I’m still here to remember
their special day, the day
when at 16 green years
she moved into the home
of his parents, a white frame
farm house in rural Kentucky.
I picture them shushing each
other, struggling to be quiet
with so many beating hearts
in one place, so many listening
ears. My father, round-faced
handsome with a sweet smile,
had a vision of rising above,
transcending. She believed
in him, his dream. From these
roots, I’ve grown.
1
I think of Jessie & how easily she paints
the tossed away or just plain
flattened. Blue plastic
swimming pool, cry-baby
doll, right arm
missing, eyes stuck half
open, a deflated K-Mart
beach ball. In watercolors
& oils, she renders them lovely.
2
Lightning split the telephone pole on Sweetbriar
the same morning I collapsed in Jessie’s studio. I wept
torrents because I figured it out. I love
her but not like a wife or flame. No flirtation
or affair, but with a potency that shoots up
& down my spine like a cliff
swallow flying to earth’s inner core & sailing
with her own wings to the habitable zone
of Andromeda. Thunder moans
as the storm inches
toward the eastern plateau.
3
Today a Trump rally — hateful & crammed
with race insults — has replaced the weather
report & I feel dragged
down. The weatherwoman at least
wanted us safe. Jessie, my friend,
we are endangered, the peril is behemothic & I’m lost
in my smartphone. I am desperate Jessie;
I am choking; I am buckling. The country’s mood
is toxic & mind poison trickles
through me. I’m like a babydoll
at the landfill. Jessie, with your bright wet
palette, your brushes of ox
& badger, can you find my goodness
& paint it with glint & luster?
It must be Saturn pushing
Jupiter through the cornucopia of Capricorn
Here you say come here look at the garden
Sometimes I think you must be
An Impossible Being for it is not
possible for one woman to bring forth
What you bring forth: produce by the bushel full
Magical corn African squash leggy legumes
Plants whose names I do not know. You flow
like a slither of silver snake through your horny
sign, plugging questionable stalks into stony
ground to restore the breath back to land
Caught in a choke hold. I love to watch your hoe
Handle fly like a crow from the cherry tree
In your hand the handle will caw
And caw at all passing spirits to come
And give birth to the food for the people
who’ve run away for lesser things
On days I have to
Be Somewhere
-and-
Be Someone
I drink coffee
while I get dressed.
I brush my hair and
Put on black clothes and
I think about
the nature of life
and that interview
I read once.
Ann Curry
Puts a little bit of cream
And a single sugar cube
In her morning coffee.
She likes it that way.
She looks forward to
Just a little bit
of sweetness.
I think about Johnny and
his love for June and
how he joked and played and
Wrote and
Fought his own demons and
Instead of putting on makeup,
Or wiping down the counter,
I write haikus.
*
To be Ann Curry
Satisfied with the sweetness
Of a sugar cube.
*
Johnny Cash and I
We just want to laugh and cry
With our breaking hearts.
“Jim Crow”
a song in our fourth grade
music book
we thought it was about a bird
history hung
over us
Juneteenth
fireworks light the night
“freedom”
is a hologram
Strange days stacking up
feet that have never stepped foot
in Saharan sands
now the Sahara comes to me
The experts promise there isn’t anything unusual
about this visit from the desert
but is there anything usual left in the world
I wonder what the sunset will look like
What kind of wind does it take
to pick up the desert and give it the shape
of a traveler visiting in the hazy twilight
strange days indeed
Just an air quality advisory, another warning
the Sahara is coming, sandstorm in the South
will we even see it?
strange days stacking up
true shall return.
This command is executed forever:
while true
do
command
done
true is widely used in historical scripts and
is less cryptic to novice readers.
SEE ALSO
false
—
Found poem (erasure) from Linux Man Pages
Complete text at:
https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/true.1p.html
Pine Mountain Cemetery XXVI
Old Mose
Old Mose Howard swore he wasn’t going
To die. He ‘bout near didn’t either. He did
Agree to give into being lifted up if necessary.
Looking at his life you might say he was
Not too far from right. Look at the mighty clan
Trailing after that man and his many wives.
Seven of them, two left plumb disgusted,
Four died having yet another baby for the line.
The last one was too mean to do either.
