Frank Stanford

after Jean Follain In the evenings they listen to the same tunes nobody could call happy somebody turns up at the edge of town the roses bloom and an old dinner bell rings once more under the thunder clouds In front of the porch posts of the store a man seated on a soda water case turns around and spits and says to everybody in his new set of clothes holding up his hands as long as I live nobody touches my dogs my friends

Hans Richter What if the moon was essence of quinine And high heels were a time of day When certain birds bled The chauffeur is telling the cook The antler would pry into ice floes Swim with a lamp And we’d be shivering in a ditch Biting through a black wing There would be boats There would be a dream country The great quiet humming of the soul at night The only sound is a shovel Clearing a place for a mailbox

The yolk went down my leg Like a beautiful snail without a shell, Went down the hill To the skillet of water, to the nymphflies, Into the lips of pond minnows, Down the long belly of the gar – the hellbenders Having dived and lost, then into The paw of the lame panther Who loped back to her lair with it. As for the white, it stayed with me, Mark of the beast, birth, and trade.

They caught them. They were sitting at a table in the kitchen. It was early. They had on bathrobes. They were drinking coffee and smiling. She had one of his cigarillos in her fingers. She had her legs tucked up under her in the chair. They saw them through the window. She thought of them stepping out of a bath And him wrapping cloth around her. He thought of her waking up in a small white building, He thought of stones settling into the ground. Then they were gone. Then they came in through the back. Her cat ran out. The house was near the road. She didn’t like the cat going out. They stayed at the table. The others were out of breath. The man and the woman reached across the table. They were afraid, they smiled. The others poured themselves the last of the coffee Burning their tongues. The man and the woman looked at them. They didn’t say anything. The man and the woman moved closer to each other, The round table between them. The stove was still on and burned the empty pot. She started to get up. One of them shot her. She leaned over the table like a schoolgirl doing her lessons. She thought about being beside him, being asleep. They took her long grey socks Put them over the barrel of a rifle And shot him. He went back in his chair, holding himself. She told him hers didn’t hurt much, Like in the fall when everything you touch Makes a spark. He thought about her getting up in the dark Wrapping a quilt around herself And standing in the doorway. She asked the men if they shot them again Not to hurt their faces. One of them lit him one of his cigarettes. He thought what it would be like Being children together. He was dead before he finished it. She asked them could she take it out of his mouth. So it wouldn’t burn his lips. She reached over and touched his hair. She thought about him walking through the dark singing. She died on the table like that, Smoke coming out of his mouth.

To the gentlemen from the south to the tourists from the north who write poems about the south to the dumb-ass students I’d like to ask one lousy question have you ever seen a regatta of flies sail around a pile of shit and then come back and picnic on the shit just once in your life have you heard flies on shit because I cut my eye teeth on flies floating in shit

It was Sunday, before dinner. My uncles were listening to the opera. O.Z. and I carried my brother in And laid him on the table. The women started screaming. My brother raised up on his side With dried blood on his hands, We killed those goddamn Canale brothers And nobody is ever going to touch us! The men shut their eyes and danced. We drank until morning When everything was quiet. They wiped their eyes, kissed us goodbye and left.

When a man knows another man Is looking for him He doesn’t hide. He doesn’t wait To spend another night With his wife Or put his children to sleep. He puts on a clean shirt and a dark suit And goes to the barber shop To let another man shave him. He shuts his eyes Remembers himself as a boy Lying naked on a rock by the water. Then he asks for the special lotion. The old men line up by the chair And the barber pours a little In each of their hands.

Raymond Radiguet Like seven birds sleeping on the plateau Overlooking the shipwreck of love, mystery Of the drunken visitors wandering off With your wife, men who talk with a bad accent, The condemned the abandoned, one day of silence, Two days of silence, dreams shattered and protected, The more the blossoms the more you suffer.

