Ben Sloan | Then On Out Into a Cloudless Sky

Then On Out Into a Cloudless Sky. Poems by Ben Sloan. Number 11 in Volume Five of our Editor’s Series.

Publication:  July 10, 2023 [100 copies]
25 pages
ISBN 978-1-960693-04-4
$ 12.00

[ cover image: Ron Mohring ]

Born in rural southeast Missouri, Ben Sloan has a previous collection of poetry, The Road Home (Thirty West Publishing House, 2017), containing work published in Off the Coast: Maine’s International Poetry Journal, The Saint Ann’s Review, and the Ozone Park Journal. He and poet/translator Vyt Bakaitis co-edited the literary magazine Thirst. With degrees from Washington University, Brooklyn College, and the CUNY Graduate Center, he teaches for Piedmont Virginia Community College, including literature and creative writing classes at the Buckingham and Dillwyn Correctional Centers as well as the Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women. In 2022 and 2023 he performed in a series of Virginia Humanities Grant-funded theater events entitled “Flying in Place” devoted to choreographed interpretations of the original writing, background stories and experiences, of incarcerated individuals. Among the poets whose work he returns to most often are Elizabeth Bishop, Edward Hirsch, Audre Lorde, Czeslaw Milosz, Sharon Olds, and Tomas Tranströmer. He lives in Charlottesville, Virginia. 

Bonita at Work

What was Bonita thinking when she passed
across the stainless-steel counter that plastic plate
holding chunks of celery and shaved carrots
suspended inside a block of orange Jell-O?

Maybe she was worrying about Troy,
her husband she had married at thirteen
who worked each day in the lead mines
in Flat River—a good paying job at the time.

Or maybe thinking about the extravagant smile
on Liberace’s face and the red sequined jacket
he wore as he pounded away on the piano
the previous night on the Ed Sullivan Show.

Or maybe it was the muffled hard landing
of her stroke-stricken mother’s body on the floor
in the hall outside Bonita’s bedroom, the ambulance
light pulsing against the wall, the siren, the silence.

I was in the third grade and can’t for the life of me
describe now what she looked like. Honestly,
all I remember is the soft southeast Missouri-
accented voice saying, There you go, honey.