Besides

 Besides, she didn’t even live here.
 It wasn’t her bridge.
The babysitter never showed.
The porch ceiling was alive with wasps.
February collapsed.
His wallet was frozen.
All along the back fence, sharps and flats.
Enough to make cows harmonize.
Weather. You like it or not.
A turkey and all the tree trimmings.
Never mind. She blessed out
Alice and Jerry and she wasn’t even
in the book. Well, I’ll swan.
Turns out that greyhound track
near Charleston races buses.
Go easy. Steep and slick here.
Glad to meet you, Steep and Slick.
I’m Rocky. Make yourself at home.
It was a good bridge but now
the suspension’s shot it’s more
like a hammock. Ho boy! What
did you do with the baby-o?
Dressed him in calico? Rubbed
him with oleo? Yes and besides.

–George Ella Lyon

 

 

 

 

 

And here, I learned

how to say goodbye.

 

With abandoned old-man-winter calves

we tried to save in the once-was-a-stripping room

in the old black barn at 5 and 8 and 11 and 2

(and 5 and 8 and 11 and 2)

with warm bottles of still-remember-that-smell

that made my hands thick with sticky.

And then, we lost them anyway.

(But not all! No, not all.)

 

And goodbye —

 

With the Great Palomino

who carried me first on that green

with his rounded quarters

my personal streets-of-gold-on-earth.

Trust him and lean back

learn not to start when he stamps at the fly

learn gelding, mare, stallion, parts – all parts.

He who laid down in the field

with the kind syringe that

took away his pain.

Don’t watch, don’t watch.

 

And goodbye —

 

With ink and crayon on paper

tied with string that floated under balloons.

“Send her messages,” Em said.

And the logical place was heaven

because Grandmother’s arms had

forever folded before they put her in the ground

and Jesus had her now.

 

And goodbye —

 

With a swab on his tongue and

the drop in his can’t-blink-any-more eyes

and the push of morphine

when he moaned

and reading-through-tears

Kipling’s Gunga Din and

God’s TRUTH from The Psalms and Isaiah

and remembering I bathed his body last

while the warmth was still tucked inside.

 

And goodbye —

 

With one last trek to Green Creek

where the crawdaddies flitted

backwards, under rocks and leaves

and where the minnows swam among

the tiny shells of never-could-name-them creatures.

And the memory: buck naked bodies

sending rainbows into the sun to dance

with our laughter-of-a-child in the sun.

And we walked

where the sky was huge and
never-before-oppressive-now-oppressive

and there wasn’t enough air

for the Oh-God-I’m-Flying-Apart

re-grieving of all former goodbyes.

 

And when we drove out,

I never looked back.

Farewell folds like aluminum foil–
loudly, with a hard edge.
You wrap shimmering grey
around fried chicken,
chocolate pie, 
yeast rolls fat on hot air.
I fill my mouth to stuff down
goodbyes crackling in my throat.
This house will one day
smell different.
Your slippers will not whisper
across the floor tiles.
One day, I will forget your birthday
until it passes like a breeze.

Granny

Farewell folds like aluminum foil–
loudly, with a hard edge.
You wrap shimmering grey
around fried chicken,
chocolate pie, 
yeast rolls fat on hot air.
I fill my mouth to stuff down
goodbyes crackling in my throat.
This house will one day
smell different.
Your slippers will not whisper
across the floor tiles.
One day, I will forget your birthday
until it passes like a breeze.

Father rests his head, grown swollen,
against your shoulder, unbuttressed,
swaying in the bluster of someone
he left behind before your birth.
Where do you begin your search?

Father’s words are scrambled eggs.
He hands you the bowl, panicked,
asks you to separate frank from joke
but it’s a frenzied mess. He holds
a whisk in his hand, smoking gun.

Father’s elbows shiver like jazz
ensembles, but he hasn’t played
a note in years, you can’t squeeze
the music out. Jazz is not like that:
you can’t give father your calluses.

