Myers, Jack

English

Iowa Research Online

Masthead Logo The Iowa Review
Volume 4
Issue 4 Fall Article 46
1973
The Ant Makes Progress Towards Himself
Jack Myers
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Recommended Citation
Myers, Jack. "The Ant Makes Progress Towards Himself." The Iowa Review 4.4 (1973): 81-81. Web.
Available at: https://doi.org/10.17077/0021-065X.1569
THE FAMILY WAR 
My father made meals underwater 
while the war went on. He stirred 
enormous pots of s.o.s. in the belly 
of a ship, thinking of me held upside 
down, he flipped an extra dash of salt 
into the stew as the big guns pushed 
and recoiled like a woman in labor. 
There was a war, the smell of irons 
steaming in small apartments and sons 
aiming wooden rifles at each other. 
There was ma grown big bellied with me 
facing the windy sea, that double image 
of waiting, dad, a cold shuttling 
ocean throwing up stones and salt. 
But you came back and blocked up all 
the windows in the house until my brother 
threw the first punch through the wall. 
Then you felt at home, coming at us 
in the darkness like a grey slug 
from the big guns ready to explode. 
THE ANT MAKES PROGRESS TOWARDS HIMSELF 
If the page isn't a hole for escape, you learn 
to fill the entrance with stones and fear 
the thunder that comes rolling to the roots 
of your progress. Sometimes, isn't it always 
night, you'll carve your rest into the wall 
and yell is this enough? The same thin yell 
that told you where to dig comes back. Nothing 
matters until another tunnel breaks through yours. 
Then the shock is seeing someone with your face; 
that there's so little left of it, it's grown 
so dark, it is the blackness shining at the end. 
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The Ant Makes Progress Towards Himself

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