I wanted to write a poem about flowers, so that's what I did.
It was short, expressed how I feel, and cut like glass.
I showed my father "Flowers" and he thought it was mediocre.
And I said, "No, "Mediocre" is the poem where I talk about dying,
and I'm trying to stay alive, so I wrote about flowers."

Flowers strangling soil plots with their roots, with their existence.
And to hurt something you love with your existence is a terrible feeling.

When he went through the windshield, amid the shrill fracture of glass and above the curling guardrail, he did not think of Junebug or his mother or his boyhood summers at Lake Tenkiller. He thought only of deep-grooved ritual: get in, turn the key, press power on the radio, turn the air to 1, and buckle in.

He saw the guardrail. He saw the guardrail and knew, or half-knew, what would come next.

He headed straight for it, going sixty, sixty-five.

He used to play a game to break up the monotony of interstate travel, back when he worked the night shift at Wolverine. He'd close his eyes for as long as he could while driving. He began with five seconds then ten, no peeking, eventually making it an entire minute, speeding down I-44 alongside the eighteen-wheelers and the farming crowd. It was around 5 a.m., sure, but a minute still.

Before he cut the ignition he turned off the air and the radio, always. His dad told him it made it easier on a vehicle when you started it. A mechanic later told him that wasn't true. Not even remotely. He still did it.

He saw the guardrail and thought of it in the same realm as driving blind, a game of chicken ending inevitably in forfeit although victory and loss weren't clearly defined, only the edge tangible, the heart rate going mad, the blood rushing through the tributaries of the body.

He thought brake. He even said it out loud, alone in the car. The air was on 1. The radio was on NPR, some story about "hacking" your closet. He saw the guardrail. His foot pressed down on the gas harder. He wondered what it'd be like to fly over the edge then he was flying over the edge.

He glided above the first snag of rocks, small cuts on his cheeks burning against gravity's drag. The car did not. While the engine continued to hum, pieces fell around him, shards of glass and jagged bits of the valance and bumper. The radio played Muzak. They were between segments.

He turned the air to 1. He hit the power button on the radio. Why didn't he buckle the seatbelt?

His screams came out in long monotonal bursts, automatic and not quite human. Turn the ignition, power button, turn **** to 1, click.

He didn't think about what he'd hit first, tree or rock. There was still some fifty feet to fall before that decision was made for him. He didn't wonder if the car would land on top of him. He got in. He turned the key. Radio on. Air to 1. Then he clicked, didn't he?

Marie didn't call tonight. Marie. Her shape started to form in his mind, waiting for him on the couch in that stupid shawl, her face lit, a bright blue, by the glow of the television screen.

A tree, he hit a tree first.

The rough bark tore at his face, chest and arm. He could feel the tree bend then repel him. He took a branch to the rib and continued his fall to the stony earth. He hit the ground and kept falling.

On a flybuzz afternoon in late June, the unshaven man in corduroy everything ashes into a shoe beside the bed. He takes another drag. He half hums, half sings "Fight this Generation." Outside he hears a car alarm. He looks through the blinds. Not his. An unopened letter rests on the night stand. He looks at it and then doesn't. His phone rings for the ninth or tenth time. He picks it up and throws it at the wall. Pieces with names like RF amplifier, microprocessor, and flash memory chip divide and shower onto the hardwood floor.

An hour and half a pack of cigarettes pass. She fiddles with her key in the door.  A few failed turns then she walks into the living room, into the bedroom.

She looks at the broken phone.

"At least I told you," she says.

"I didn't read it."

"I don't care. I already told you. That was just to soften the blow, a nice thing."

"Look for the splinters. You might see where they come out."

"We already talked about this. You said you wanted to stay together. You know and I know this wasn't completely my fault."

"Yeah."

"Yeah? Yeah. Absolutely. You've got to take care of yourself. I said nice things in the letter."

"I'm not going to read the letter."

She opens the window by the bed to vent the smoke. There's another siren in the distance. Someone protected, someone hunted.

"Your life is selected," he says.

"So select yours, too."

He runs his fingers through his hair, pushing the matted mess out of his eyes.

"For you to have the life you want, I give up the one I want."

"Stop feeling sorry for yourself. We've already talked about this. We've already had this fight."

"I want to have it again."