She was his match even though only a kid
Of seventy, him being nearly ninety. Cooked
Nothing he liked and chewing took teeth, of which
He had very few and none of them met. Ran
For office and stayed a constable since the time
They fotched on that office from Frankfort.
“Ask Mose” was the standard answer to questions
Of theft, fence cutting or even taking another
Man’s milk cow. That well-polished gun and he
Settled most arguments without bothering the boys
In gray, the sheriff or those no-count deputies.
He kept the jail quiet and empty. The judge smiled.
Four songs he liked in church and if a daring
Soul squeezed in another, his cane would
Pound its way to the door well before the offering.
He was not above a bribe to get his way, handy
Tool. He always left a name tag on the bottle, just
In case you might forget to whom you were a owing.
At one time or the other he made every man jack who
Crossed his path jealous of his cunning and crass.
Mad or not they did line up when he had a job to do.
One hundred and three is a mighty age, but still not nigh
Enough to suit Old Mose. He lived to one o four just to spite
His hoard of kin traispin’ up his path finally to say goodbye.
It’s all right not to shed tears at this stone, he
Wouldn’t have thanked you if every drop was
Gold to pave his way to heaven’s promised gate.
Not many like him, thank goodness, but then if none
We would be right short of legends down-right good
To sing or tell about and wonder if they’re true.
Thank goodness for naturalists —
I’d been catching the smell of honeysuckle
within moments of you first kissing me, long and longingly,
bold at the brick face of my building
in broad daylight.
I’d misdefined it: a grape iris smell. Found it on my zebra pattern
sarong and thought it could be your cologne and later explained
it to you as similar in strength-meaning as fresh ballpoint pen ink
but floral.
Then my friend, the painter, asked me to join her on a
peony walk. We stepped into the trees that speak of fairies
and the ghosts of Henry Clay and Gypsy the estate cat
and she mentioned the sweet smell long before we approached
the beds of peonies: honeysuckle
was in bloom.
There I learned that each time, each phantom smell
had not been a clairsentient indication, but still, divine timing,
a sign reminding me of the special iris we found for my great-grandmother
and transplanted from the Grand Valley to the front range of the Rockies,
and dreamingly
some day to my old Kentucky home or, maybe, wherever you
and I might wish
to grow and open year after year. If we are so lucky
to take root.
I was just watchin’ this movie.
I got a box of DVDs from this guy
Out at the flea market.
Gotta be a least fifty or so
And he was only askin’ twenty dollars.
Other day I saw this ship on TV.
It’s owned by McDonalds
And all lit does is suck up
Everything in the ocean
And turn it into those fish sandwiches.
It doesn’t matter what it is,
It gets ground up
And then people buy that shit
And the boat just keeps goin’.
I ain’t been able to keep off the weight
Since I was in the hospital
With that real bad pneumonia.
I was in pretty rough shape.
They brought in the preacher
And everything.
I told him, son, if it’s my time,
It’s my time.
It wasn’t my time.
Little while back I busted my tooth
Up in the front
And had to go to the dentist.
But by God, it’s good as new now.
They put that stuff on it,
Shot it with that light
And it’s as hard as a new tooth.
You got them teeth like mine,
Thin and weak.
My daddy had what they called
Horse teeth.
He could eat gravel
And it wouldn’t bother him one bit.
Must be a lot of blacks
Down where you are.
But I bet they ain’t as bad
As the ones you get
In the cities.
I don’t hate nobody,
But some of ‘em make you
Hate ‘em, the way they act.
I understand why they’re mad
And all that
But most of ‘em don’t even know
White people were the first
Slaves.
We were called
Indentured servants.
When you tell them that,
Well, it just blows their minds.
They can’t believe it.
I’d like to go out into the world
And see something.
What I’d really like to do
Is take that train up to D.C.
And go to the Smithsonian,
See what they got.
They’ve got dinosaur bones
And every-damn-thing under the sun
So I could just go around,
See It all.
The sun ain’t like when I was a kid.
Back then you could stay outside
All day and be fine.
Now you’re out there five minutes
And you get burnt up.
Just a lot stronger now
And I guess it’ll keep gettin’
Worse.
Hell, I don’t know.
