Weekly Poem: ‘Handymen’

By Cornelius Eady

The furnace wheezes like a drenched lung.
You can’t fix it.
The toilet babbles like a speed freak.
You can’t fix it.
The fuse box is a nest of rattlers.
You can’t fix it.
The screens yawn the bees through.
Your fingers are dumb against the hammer.
Your eyes can’t tell plumb from plums.
The frost heaves against the doorjambs,
The ice turns the power lines to brittle candy.
No one told you about how things pop and fizzle,
No one schooled you in spare parts.
That’s what the guy says but doesn’t say
As he tosses his lingo at your apartment-dweller ears,
A bit bemused, a touch impatient,
After the spring melt has wrecked something, stopped something,
After the hard wind has lifted something away,
After the mystery has plugged the pipes,
That rattle coughs up something sinister.
An easy fix, but not for you.
It’s different when you own it,
When it’s yours, he says as the meter runs,
Then smiles like an adult.

Cornelius Eady is the director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Notre Dame and is the co-founder and vice president of Cave Canem, a national organization for African American poetry. He is the author of seven books of poetry. His collection, “Brutal Imagination,” was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2001, and the poem “Handymen” appeared in the “Best American Poetry 2008,” edited by Charles Wright.