Paul Bone: “Hanging the Ceiling”
HANGING THE CEILING
He’d hoist a panel to the ceiling
and have me hold one end,
keeping his head dead center,
and stand there like a pillar.
Then pluck a black nail from his mouth
and drive up his two corners,
gypsum dust sifting down
as if from small detonations.
Deliberate as a man walking ice,
he turned and slid an elbow
to take my end, face whitened now
as a wraith, the hammer rising.
Four strikes and the nail was in
and countersunk in its quarter-sized dimple
where later he’d knife in the spackle
then mud and tape the joints.
For now he’d hung a kind of screen
over the wiring of heaven,
a hole cut here and there
through which the lesser light would dangle.
Outside was darkness, early winter.
The tripod lights shone up at his work
from the corners of the room
as the dust sank through our rising breath.
Paul Bone is the author of the poetry collections Momentary Vision of the Assistant Meteorologist and Nostalgia for Sacrifice. He teaches writing at the University of Evansville and is Co-Editor of Measure Press and Measure: A Review of Formal Poetry.