"And Abraham drew near, and said,
Wilt thou also destroy the righteous with the wicked?"
- Genesis 18:23
I
There are about four thousand people
Here.
They throng in blasted heat like
Little arid wasps.
Gasping summer rain,
Like the opposite of fish.
Of their individual character
I can give no generality.
They are men and women,
They stand on roofs and
Sleep on their words.
They are hot and cold
And they hate and scold.
They are devils and stars
And ***** and priests
And children of priests.
Orators, they are also:
The speakers of the state (which
Is hotter than they could
Ever know); they steal
And reel and impose their
Splitting fingernails deep into
The varnish of the
Wishing well.
They are men and women,
They stand on roofs and
Smother dreams by spitting on the sky.
II
Fox. Come and light my little room
With your brilliant breath. Have you
Come very far? From the eye of the trees?
I should leave this little town if I were you.
It has its ways and leeches from our
Dangling hands. A tongue named Lethe.
Wake early and flee back to your dark,
Summon that green corpus shell that
You came from and follow its outlying root.
You should know the power of the vine.
It crawls in the blinding night and
Strangles what it cannot feed upon.
Oh my little fox, I beg you turn back,
For in familiarity lies strength and nothing
In this wilderness will give you nourishment.
III
He walks in waterways and crunches bone.
He watches moonlight play on open wounds.
He wishes dearly for the ends of weeks.
I heard him live his life without a sound.
The high school band with a treble clef. The year
Of empty penmanship in which he wrote
A thousand notes and mailed them underground
About which neither parent knew a thing.
Encounters best discovered some years later
Work to redden ears in coffee shops,
Or rather as I’m talking to him now,
With darting speech and halting eyes and all.
Perhaps the atmosphere could lend itself to blame,
The hormones and the collusive ennui.
But little charms the tear ducts quite like saying,
“Why am I this way, do you suppose?”
I haven’t got the heart to make reply
And often pose myself the same question
Before the mirror thinking of my whims,
The muddied roads that led me where they did.
My time has run itself to pieces in
The hope of spreading my horizons, but
Some sand runs faster in the way, some gains
More ground. And mine? This distance is unknown.
I licked the shelves of Hardy, Plath, and Keats.
I lorded over idiots with glee.
I lured the fathoms of my mind to float.
And oh, the things that he must think of me.
IV
The doors know I am coming,
They dart out of my way.
My telekinesis stops there
But I troll forward
And brandish my little iron steed.
**** Adjust my strap
And push the cart onward.
My purse like a little leather
Bundle of swaddling.
I nuzzle it close to my breast.
Frozen foods. Diet says
No carbohydrates, so I adjust
My tastes. In a little town
Like this, they’ll notice if
I don’t.
Magazine aisle. Nothing
But sex-endorsing rags
And godless photo sessions fit
For lining shelves and
little else.
Lord, this vast store!
Give me strength to bet back
To my car. God, look at
That **** at the pharmacy
Asking for birth control.
And I can’t help but
Cluck my tongue at her:
I just tell Ray I have a headache
And turn on my back.
Ha, as if she’s married.
No decency any more.
Men getting married, women too!
God supposedly “Banging” us out of
Star dust. Who are those atheists
To judge my truth?
Checkout. No, self-checkout.
I don’t like that clerk
Staring at me. Receipt.
Probably a ********* anyway.
And for a moment my mind controls the doors and all things.
V
She’s gone a bit insane.
Yesterday in class, she asked
To go to the lavatory
And just went straight home.
(Poor thing, I can’t blame
Her after all that has happened.)
She’s told me about her
Father before. Whether she’ll
End up as warped remains
To be seen. She’s got my sympathy.
(Mother dead at four, brother at
Seven and something else at twelve.)
Senior year is more than
Freedom from Dad, she says.
It’s freedom from myself,
Whatever that means.
(It is her father’s profound wish
That she memorize all of Revelations.)
From the grass, she tells me
That her father explained to her
That non-dairy creamer kills
Ants. She does it with a smile.
(We don’t have to say much more,
Suffice it to say he’s a very loud man.)
She still has an averse reaction
To stories about car crashes.
And I never read her her
Early July horoscope.
(Nightmares are too kind.
