Patricia Spears Jones

My memory of a perfect scent: pine, sage, and cypress; My friends' faith in the power of rough and winding paths to take me up a mountain and bring me back. Specimens plucked from that mountain's pastures: Indian paintbrush, sego lily, ordinary wildflowers. How I got them is a story of friendship and passion Nancy, now a doctor, once a shy sophmore in college Her husband Mike, the second, better one, and their obsession with the Great Outdoors—hence an Idaho address. Boise's Northend is a throwback to neighborhoods American—nice homes Next to two-story garden apartments down the street from a mansion. Bikes and dogs and hand-pushed lawn mowers. Where they dwell is a bungalow that spirits Memphis, Tennessee circa 1971: The Who blasting off a turntable, marijuana-scented air, boys with long hair, girls wearing their boyfriends' blue jeans, bourbon and acid. Paperbacks, record albums, text books piled up—azaleas on the parkway; a howl of buzzing bees late spring just before graduation. Their bungalow has dueling computers and a real backyard. While Nancy and Mike's boxes are slowly being unpacked, Their bicycles are carefully racked inside their front door. Everyone is a thief out West. If you leave your bikes on the porch They disappear. If you find water, someone else will divert it. There are those who fight about the wind. Others the sun. All angling for rights—mineral, water, air—that only comes with political power. Oh, my friends who love to hike, to ski, to bike and me, they love Are driving me from Boise to Ketchum through mountain and valley beauty. High desert heat is clear, dry and when your body rises out of  a chilly car, BLAM. From there you enter another air conditioning zone: a general store at the edge of mountain lore. This place has everything from Bibles to good bourbon. I almost bought a foot long sausage. I almost bought a gun. I did buy cowboy postcards, mostly made for fun. Food and security. Winter just over the ridge, four weeks hence. I used to watch Death Valley Days. Death was hinted, but not shown—the wagon turned over, The wagon train a going. O, those long-suffering white people fearful of Indians and scared of bandits, desperate for shade, for water, for land flowing milk and honey. Hard-bitten men and sad-eyed women trekking. How grand those verdant acres were to be. What they got was land just green enough for wandering herds of long-horned beasts and no where to farm, no where to hide. Today, the wind machines whip around:                         BIG ENERGY. Horses gambol and graze on that patch of land or this keen slope. No wheat and corn, not even dope grows here. But silver, gold, treasures unknown lode these mountains inviting speculation, misery, and bad legislation. A few miles up from Sun Valley, we enter a trail. Mike and Nancy smile and cajole. Straw hat and baseball cap attest to sun's plenty. Their walking sticks to the rocks' ready challenge to ankles and limbs. Our water pouches are overflowing. What were my friends thinking? We slip and slide on the side of this mountain and step aside for the sculpted women in tank tops and biker shorts—trotting as fast as Nancy and Mike's favorite dog She runs ahead following the blonde beauties until all is shadow. We greet each other with glee. I am the novice hiker. I am afraid of falling into thin air. One large Black woman with a bum knee. What were they thinking? She will love the smell. Pine, sage, and cypress. She will love the sound. Wind shakes aspens. Water crinkles rock She will love the sight. Wildflowers—whites, yellows, purples and reds: Indian paintbrush, sego lily, the wily cinquefoil. When friends give you what you need, what more can you ask? Oh the pleasure in a mountain's power to quiet a panicked heart. The glade refined. Hawk's home, wolf's dream, bears far away. Stewards of American beauty—these are the paths my friends make in wild places —the rise and fall of future walks. I salute their obsession for Idaho's red undulating hills. Whose mountain ranges east to west like those in the Himalayas says a guidebook, but ours is a different story—in this young mountain, on these new hills, circumspect is the American West. Where people steal a drop of ore, a native flower, a piece of splendor day in and day out.

I. Here is a place where declarations are made/where the heart takes precedence the gleam goes bland This is the heart part/intense improvisation on the I/THOU axis pity the poor actors (darlings)dust in their throats (choking) dialogue ancient (concentrated chatter dictated by clouds) click of whispers dammed up phrases     {mythologizing always) Moans move through their limbs like wind through Trees talking mad talk 'cross the illuminated Avenues of hard cities. II. Take the skin Take off the skin Remove the vital organs one by one especially the heart What is left The skeleton The skeleton is made of calcium magnesium, phosphorous et cetera: an amazing catalogue of chemicals You are holding in your arms an amazing catalogue of chemicals The elements clash tenderly Sparking compounds that move like eels Under touch. III. Dime falls, your voice rises (fevered) It's keen, the way the wind whips this Garbage up and around like a father Swinging his baby we are holding hands And yes, giggling no force can stop us now We are singing all the James Brown songs We know helpess off-key, but exhilarated Columbus Avenue breakdown: how the puddles In the sidewalks radiate splendor/glass Broken against high-rise buildings beckon We are hungry the shifting children salsa And you may be our feast, please linger You offer me your laughter I take the sweat from y our cheeks and hum. IV. Taste like tears—sea flaked and heated— Taste like try again and get nowhere, Maybe, this is the sonnet that mimes itself Sequences silent and perceptive The "might have saids" The stomach-eating rage The power of conversation is in its Possibilities of Interpretation (here's where the mime becomes important because the words sound so dumb) And here's where the anxiety dance gets choreographed. It goes like this: You turn clockwise. I turn Counter-Clockwise. We stop, stumble Resolve our steps. Begin again. V. You slipped into something dangerous after attending to your intimate conferences Thirsty friends forever requesting water Or is it blood they want?            Your blood. Somebody's screaming. Is it me? Here on the side street being a sideshow For passersby. You put on your silver armor. I have only my quaint devotion. It is not enough.            You say I can't eat your food, baby, but I sitll like your cooking. Did I trip?         Did you?    That Mingus record is still revolving. You smile serenely.             I can barely breathe. VI. If I could waste myself, I'd do it here In public. Curse your name till my tongue bled. The same tongue that searched out the darkest spot on your back and licked it like chocolate. Curse your name like you were some Broken god in need of further profaning. But I am no good at playing: victim. Sadness is so private. These tears on the Uptown Express. Take that tired song off the constant stereo. It keeps reminding me That what brought me to you was music. You said you never lied to me. Fucker. You take the exit sign home with you. But I won't become invisible.