I   Or Your Woman The night was a bad one. I only saw one other person out: A big black man on muleback Riding along the levee, marking the water. There was a lantern in his hand And what you could call a grim smile on the lips. I shifted down gears, Rolled down the window, turned the radio low. And said, “Say there, man, how goes it?” But he couldn’t hear me for the rain And the song on his transistor radio. “I don’t know,” he said, “but it’s raining, Raining to beat hell.” Said I, “Do you think it’s going to quit?” “Friend, I couldn’t tell you.” When big water will, you call everyman friend . . . We said our goodnights, Went on, by mule and flatbed truck, wearing black Rubber, cold to the bone, Like divers from different ships meeting below. All you can do is nod, some of the times. At least, we spoke, knowing that living Anywhere near the river You speak when you can; the only thing you try To hold is your liquor, And we had none, that bad night on the levee. Always down the road, I looked up In the mirror.  And I’m sure he’d a done the same. II   Midnight I almost slid off, once Imagining this cloud was a pall And the moon was a body. I don’t know who put coins over her eyes. When I got to Rampion’s Ferry, I thought I was the only one there. I mean it was quiet, Except for the current, the cables, and the rain. I got a piece of rope Out of the back of my truck, and wound it Around the generator Engine; it kicked right off the first pull. The yellow bug lights came on, And I saw a body move under a purple blanket. He cussed me out For waking him up, pulling his old self up. There was some kind of fish In the weave of his poncho; other figures Of snakes and birds, too. I didn’t mean to wake the awnry fellow up, I wonder if I did. A strange odor came from underneath him When he dragged out his towsack. It didn’t smell of something burning, but of Something that was singed. Like the rain, it didn’t let up. “Are we going crosst it, or not,” He told me in a voice, half-blooded song. III   Some Past Twelve Someone with a light Rode up before I could see what all He was pulling from the burlap: Blue calling chalk you find in pool halls, ivory Tusks, a stringer with rotten heads The good book and another I couldn’t pronounce— Just as worn, And one of those paperweight crystals that snows. He had strummed the mandolin twice, A couple of sounds blue as a fox in trouble In a snowdrift on a ridge, like weeds Burning underwater, a few licks of silent fire. When I recognized the lookout The ferry wasn’t more than a few feet off the bank, So the mule made it aboard, easy; Its hooves on the planks like a mad, rough carpenter Nailing driftwood together. Oh, we made it across.  We didn’t exactly Hit the dock on the head, But we floated on down to Vahalia’s Landing. We had a good time. The foreigner played the mandolin, the river Reached its crest, And the man on the mule and I drank way into the morning. They heard us, the ones on land. “We’re a floating whorehouse, without noun women.” And in the dead of night, Rain and all, we motioned them on.

When you take the lost road You come to the snow And when you find the snow You get down on your hands and knees Like a sick dog That’s been eating the grasses of graveyards For twenty centuries. When you take the lost road You find woman Who has no fear of light Who can kill two cocks at once Light which has no fear of cocks And cocks who can’t call in the snow. You find lovers who’ve been listening For the same roosters to sing For twenty centuries Roosters that have swallowed stones Out of each other’s tracks But have never met Anywhere on the road. When you take the lost road You find the bright feathers of morning Laid out in proportion to snow and light And when the snow gets lost on the road Then the hot wind might blow from the south And there is sadness in bed for twenty centuries And everyone is chewing the grass on the graves again. When you get lost You come to the moon in the field The light all lovers soil The sheet no one leaves clean The light cocks are afraid to cross The same moon woman danced under For twenty centuries With blood on her face. When you get lost on the road You run into the dead Who have broken down stones In their throats for twenty centuries I saw two little crazy boys crying Because it was morning And when morning comes it comes In the morning and never at night. I saw two security police taking out a man’s balls And I saw two little crazy boys Crying by the road who wouldn’t go away But two has never been a number Because it’s only legal to pass one at a time It’s only a drum you can carry but you can’t beat It’s the evidence they need to make you disappear.