The Sky Tonight
💐💜🎀The sky turned pink tonight—
the softest, boldest pink I’ve ever seen.
As if the heavens leaned close to say,
This is for you.
To every mother
in the kingdom of Earth:
We are here.
We are free.
We are remembering.
And so it is.
💐💜🎀The sky turned pink tonight—
the softest, boldest pink I’ve ever seen.
As if the heavens leaned close to say,
This is for you.
To every mother
in the kingdom of Earth:
We are here.
We are free.
We are remembering.
And so it is.
The prettiest person I know
So many ideas trapped inside
How do I free them?
Maybe a checklist
Need to buy the right materials
Need to practice first
Just need the time
Then I can start
Then I can pry them free from those tiny pages
But maybe they’re not ready to come out yet
Which do I free first?
So many
Just choose one
Start anywhere
Start now
They’ll stay trapped otherwise
The reason why the villagers cried out
Was not that he looked strange
But looked familiar
Pieced together as he was from graves
Of those who died so recently, too soon
For time to smooth away the edge of grief
A woman saw her lover’s face
The lips that kissed her in the heat of passion
And groaned apology with their last breath
A girl saw the arms of soldier brothers, right and left,
That swung her, beloved sister, in between
Before leaving for their final battle
A son saw his father’s knees, the favored seat
To listen to the passed-down stories
And the grandson’s, too, for that short time they had
Did he realize?
They never saw a monster
But a memory
James Baker Hall, Robert Penn Warren, and Charles Semones
were at the breakfast table, looking down on us.
“I move the boxes to make for fewer boxes, fewer places,” James said.
“With the motion of angels, out of Snow-spume and swirl of gold mist, they Emerge to the positive sun,” Robert said.
“And yet these souls below belong to the Sabbath Country,” Charles said.
Jesus wandered by.
“Good morning,” He said. “If you’re discussing reincarnation again, please let Edgar come to the table. It’s kind of ‘his thing’.”
Joy Bale Boone took His hand, winking at the others. “I think there are waffles this morning,” she said.
Nerve struck, he moped deckwards,
quietly angry, the way twelve-year-olds will be,
too old to cry about a game,
too young not to feel it
all the way down.
Ten beats later,
she followed —
no sorries,
just the cardboard box
my mother had saved from the mirror delivery,
the kind you’re meant to keep,
just in case.
She said, watch.
Then it began:
first her, then him,
punching feet through board.
Enter hose
and it’s “Lucy’s Italian Movie.”
They’re in the grape vat,
laughing too hard,
burning exhaustion off
in soaked cardboard
and loud, clean violence.
Then it was mash.
Then it was soup.
Then it was holy.
They called it compost
and kicked it like faith,
beat it beneath them
until it had no use left
but laughter.
Inside, Annette Hanshaw
crooned, “Daddy, Won’t You Please Come Home?”
through the split radio of my chest,
while the magnolia bloomed so hard
it embarrassed the air.
When I made them wash it up,
I didn’t yell.
Just spoke in that tone that means,
don’t make me cry about this too.
They were still smiling
when they sprayed feet
flecked with pulp
refusing to come clean,
the end of a long joke
they didn’t know
they were telling me.
From the tired hotel on 2nd and Broad
where Johnny Cash stayed, the sign says,
and the Beatles and the termites,
she stares out at a scraped sky
remembers the conversation that led
to her own Southernmost Point
where everything stood behind her
Remembers how he pulled her aside
there’s a whole world out there,
he said and what are you, chicken?
Remembers his confidence and
how she followed, entranced, as he
slithered away, back before she realized
he didn’t even have hands
She wondered what the big
apple would taste like – oh it was soft
at the core, some new kind of rotten
and the worm in the middle
still squirmed on the floor
where she spit it out, laughing
and writhing at her feet
She lifted her suitcase
with the strength of a woman who
found what she’s looking for elsewhere
Elsewhere.
She never had to leave home for this.
Everywhere you go, you have to make
your own sparkle –
Any city is sin city if you do it right.
Julia says, This is the kind of soup
you could make anywhere in the country,
even Kansas City.
Her voice is a flute, his a cello.
Jacques says, Even with salmon, right?
She calls him Jack.
Even hunched, her spine
curved like the fishbones in the stockpot,
she towers over him.
Proportions aren’t very important,
she says. That’s about half a big onion.
Here’s some garlic.
Jacques throws tomatoes in the pan.
It’s beginning to smell, Julia says,
like the streets of Marseille.
Julia says, You don’t have to have wine it.
Jacques, smiling & pouring from a bottle,
says I think you do.
But Jacques, gallant, mostly defers to her,
even though he’s doing the bulk of the work.
Julia is the legend, not him, not yet.
Jacques, judicious, ladies the stock.
I think put the whole thing in, Julia says, don’t you?
He says, I think you’re right.
Salt, pepper, thyme, tarragon, saffron,
not too much. You can always add more,
Julia says, but you can’t take it out.
Snapper, scallops, clams in the shell.
Mussels would be very nice, she says,
but there are none. Put in what you have.
Julia shows off a giant mortar & pestle
she & her husband found in a market in Paris
in 1949. Paul had to carry it a mile.
Ten years her senior,
Paul died years ago after a series of strokes.
Jacques looks a bit like him.
Jacques says, Shall we taste it?
Julia takes a delicate slurp, her eyes on him.
This, she says, is one of the best soups you can find.
Remember
people don’t come to hear you
as much as they come to feel themselves
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