Fat, face the color of blanc on blanc, smelling of cheap tobacco and many unwashed garments, from the other end of the car, the unmistakable melody of La vi en rose scratched against tender ears of Parisian commuters. "Not La vi en rose again", said the young Frenchman facing me. I understood every word he said. The old woman singing was no tiny sparrow, no waif. Her corpulent canine companion was equally uncouth. She sang Piaf's signature song with a hostile gusto, each syllable enunciated loudly. We sniggered as the singing voice came closer. So close we began to sing along, conspirators, smiling. And we welcomed the doleful silence at the song's inevitable end. I gave her a centime or was it two? She deserved it. Was she blind? Did it matter? As for me, I am weary of speaking shattered Spanish with Argentinean intellectuals and outmoded American slang with the Moroccan grocer and his cousins on the Boulevard Saint-Michel near rue du Val-de-Grâce And I cannot seem to count past the number, sept! Gloved hands push apart the Metro's doors. It is journey's end. I try singing Piaf's mysterious refrain, grateful for my own soulful silly version on the walk towards the rue Henri-Barbusse, a short slice of street named for a revolutionary or was he a pirate philosopher? Tired and cheered outside my American language, I am puzzled with the battered glamour of this city built for electric illuminations, swift flirtations, as I follow the paths to dead poets shaped in solemn statuary harboring the austere lawns of the Jardin du Luxembourg.

It's all foreplay, really-this walk through the French Quarter exploring souvenir shops, each of them carefully deranged, as if dust were to settle only at perfect intervals. Yes to the vetiver fan that smells sweeter than sandalwood or cedar. No to the mammy doll dinner bells. No to the mammy dolls whose sewn smiles are as fixed as the lives of too many poor Black women here: motherhood at twelve, drugged, abandoned by fifteen, dead by twenty (suicide, murder) so easily in Desire. And yet, their voices sweeten the snaking air, providing the transvestites their proper Muses, all of whom have streets named for them in the Garden District. A soft heat settles on Terpsichore, just inside the gay bar where the owner's pink flamingos complement silly songs on the rescued Rockola. Who can dance to that Lorne Greene ballad, "Ringo"? Dixie beer is the beer of choice; marijuana the cheapest drug. Relaxation is key, since it's all a matter of waiting for the right body to stumble toward you. Lust perfumes parties in the projects, barstool chatter at the Hyatt, lazy kissing on the median strip stretching down Tchoupitoulas. If Professor Longhair were alive, he'd teach a lesson in seamless motion: the perfect slide of a man's hand down a woman's back; a lesson you learned long ago before you met me. We are making love as we did before in Austin and Manhattan. But in this room on this costly bed our lovemaking starts out the slowest grind, then, like this city's weather, goes from hot to hotter, from moist to rainstorm wet. You're tall, A., and where there should be tribal markings there are scars-football, basketball, mid-sixties grind parties where something always got out of hand. There's the perfect amen. You're your own gospel. And you bring good news to me-the way you enter me Like grace, the way you say my name, a psalm. No. That's not it. It's the engineer in you that gets me. Your search for the secret line that goes straight to the center of the earth. Deeper and deeper you go until there's no earth left in me. And we hum and moan a song as old as our selves gone back. There are too many souvenirs in your eyes. Gifts given too often, too hastily, never opened. Outside a city sprawls its heat, seeks out every pore, licks every moment of sweat as we shiver in this chilly room taking each other's measure. We say good-bye again and again. As if every kiss, every touch we make will shadow All our celebrations. And they do.

First, Beulah has no idea where the damn grape is. She just got her manicure and frankly could care less. She does find the cocky Cockney cute. But, so does that glittery Lil and well--- It’s Lil’s Big Show. Lil has blood on her hands, and rubs in the almond scented lotion, while she waits for that peeled grape. Beulah pours a large portion of gin and recalls the Minstrel shows, Bessie Smith, chicken dinners in a picnic basket, and a guy named Roy. He was no prince, but a king of the bedroom rambles. Elsewhere, boots are beating the ground, leaving bloodied feet and untended harvests as glass breaks across the faces of Polish Jews and the Spanish Republicans fight black clad insurgents. More boots, pretty, shiny, well-made boots. “until the war” says Tom in The Glass Menagerie. When America  sits  in a “dark room” and watches “until the war”.  Death’s stench rolls across the Atlantic, a powerful fog.  Meanwhile, The dapper heroes roam landscapes as fake as their stage names and the heroines roll up their stockings or sweat the chorus line But not Miss Lil and the disobedient Beulah, both swaying large hips and rolling brown eyes, generously Awaiting a man’s tongue sucking For Gertrude Howard (1892-1934)