My car finds it way down to the parking lot
at Bradford Beach. I turn off the engine
and stare out at Lake Michigan as waves break
hard over square white rocks, the spray
landing on my windshield. The local college
station plays the full 7 minutes of Chet Baker
doing a cover version of Elvis Costello,
his trumpet moaning like a dying animal.
I sit and I listen. What else should I do?
I can’t get out of my car and slowly spin you
around the parking lot like I did once before.
I won’t walk down the empty beach anymore
and build ad-hoc sculptures from driftwood,
prehistoric-looking skeletons left to surprise
the morning joggers and dog walkers. Seems
pointless now. So I sit back and I listen, his horn
just killing it, as dark waves break over me
like liquefied sadness splashing onto the glass,
and I’m almost blue, almost there in that deep
place where the music is all that remains,
and the wiper blades clear you away, almost.

Paul Scot August

(Originally Published in Connotation Press: An Online Artifact – Issue V, Vol III, January 2012)

Before bed, take a shower with the same brand
of shampoo she used, the same fruit-smelling
soap. Put on the t-shirt she stole from your drawer
and used to sleep in, then left behind when she moved
away. Go to your closet and find the blue shoebox
on the upper shelf, take it down. Put on the CD
of songs she gave you. Sit on the edge of your bed,
the box on your lap. Wait until the third song ends.
Now, reach down and open the lid. Grab a random
letter, note or card. Read it over several times until
the words begin to sing to you, and you can hear
her voice again. Take out the envelope of photos,
try to recall every detail of every situation pictured
in them. Now, when you are almost back there, stop.
Put the photos and letters back in the box. Replace
the lid carefully and put it back on the shelf. Close
the closet door. Turn off the music. Set the alarm
clock. Turn off the light, and crawl into bed. Pray.

Paul Scot August

(Originally published in Connotation Press: An Online Artifact – Issue V, Vol III, January 2012)

Another night dreaming of the sea,
bodies of unidentified, rough water.
The Gulf of Mexico near Clearwater
where I swam with my grandparents,
schools of unseen fish brushing against
my teen-age legs, the theme from Jaws
thumping in my brain. Or the Pacific Ocean
at Venice Beach while in my 20s, swimming
along the tide-pulled pendulum between high
and hungover. Or at Half-Moon Bay in my 30s,
celebrating New Year’s Eve on the beach,
the waves crashing over regretful words
I’d scratched into the sand, hope for renewal.
But more likely Lake Michigan, having never
lived more than a few minutes away from it.
No matter the location, the result’s the same:
Tossed about on the waves, washed up on
a pebbled beach, waking as a castaway.
Then slapping the alarm clock, out of bed
and into the shower, being in complete
control of that water, if nothing else.

Paul Scot August

(Originally published in Connotation Press: An Online Artifact – Issue V, Vol III, January 2012)

While she waits on tables at the Dallas City Café,
she glances up through the greasy front windows
at the Anguish & Wolfenbarger Ford Dealership
across and slightly down the street. People in town
just call it The Anguish. The name still makes her
wince. Today is Tuesday, so she takes her coffee
break at 2:15, just like she does every Tuesday,
sits at the table in the front and waits. She’ll see
the Greyhound Bus as it motors down Main Street,
stops at the railroad tracks, the driver looking down
the rails that extend in each direction to the horizon,
becoming arrows he wishes he could grab onto and use
to launch himself into another life that is not this one.
She’ll watch as the bus crosses the tracks and pulls
over at the far end of the auto shop to either catch
or release another passenger. Or more likely, no one
does either, and the driver shuffles inside for a cup
of vending machine coffee and a piss, before leaning
against the brick wall along the alley and having a smoke,
then getting back on the bus. He always leans in the exact
place where her Billy did that day, where the metal plate
on the wall is falling away from the bricks, where he smoked
one Lucky Strike after another until the bus pulled up
and he turned to her, winked, and climbed into the past.

Paul Scot August

(Published January 2012 in Bending Light Into Verse, Volume III)

In “His Wife Called Him Moose,” Paul Scot August responds with a sound as devastating as Riegel’s wind, as an old man sits in his home at sunset by the Clam River, bathed in radio static while “the river washes itself / through cattails, the sound like the final sigh of a dying wife.”

You can read the review here…

Connotation’s Editor Ken Robidoux writes: Paul Scot August is in our Poetry column this month with three new poems and a great interview conducted by Associate Poetry editor Nicelle Davis. This set of Paul’s poems are characterized by some catch and release rhythms that are grounding while the narrative rips through existential reflections. Great combination. Thanks Paul and Nicelle! Connotation Press: Almost Blue

Poetry Editor Kaitlin Hillenbrand writes that I bring to the column three water-, memory-, and dream- filled poems that made my heart hurt but filled me with music and the sound of the ocean. I’ve scratched sad music into the sand, watched waves at night, and joyfully inspected and rearranged driftwood and other little treasures the ocean deposited on the sand, and Mr. August’s poems brought me right back to these times as he, in delicate detail, related memories by both dredging them up and attempting to momentarily drown them.

And be sure to check out the rest of the poets published there!

Big thanks to Nicelle Davis and Kaitlin Hillenbrand.

The top of my world shimmers with danger
as three black shadows cross the blue-gray
surface of all that I know. We are warned
about the long-beaks, the way they scoop
our brothers and sisters from our ranks.
The elders call them Death From Above.
Yet still I have the desire, late in the day,
to start from the bottom silt, swim upwards
with all my might, and break thru the plane
into the vast unknowing, see for myself all
that the Great One has created and placed,
like a cruel joke, just outside of my reach.

Paul Scot August

Published in Bending Light Into Verse II by Jennifer Tomaloff

Hiking along a railroad-track-turned-bike-trail,
we found an explosion of berries along a field
just beginning to find its own way back to life.
They were red, but neither of us cared enough
to find a metaphor, so just red they remained.
You told me how some red berries in this area
are poisonous to certain small mammals, yet
are a delicacy to many birds. Try one, you said,
almost smiling. Our dog ran over to sniff them,
as if his hunger could ever be sated by crimson
little orbs hanging from thin stems. You called
him back, afraid he may eat that which later
will tear at his insides, momentary pleasure
replaced by intestinal regret. But he gulped
a mouthful before returning to us on the trail,
and all that night you watched him, waiting
to see if he would be undone by his hunger,
or if he was testing out the toxicity for us,
trying out something new before we do it,
like just last week when he began sleeping
on the living room couch instead of our bed.

Paul Scot August

Published in Bending Light Into Verse II by Jennifer Tomaloff

It’s been years since the last time I visited.
My uncle’s guitar reclines in his empty chair,
waiting in vain for his fingers to pick out notes
that for years rang off the knotty pine walls,
before becoming muffled by soft green carpet.
But his gnarled knuckles gave up years ago.
This was his favorite room in the house,
built to look exactly like the cabin up north
where he spent his childhood summers.
After he was left alone, he rarely used
the rest of the house. The room is cleaner now,
straightened up to allow strangers to roam
through while thinking about mortgages
and updates. It’s been years since I last
visited, and the room looks the same,
except for a deeper, more enduring silence.

Paul Scot August

Published in Bending Light Into Verse II by Jennifer Tomaloff