Poemunity — your poem community

A garden late spring, honeysuckle and lazy birds heavy with the round scent of tuberoses and jungle gardenia. There is a man in boots that make his thighs look lethal   with a whip no spurs medieval sorrow in his eyes or around the mouth, maybe. He is dangerous in this place he has the fertility of steel. There is a woman in a vine green habit   her veins are purple, her blue eyes. She is blonde though sometimes brunette:

Until nightfall my son ran in the fields, looking for God knows what. Flowers, perhaps. Odd birds on the wing. Something to fill an empty spot. Maybe a luminous angel or a country girl with a secret dark. He came back empty-handed, or so I thought. Now I find them: thistles, goatheads, the barbed weeds all those with hooks or horns the snaggle-toothed, the grinning ones those wearing lantern jaws, old ones in beards, leapers in silk leggings, the multiple pocked moons and spiny satellites, all those with juices and saps like the fingers of thieves nation after nation of grasses that dig in, that burrow, that hug winds and grab handholds in whatever lean place. It’s been a good day.

Winter mornings driving past I’d see these kids huddled like grouse in the plowed ruts in front of their shack waiting for the bus, three small children bunched against the drifts rising behind them. This morning I slowed to wave and the smallest, a stick of a kid draped in a coat, grinned and raised his red, raw hand, the snowball packed with rock aimed at my face.

Out in the yard, my sister and I tore thread from century plants to braid into bracelets, ate chalky green bananas, threw coconuts onto the sidewalk to crack their hard, hairy skulls. The world had begun to happen, but not time. We would live forever, sunburnt and pricker-stuck, our promises written in blood. Not yet would men or illness distinguish us, our thoughts cleave us in two. If she squeezed sour calamondins into a potion, I drank it. When I jumped from the fig tree, she jumped.

I left here at eight And returned at 75. In between I largely wasted America. I married, had children, Distinguished myself in a profession Full of fools, becoming one myself, As is the way Of this (or, I suppose, of any other) world. I missed The Nobel but I did bring down The Pulitzer. The weather, The politics, the stars, And my own small contribution All lined up, and I got one. So “Pulitzer” became my middle name Before I came here, where no one cares A whit about such things. I failed at love. That’s where I truly fucked up. I couldn’t. The women in this town Are mostly severe, resentful —The men bitter, disappointed: A perfect place for my purposes. I stay in a room In the house of an old woman Who doesn’t want to have sex any more And neither do I So we do not Trouble each other on that front, Which is good. I do like to drink. I used to love to eat But then I don’t much Give a shit About any of that now. The old woman sometimes says wistfully God will soon be calling both of us Back home, but as an agnostic I don’t believe that. As an American, I don’t buy that. I came here to retire from love, To face my failure to love As I attempted to face everything Else before, and that Is exactly what I am doing and doing With the exactness I used to put into My work, for which I received the Pulitzer. I hate a coward. My son Came here the other day and asked Exactly when I might Be coming back And I sent him off without an answer. The answer Seems to be staying here, Staying honestly here and coming to terms With my greatest single failure. My wife is dead. To me, It seems I am left over To eat a shit sandwich. “Eat me,” the world says, Now that I have lost my appetite. We used to say, “Eat me” To each other in high school, Another thing from which no one Ever recovers. America likes to think Every one can recover from every thing, But about this, Especially, America is wrong.

That was the year we drove into the commune in Cornwall. “Jesus Jim,” mam said, “back up quick they’re hippies.” Through the car window, tents, row after row, flaps open, long-haired men and women curled around each other like babies and the babies themselves wandered naked across the grass. I reached for the handle, ready, almost, to open the door, drop out and away from my sister’s aggressive thighs, Daddy’s slapping hands. Back home in the Dandelion Market I unlearnt the steps my mother taught, bought a headband, an afghan coat, a fringed skirt — leather skin. Barefoot on common grass I lay down with kin.

1 There’s a lot going on in “the” zombie apocalypse. But wouldn’t she recognize that her mother was a zombie? I mean zombies are a thing. 2 The last thing she did was point to one corner of the ceiling with a horrified stare. The nurse called this “a seizure.” As if words drained experience of content and continued to accumulate. As if words were sealed containers stored for safe keeping. 3 The background is everything that, for now, can be safely ignored

Night eats color, Flower bouquets lose their fake ornaments. Day falls into the leaves like sparkling fish And struggles, like the lowly mud, The shapeless dreams and trees Nurtured outside this shriveled, deridable despair. And the space that was chopped down Tickles the weeds there by its feet. Fingers stained with tar from cigarettes Caress the writhing darkness. And then the people move forward.

for Miami They all like to hang out. Thinking is all rather grim to them. Snake and Minnie, who love each other dearly, drink in different bars, ride home in separate cars. They like to kiss good night with unexplored lips. They go out of town to see each other open. This they do for no one else. Minnie does it all for God. Snake does it all for fame. Backstage is where they play their games; that’s why i know their business. I was gonna talk about a race riot. They say they’ve never played that town. Fleece tells me he’s seen an old movie about a black town attacking a white one. Sidney Poitier was the young doctor, accused, abused and enraged. There were Ossie Davis and Woody Strode, Ruby Dee and a hundred unknowns. Also Sapphire’s mama as a maid. “What was Sapphire’s mama’s name?” says Inez. I was going to talk about a race riot but we were stuck on Kingfish’s mother-in-law. Minnie kisses Snake so he’ll forget about that and I say, “They’re mad, they’re on the bottom going down, stung by white justice in a white town, and then there’s other colored people, who don’t necessarily think they’re colored people, leaving them the ground.” “That’s just like the dreads, the Coptics, and the Man-ley-ites,” one drunk says too loud, “I and I know,” say he. Snake yells, “Are you crazy? No, it ain’t, and no, we don’t.” “That’s just like Angola,” Terri chimes, “Sometimes it’s not who but what, sometimes not what but who.” I’m trying to talk to these people about this race riot, someone is walking on the bar, and every one of us belongs even now to Miami, to people we have never seen. Pookie and Omar want to know what’s goin’ on. They always do, ’cause they’re always in the bathroom when it’s goin’ on. They do everything together and not for God, and not for fame, but for love. At least that’s what their records say. They are a singing group that’s had 13 Pookies. Omar asks me, “What do you want to say?” Inez interupts, “She don’t know what to say, she just wants to say something, I understand that.” The 13th Pookie chirps, “This race riot sounds like all the other race riots.” Fleece says, “And you sound like 12 other Pookies, Pookie.” I am still trying to talk about this race riot. Minnie looks up and says, “We don’t have anywhere to put any more dead.” Snake puts on his coat to leave alone, “We never did, we never did.”

It takes a calendar one damp day to declare fall, weeks of dying mums to second the motion. *     *     * Gone the homeland, gone the father, nothing left but invisible north to magnetize your doubts. *     *     * Not eulogies or hearses but the sandwiches after, estranged cousins chewing under one umbrella. *     *     * One clock for errands, one for midnight trysts, though neither will hurry a slow train. *     *     * Prairie is not the floor nor sky the coffered ceiling. Even a scarecrow is wise beyond its straw. *     *     * Look down: a river of grass. Look up: a velvet lost and found. Look inside: no straws to drink that dusk. *     *     * A woman’s watch thieved by a jay—ah, to be lifted like that, to be carried like time across lapping waves.