Damn You
Your heart beats
Death marches
To the tune of Dixie
A bounce in your step
And a glint in your eye
The whole way
To the graveyard
Where you’re not the one
Being buried.
As Krapp recalls his viduity freely,
easy sluice or Berryman’s sieve,
a slip recycled to steer his sloop,
wet mastheads dandling crows again—
what nidus or nexus nudged him,
quickening clutch of the snow-blind sailor’s shake;
what waft of wizening brine or chutney
cracked a bow-legged compass straight;
what cordial floe saluting something
bussed the hull engraved and greaved
in trellising tresses’ trammeled tracings—
“VIDUITY” graven and glittered with salt?
Those callow teeth enlarged and polished,
dredged in a poultice of chrysolite crushed,
left dazzling dangling lobes ‘long garments’
hems jacquards once sutured shut.
What shallow teeth of cogs discarded,
a chamberlin’s ribbons reeling raw;
withdrawn among rusty scores imparting
tears his teasing tawse applauds.
What shallow teeth of cogs replaced
still chafing naked necks at night—
a gorget of cinnabar rime defaces,
shoving, surely, off one ruddling
morning’s wryly riffling light—
The crows, whose hackles crossed his eyes,
then sloughed their frenzied pinions bare
and proffered quills; rich, coppery ichor;
pimpled hinds of vellum rare.
They clawed, at his sinister flank,
frank ostinatos strange and stridulous,
striking up melodies Shostakovich ranked
among his most discordantly strenuous;
then purred blithely, Do you know of this opus?
pressed him firmly, rooked his shoes,
then thereby snapped in noxious crackles,
carping creeping, grousing queued,
O, do indulge us. Clip your craning nose:
discern ‘twixt onus and opus.
That crow, whose vellum fouled his hand,
then notched amidst its stolid spine
in elegant blood both “ONUS” and “OPUS”,
and brayed, Is Krapp, alas, here stymied?
Can Krapp discern a letter’s worth?
Could Krapp enliven mirthless clods?
Would Krapp evince that vile mirth
should Krapp demur his tattered tawse?
Should Krapp record another tape
to which no noisome soul relates?
Should Krapp relay a lovelorn sigh
or seize in ink his life denied?
Should Krapp refuse to wince or blink
as not to blear his pupil’s ink?
Should Krapp retail those sallowed gobs
not cotton, nail, nor candle swabs?
Should Krapp display his sharpened tongue
that clots a throat in blood unsung?
Should Krapp invite those in-the-know
to pick his brain or brazen nose?
Should Krapp unveil old mackerels’ flesh
he’s smeared across his sunken chest?
Should Krapp assay another word
that wasn’t first awoke in birds?
As Krapp recalls his Viduity
freely, riffled among the tumultuous Euxine
rooks distilled from tacit bees
and tactless bdelygmia’s crackling bustle;
should silvered plastron safely suit him,
salve his shameful reticence’s stings,
reveal rich reveries reared among sputum,
compel this callus contrivance Beckett
abandoned ‘long publican riprap, once,
and again, amid anxiously creased asides, to
frankly, freely, and finally feel
something more than viduity’s edges—
Pine Mountain Cemetery XVIX
Lingenfeltzer the Belle
Lingenfeltzer, it almost rings a bell, say
It fast and over twice and it does. Shame
Her stone is not shaped like it sings.
The absolute scorn of school board drudges,
With rules and paddles and gray miseries.
Her room was filled with magic, dreams, tomorrows.
No telling where you might find those kids,
Riverbanks, creek beds, forest glade, cliff edge
And even all the way to Frankfort on the train.
Blank maps with stickers provided riotous chaos,
You could hear them down the hall, out the window.
Frogs in tanks, a turtle, a little snake, and ants.
Window frames full of Dixie cups with plants.
Attendance sheet always lost, Bird Book disasters.
She mostly laughed at all that boring, duller stuff.
They never did a table, or a spelling test, turned
The pledge into a song and dance, Built an Alamo,
Log cabin too, staged plays they wrote of other lands.
Boiled a pot to make steam to turn the engine built
Of tinker toys and imagination drawn from books
Read by her when day was drawing to its end.
Sewed a history quilt with pieces brought from home,
Wrote a book about ancestors’ hard work past.
Decorated a tree with bread for birds and fatback, too.
Pitched a handmade tent Indian style, learn to weave,
Made soap and candles, dried apples and beans.
Jerky dried on the radiator, smelled to heaven high.
Those kids dreaded Saturday, not normal parents cried.
The teacher with a ring for a name stirred the pot too long.
Rules writ there for a reason the elders all decreed.
The Teacher College way across the state took her in,
Saved the mountain kids such wild and silly lessons.
Kept them safer, duller, ready for life’s test, they said.
Today we call it experiential or hands on or some such.
The shame is we didn’t listen to the kids who knew
Magic taught best the lessons learned for life.
your voice
a quiet clarion, appalachian
a beacon
you are like the word, entity
you were born in blue mountains
populated with rows of old growth,
and violet butterflies
but you don’t live there presently
when you see the foothills you sigh in relief
you never have worry of sticking out at home
like someone standing a-corner at a dance
this that i hear is the rarely understood,
the dealer shuffling out so many accents of
so many places barely called home, and
the question
what people will get to know about me
what, what will it be
the more you’ve wandered out to sing,
the more it sticks that
there is a big town word to describe a thing
there is a holler word to say “that’s a spring.” and
there are judges and juries that would break you,
to know where you flew in from.
i’ve seen the same.
sweetness.
you are fascinating.
