
so close my nipples swell and
stretch to you with longing.

But then you came back and
Watching you drink
and watching you sleep,
I knew there was something there
I didn't understand like the
fine details in the high arches
of the cathedral and my
Friday dreams were flattened
in the dull thud of Saturday's 
lost potential.

Details | Emerson Adkins Poem

Empty

A great sadness has settled down upon me
a misty cloud of cold
I can hardly breathe
and I can barely see
and I'm damp and chilled
and in need of the scent of my lover.

A sometime intellectual but hardly
more than animal in my excruciating desires,
I leave my desk and go out on the street
to pace around the building in the dark
and wish I smoked
so I could fill these empty hands.