"Why?"

"I just need to."

"You're saying the same things."

"Maybe in a general sense, but I feel like I'm saying them better."

"I'm not going to listen to you refine your arguments for the rest of my life. We already got past this."

"Already is a strange word."

She turns her back to him and heads into the living room. "Everything is strange when you think too much, when you refine," she says through the wall.

"It's something that happened before or something that came too soon yet sounds like something inclusive, all ready to fight, to die. It's strange."

"You're not ready," she says. "I'm going to stay at Amy's again tonight."

She doesn't slam the front door. She eases it closed, locks it, and leaves.

"All ready," he says to himself. "All ready."

338

I know that He exists.
Somewhere—in Silence—
He has hid his rare life
From our gross eyes.

’Tis an instant’s play.
’Tis a fond Ambush—
Just to make Bliss
Earn her own surprise!

But—should the play
Prove piercing earnest—
Should the glee—glaze—
In Death’s—stiff—stare—

Would not the fun
Look too expensive!
Would not the jest—
Have crawled too far!

In the Deep South
There is always a woman
In an apron calling out to her kids
Warning them to hurry in
Or the corn bread might get cold
The kids couldn’t care either way
And at their age
Food doesn’t taste as good as
The marshes feel around their ankles

They’re just young enough to be nourished
Off of adventure alone
With sticks in hand
Grazing the tops of half-way grown
Up to their heads wheat

In the Deep South the outside
Is still the Wild West
Where you can walk a few blocks
From your front yard
To deserted boulevards
You can’t but a greeting card
From.
And among all the untamed
Nature and desolate fields and lakes
There is so much space
For kids to create

In the Deep South
Kids see broken down Chevys
As breeched kingdoms
Open fields as battle grounds
Littered with rocks that look like grenades
Every vacant marsh a ****** planet
Where you use overall clasps
As radios to your fellow astronauts.

Why would anyone be in a rush
To come home
To something so real
As Mama’s cornbread.

Love like the sun
Loves the earth
Ever since they met
They dance every day

The sun makes the earth
Look on the brighter side
The earth gives the sun
A reason to wake up

Love like the earth
Loves the sun
Because the earth isn’t distracted
By the stars and the moon

1063

Ashes denote that Fire was—
Revere the Grayest Pile
For the Departed Creature’s sake
That hovered there awhile—

Fire exists the first in light
And then consolidates
Only the Chemist can disclose
Into what Carbonates.

PARNELL'S FUNERAL

UNDER the Great Comedian's tomb the crowd.
A bundle of tempestuous cloud is blown
About the sky; where that is clear of cloud
Brightness remains; a brighter star shoots down;
What shudders run through all that animal blood?
What is this sacrifice? Can someone there
Recall the Cretan barb that pierced a star?
Rich foliage that the starlight glittered through,
A frenzied crowd, and where the branches sprang
A beautiful seated boy; a sacred bow;
A woman, and an arrow on a string;
A pierced boy, image of a star laid low.
That woman, the Great Mother imaging,
Cut out his heart.  Some master of design
Stamped boy and tree upon Sicilian coin.
An age is the reversal of an age:
When strangers murdered Emmet, Fitzgerald, Tone,
We lived like men that watch a painted stage.
What matter for the scene, the scene once gone:
It had not touched our lives.  But popular rage,
Hysterica passio dragged this quarry down.
None shared our guilt; nor did we play a part
Upon a painted stage when we devoured his heart.
Come, fix upon me that accusing eye.
I thirst for accusation.  All that was sung.
All that was said in Ireland is a lie
Bred out of the c-ontagion of the throng,
Saving the rhyme rats hear before they die.
Leave nothing but the nothingS that belong
To this bare soul, let all men judge that can
Whether it be an animal or a man.
The rest I pass, one sentence I unsay.
Had de Valera eaten parnell's heart
No loose-lipped demagogue had won the day.
No civil rancour torn the land apart.
Had Cosgrave eaten parnell's heart, the land's
Imagination had been satisfied,
Or lacking that, government in such hands.
O'Higgins its sole statesman had not died.
Had even O'Duffy -- but I name no more --
Their school a crowd, his master solitude;
Through Jonathan Swift's clark grove he passed, and there
plucked bitter wisdom that enriched his blood.