CUT TO FIT
by Phil Hey
So then she says “I want a dutch door on the barn,”
all the time watching Norm Abrams and his
hundred thousand dollars worth of tools,
and your own workshop looking like an explosion
at the Historical Woodworking Exhibit.
What to do then but start?
Set up that rickety old table saw again
with homemade guides out of 2 x 4 scraps
clamped onto the table. And measured twice,
hell, five times, and still knew it wouldn’t fit
unless you held up the parts to the door frame:
shim here, cut there a hair less than a quarter.
You were right; one measure was off an inch.
By this time Norm would have had that project
out the door and talking about next week’s,
but for you next week was in no hurry to come.
There was still not much fit, though you used
long decking screws and Gorilla Glue in the joints
and cut half-inch plywood panels to fit
the channels it took you most of a day to cut.
Even if you remembered dimension lumber
this time --where what they call a 2 x 4
comes closer to 1-1/2 x 3-1/2 -- even if you made
pilot holes so nothing would split out,
even if you glued it up into one solid piece,
goddamn it, something would still go wrong.
And did. Nothing like repair on a new project,
you think, and start in once again.
Phil Hey is the author of How It Seems To Me: New & Selected Poems (MWPH Books, 2004; available from Tom Montag, PO Box 8, Fairwater, WI 53931 for $12.50 + $2 s&h). He has been writing and teaching at Briar Cliff University since 1969, and he is now a professor in the English/Writing Department. He received a B.A. in English at Monmouth College in 1964 and an M.F.A. at the University of Iowa Writers Workshop in 1966. He also studied creative writing under Gwendolyn Brooks at the University of Wisconsin. In 1992 he won Briar Cliff's Duff Award for the Pursuit of Excellence, and in 1998 he was given the Literacy Award for college English teachers by the Iowa Council of Teachers of English and Language Arts. Published in numerous magazines and anthologies, Phil has several earlier collections of poetry: In Plain Sight, Reorganizing the Stars, Plain Label Poems, A Change of Clothes, Ballads & Songs. His poem "Route 39 south of Pittsville" won a Rainmaker Award from Zone 3 magazine. He has also received a dozen commissions for poems, most recently from the Sisters of St. Francis in Dubuque. As an editor, Phil has co-edited the Iowa Poets series with Zachary Pearce of Pterodactyl Press, including Michael Carey's The Noise the Earth Makes, Ann Struthers' Stoneboat, and James Hearst's posthumous A Country Man. He also edits for Celestial Light Press and The Briar Cliff Review, Briar Cliff's national prize-winning magazine of writing and art. He assisted Michael Carey in the editing of Voices on the Landscape: Contemporary Iowa Poets (Loess Hills Books).
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