Panic sifts through windowpanes.)
Her uncle doesn’t call from
The old hometown, he was
Grabbed from her life and her
Father never says why they moved here.
(Two years her junior, she jokingly
Calls me Grandma because)
She hates her real one. Prom
And graduation. A candle
Ceremony and she’s gone.
Her father left before it was over.
(I’ll miss her, but I made
Her promise not to visit.)
VI
Hot like a miracle breath.
The two seasons: Summer
And February.
We taste the heat
And drive away for the weekend.
Of course the world ends
And the “Welcome to” sign.
Unsurprisingly,
The radio dies as we
Head back to town.
Why should the death of
An intangible surprise me?
Everything else
Dies here.
Pessimism like a mockingbird.
The smoking trees
Ripple like an Ella
Fitzgerald vowel.
Hold your
Miraculous breath
And it still won’t rain.
Our abortion
Welcomes the needle heat
with a horrifying
Little finger.
That smile,
That smile.
Jesus.
How can it stay so
Hot? No reply,
But I forgot who
Was asking.
The irony of this ****
Town sparks my
Smile.
VII
So where are you from?
I lived up north
Before I moved down here.
They needed teachers and
I thought “Why not?” Turns
Out this place is a lot
Slower than up where I
Came from. No offense.
(Laughs) None taken.
So what are you teaching?
Senior English. Pretty cool
Subject but I was shocked
How little the kids had been
Exposed to. I hope to remedy
That soon. (Mumbles something)
Any more problems, you know?
The parents have complained?
Oh, just the usual nitpicky
Silliness: “I don’t want my
Christa or Johnny reading
Such-and-such a book.”
After a few years, I’m
Sure the parents will lighten up.
Or, (Laughs) at least I hope.
How are the kids?
Can I actually answer that one?
One or two brights but most
Just seem ready to get out.
They’d better be willing to put
In some actual thought if
They really hope to. (Pause)
It’s not all about sports.
(Laughs) I hope you’re not too
Hard on the athletes. They do their best.
Well, I certainly hope
They do. I won’t play
Favorites or anything like
That. Hardly fair to the
Others, right? (Laughs,
A pause, tape ends.)
VIII
He can’t breathe.
He’s been running for
Hours.
The trees. The brush.
Wonderful veins blast
Away at their work
To preserve him;
Great fibrous tendons
Work to carry him
Away from the noise.
The murderous streets with
Scoured buildings
And trees inviting the
Convening crowds to lay
Out their burdens, to
String them up and
Ease their hard frustrations.
They have not seen him as yet.
He follows Polaris,
god of the irreverent,
Meager candle for a
Drowning man.
Exposed road; he flags
A car like a madman.
Well, we shan’t go
So far as to call him that.
And has he any bags?
No.
And which way is he going?
North.
Procession. Silence.
The coolish progress
Of a blackish
Summerish
Night.
How many minutes
out of town? and how
many moments in the
rounding cruelty of acting?
The driver smiles in his driver’s
Seat, eyes lit by the green
Display, ears filled suddenly with
Static.
The bruised night
Raises its single, white eye
Like the ponderous pitch
Of a bird.
I suppose he knew from
The second he saw the car:
There was never any sanctuary
In this little cloister.
The towns spreads like
Botulism over both windows.
He stops before the courthouse.
Stops before his jury,
Hanging judges.
And you needn‘t ask yourself
“Who are they?”
I’ll tell you.
They are men and women,
They stand on roofs.
They are boys from California
Who ran like foxes but refused
To run away.
They are musicians who lived
Their lives without a sound.
They are hopeless hags who
Speak in blinding grocery stores
And **** the gossip air.
They are girls with opportunities
Burst like an innocent cell
And violated by the heavy hand
That tucks them deep to sleep.
They are cruel little ******* who
Only wanted something to listen to
While the seasons spun around them.
They are teachers who never learned.
They are hearts that never burned.
They are heads that never cooled.
Not when it’s so hot outside.
They grew uneven like a story
Written in celebration of a meaningless title.
They have every right to be angry,
And yet they level their stones
At one another instead of the
Hell a glass house can become.
They walk so slow the sun
Can stoop and eat them up
Without the briefest guilt.