Kevin Thomason: “The Auction Shed”

THE AUCTION SHED

This is where bluff, bad luck, or tough love brings

The lost and written off: our trailered cars,

Trinkets, and autographed gloves and guitars.

Never the pedigreed and graded things

Displayed in parlor cabinets like remains—

A Stone Age statuette or hunting knife,

The likeness of some bearded colonel’s wife,

Or tapestries depicting Charlemagne.

Still, it’s worth a lot for the one who wins.

These takers don’t smartly cough as they raise

Numbered paddles to hail the auctioneer;

They don’t pretend not to care when it ends.

A silence settles from the static’s haze

Of shouts and sighs—a silence loud and clear.

Kevin Thomason’s work can be read in 32 Poems, Measure, and The Southern Poetry Anthology Vol. VI: Tennessee. He teaches English at the University of Memphis and holds an MFA from McNeese State University.

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