B R A D E V A N S

the old lady who didn't show her face

There was an old lady at work yesterday, who didn't show her face. Whenever she walked by all I could ever see was the back of her head - her hair was thick & neatly brushed. I couldn't tell if she was shy or if it was just one of those odd situations that whenever I looked her face was somewhere else. I was on the verge of getting irritated when I caught her face finally while she was leaving the staff room. I only saw it briefly & it looked wise and gentle.

- Brad Evans © 2023

Voice Links to poems by Brad Evans: it's sure nice to see you! across the threshold (or 'the house on the corner') it was only in hindsight that the symptoms made it obvious: the vomiting, the desire to take a bath; and when the 2 women frantically knocked on my father's door - he came quickly and followed them to their home.

I saw Einstein on spice curled up in a fusion formulazombified face flickering in torchlight, a twitching scenario framed in grass. And there's Bruckner on ice grinning through rotten teeth lies on a cardboard bed, church organ sold for a buck. You don't see what they see, you don’t hear what they hear, you can ignore how they live, but can you ignore the approach of thunder? That suit looks freshly pressed and your face looks nicely tanned and the sun that scorched your skin, is a star of many.

It's sure nice to see you! and aren’t those dreams a little too bright for the dim minds of men but it's sure nice to see you, again! Not far from a bank a rose hangs in the airMarie C lines up with her pram, she waits an hour for a small box of food with foggy plates caught in her hair. That suit looks freshly pressed and your face looks nicely tanned and the sun that scorched your skin is a star of many. But it's sure nice to see you! and aren’t those dreams a little too bright for the dim minds of men and it's sure nice to see you, again!

They showed him where the neighbour layface down and across the threshold between the bathroom & the hallway; and when he pressed his fingers to the man's neck, he was already gone; the ambulance arrived quietly and took him away. The home sold a while later, his family moved on...

4 years later my father finally met the guy who'd bought the place and told him about strange noises that kept him awake at nights, of sounds in the unlit kitchen, of cutlery clanking in the drawer. He played a recording he'd made of one such night to my father and the sounds he heard were eerie. The young neighbour told my father how he dared not freak out his girlfriend with what he thought was going on. My father then told him about the guy who'd died there from an aneurysm those years before, but he didn't tell him where the neighbour layface down and across the threshold between the bathroom & the hallway. on a bus ride, with Tanya

I remember, while on a bus ride with Tanya, she asking me in a loud, childlike way"Brad, why do old men have such big ears?"

I looked at the back of the old man's head, in front of us, and tried to think of an answer.

I told her something about how thin skin from old age may have something to do with it. (My response didn't sound that convincing to either of us.) but, Tanya, if I ever reach old age with cognition and somebody sitting behind me on a bus asks the same question they will hear an old man with big ears laugh in a loud, childlike way.