Atsuro Riley

We come gnawed by need on hands and knees. As a creature (nosing) grubble-seeks a spring. As bendy-spined as bandy snakes through saltshrub yaupon needle-brake. For darkling green; for thorn-surround. This absorbing quaggy crample-ground. Of   briar-canes (intervolved with kudzu-mesh) and mold. Of   these convoluted vines we grasp to suck. To taste the pith — the lumen the cell-sap pulse. To try to know some (soursharp) something about something. Lumen is as lumen does. ‘A little room for turmoil to grow lucid in.’

A last rock-skip hurlstorm (crazing river-glass) the closest they ever were. • In right lockstitch snared and split some fire-supper cooked on sticks. • By dawn the older brother took to chucking what bottle-frags he could find and crud-oysters across. The (high-pitched) younger blacked our waters with a yowl. • Lord the sound such as rose from him carried so— Carved into us. Clings. • Hadn’t they clung tooth and claw to branch and bark. — Came a man (and truck) to take them off. • Dieseled those boys off away some say somewheres upcountry, inland. • Where it was they landed (why) nobody not them knows. • No body not them knows just how they humped and grubbled home what road they’d graved what woods criss-crossed which creeks which trains they’d hopped who helped. • Came safe home sure        but blank as houses. Came safe home       —as him  —and him. —as (evermore) not them.

1. FIELD Truck a passel (a poke) of wildling boys We call ourselves (our pack) the orphan-slaves

What was it for the longest time but lore, lure; A heard-tell growing gold in the mind. Word said (and word’d spread) it was well on back Through the underwood by Bowen’s Canal.

— Candy’s Stop, up Hwy. 52 I been ‘Candy’ since I came here young. My born name keeps but I don’t say. To her who my mama was I was pure millstone, cumbrance.Child ain’t but a towsack full of bane. Well I lit out right quick. Hitched, and so forth.   Legged it. Was rid. Accabee at first (then, thicket-hid) then Wadmalaw; out to Nash’s meat-yard, Obie’s jook.   At County Home they had this jazzhorn drumbeat orphan-band ‘ them lambs ’ they — They let me bide and listen. This gristly man he came he buttered me then took me off (swore I was surely something) let me ride in back. Some thing— (snared) (spat-on) Thing being morelike moresoever what he meant. No I’d never sound what brunts he called me what he done had I a hundred mouths. How his mouth.   Repeats on me down the years.   Everlastingly riveled-looking, like rotfruit.   Wasn’t it runched up like a grub. First chance I inched off (back through bindweed) I was gone. Nothing wrong with gone as a place for living.   Whereby a spore eats air when she has to; where I’ve fairly much clung for peace. Came the day I came here young I mothed my self.   I cleaved apart. A soul can hide like moth on bark. My born name keeps but I don’t say.

His mother came (she said) from salt so fed him salt. Raised to wolf white roots and dirt she fed him dirt.

Daddy goes. Trolling and trawling and crawfishing and crabbing and bass-boating and trestle-jumping bare into rust-brackish water and cane-poling for bream and shallow-gigging too with a nail-pointy broomstick and creek-shrimping and cooler-dragging and coon-chasing and dove-dogging and duck-bagging and squirrel-tailing and tail-hankering and hard-cranking and -shifting and backfiring like a gun in his tittie-tan El Camino and parking it at The House of Ham and Dawn's Busy Hands and Betty's pink house and Mrs. Sweatman's brick house and Linda's dock-facing double-wide and spine-leaning Vicki against her WIDE-GLIDE Pontiac and pumping for pay at Ray Wade's Esso and snuff-dipping and plug-sucking and tar-weeping pore-wise and LuckyStrike-smoking and Kool only sometimes and penny-pitching and dog-racing and bet-losing cocksuckmotherfuck and pool-shooting and bottle-shooting over behind Tas-T-O's Donuts and shootin' the shit and chewin' the fat and just jawin' who asked you and blank-blinking quick back at me and whose young are you no-how and hounddog-digging buried half-pints from the woods.

The coarse croker-sack cloth she’d grown to clutch mesh-merged with her woof and pang rose to serve more like organ than protection

We low on daddies hereabouts The fathers all but gone Our lack a weight a shape a drybone lake By war by drink by gun by drift The father’s all but gone.

—by way of what they say From back when it was Nam time I tell you what.