Father asks you, have I done good?
You nod, leaden, hold his childhood,
unwilling to dump it out, not knowing
where to keep it safe, not knowing
its shape beneath bloated skin.

Father is hopeful you’ll come around.
You haven’t been back in years.
You do not recognize his sinews
untempered by smoked herring
or rye bread. Doctor’s orders, see.

Father worries he is contagious,
is glad a continent separates you.
He does not understand the word
congenital, genealogy, generosity.
He’s asked for the keys to the family tree.

Father chews pomegranate blossoms.
Sap seeps from his eyes, on a stool
in the garden: the photo gone grainy.
Light is waning. You want to capture him
but father’s gone back to larvae.

Father watches angry white men on TV.
He says it comforts him, to see their veins
reveal themselves. It’s not PC, he says,
with a twitch in his eye, slowly calcifying,
milky, murky. He only sees memories now.

Father sleeps sitting down, wool over thighs,
drool like powdered milk drying on his lap.
You tuck him in but he will not stay.
You turn off the TV but he wakes up.
If you do not move, he cannot see you.

after “Grande Odalisque” by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (1814)

One critic remarked that the work had “neither bones nor muscle, neither blood, nor life, nor relief, indeed nothing that constitutes imitation”
—Roger Benjamin, “Ingres Chez Les Fauves” (2000)

She wasn’t from around here.
He found skin for her
in the butterfly bush
beneath his studio window,
spread out over the dazzling
wingcloth of three dozen
small whites lolling around
the nectar beneath a June sun.
He took them all home, crushed
them and made a reflective paste
of their wings, smeared it
along her cheekbones.
Her back. Her ankles.
Her limbs, were thin
branches out in the yard
blown down by last night’s storm.
Elm. Sycamore. Holly.
Her fingers and ankles, cutlery,
a couple pieces of flatware.
He wired together what he could
and poured taper wax
over where muscle met bone.
Her hair—he stole
from the mare, snipped
the length of her umber tail
as she stood asleep,
dreaming of fallen apples.
He borrowed the fan
from a neighbor,
but she didn’t know it.
The scarf came from
another neighbor’s
brocade couch, tassel and all.
The visible eye,
was one of his own,
plucked out and left
to temporarily wander around
in her skull—he didn’t even
wince when he did it.
Just painted with one lid shut.
And when they said what they said,
he patted her on her winged
backside and laughed to himself—
what they didn’t know
is that she was never alive,
and so what they didn’t know
wouldn’t kill him.

Meanwhile, the tectonic plates move
without me willing, the winds pore over

the valleys and lead mountains to 
ruination, the smallest wave grabs

more sand than I’ve ever touched.
Here’s to improvement, here’s to

holding on.

So what have I been chasing?
Something delicate? The silence

of sleep, or else of comfort, while held
by a dream that refuses to disperse

in the morning’s shower of new?
The warmth of flesh not my own?

A certain face, made up or uncovered,
or an easy fluid secret fantasy?

I will myself into stillness, but come
no closer to my labyrinth’s answer.

Railroad tracks hummin’ a tune
goin’ someplace and it ain’t too soon
Metal wheels runnin’ them rails,
screechin’ past with the wind in her sails
Steam comin’ on hot and louder,
makes heart beat fast and eyes gleam prouder
Pull that whistle and make traffic pause,
if just for nothin’ cause you’re the boss
Movin’ pistons churn the air
as space sweeps by without a care
Black iron gleamin’ against blue sky
passin’ backyards and children by
Clackin’ onwards to who knows where,
blowin’ high lonesome as if on a dare
Drawin’ and careerin’ down paths brand new,
makin’ us wish we were goin’ too

This is a catastrophe

Of a poem.
Tear it up,
Strip by jagged strip;
Paper mâché it to blank canvas.
Let the glue sop up unnecessary commas
And uncertain claims
And too-curly L’s;
Bleed out the ink.

Hide murky words in pastel paints
And flawless calligraphy.
Write, centered on canvas:
Live, Laugh, Love
Or Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff
Or YOLO.

Sell it at Home Goods for $14.99;
Call me an artist.