Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/weekly-poem-am Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Weekly Poem: ‘A.M.’ Arts Oct 29, 2012 10:08 AM EDT By Nick Norwood My father’s shaving with the radio on. He’s in the bathroom, the Trutone’s in the kitchen. All of us crammed in this crackerbox on Spicer Street, Wichita Falls. The one tiny speaker strains and crackles. The air fattens on Patsy Cline. Ernest Tubb comes on and it starts to wobble. Daddy’s dark face, mirrored back a foot away, half-shrouded in a cloud of Barbasol, cuts through a cirrus of steam. In T-shirt and boxers he’s like a linebacker in a phone booth. But his voice when he arcs out a Bob Wills holler starts near the ceiling and doesn’t level off till it hits Oklahoma. In six months he’ll be dead, his oilfield Cessna accordioned into the flats near Olney. But right now he’s happy, almost completely himself, a half-assed country singer, playing to a packed house. i.m. Richard Gaylon Norwood Nick Norwood‘s third full volume of poems, “Gravel and Hawk,” won the Hollis Summers Prize in Poetry and was published by Ohio University Press in April 2012. His other books are “A Palace for the Heart” (2004), “The Soft Blare” (2003) and “Wrestle” (2007). His poems have appeared in many journals, including The Paris Review, Southwest Review, Western Humanities Review, The Wallace Stevens Journal and Poetry Daily. He teaches creative writing at Columbus State University in Georgia.
By Nick Norwood My father’s shaving with the radio on. He’s in the bathroom, the Trutone’s in the kitchen. All of us crammed in this crackerbox on Spicer Street, Wichita Falls. The one tiny speaker strains and crackles. The air fattens on Patsy Cline. Ernest Tubb comes on and it starts to wobble. Daddy’s dark face, mirrored back a foot away, half-shrouded in a cloud of Barbasol, cuts through a cirrus of steam. In T-shirt and boxers he’s like a linebacker in a phone booth. But his voice when he arcs out a Bob Wills holler starts near the ceiling and doesn’t level off till it hits Oklahoma. In six months he’ll be dead, his oilfield Cessna accordioned into the flats near Olney. But right now he’s happy, almost completely himself, a half-assed country singer, playing to a packed house. i.m. Richard Gaylon Norwood Nick Norwood‘s third full volume of poems, “Gravel and Hawk,” won the Hollis Summers Prize in Poetry and was published by Ohio University Press in April 2012. His other books are “A Palace for the Heart” (2004), “The Soft Blare” (2003) and “Wrestle” (2007). His poems have appeared in many journals, including The Paris Review, Southwest Review, Western Humanities Review, The Wallace Stevens Journal and Poetry Daily. He teaches creative writing at Columbus State University in Georgia.