Deming, Kerry James Evans, Juan Carlos Galeano, Chris Hayes, Robert Herschbach, Judy Jordan, Jami Kimbrell, Chris Mink, C. Leigh McInnis, and Jane Springer.
SMOTE
“. . . then we shall know that it is not his
hand that smote us: it was chance.”
I Samuel 6:9
1
Free Checking!
Desire for the good deal, the hot need
to look slick, wordless advertisement
for the invisible product, I release you
like the dumpster behind the cafeteria
releases these long, festering rivers of milk.
Fear of death, fear of narrow spaces, love
of the wine-red mole that punctuates
the transaction-inspiring cleavage of Jill,
my credit union teller, I release you like
the scared shitless man releases the tiny
parachute. The name “James Kimbrell”
which I share (says Jill) with thirty-eight people
in Florida alone, the subsequent deflation
of our hero groomed by the goddess,
sped by the wind, loved by his mutt, envy
of his entire dreamed-up Mediterranean—
I release you like the crank-addled truck driver
releases his cargo at the midnight dock
until the warehouse is one in a trail
of crumbs, little light left on behind him.
So Many Stories
—for April
To return to the living, you have to walk backward
from that place where every beer joint has a playground
and no one’s afraid of happiness guaranteed to end.
Why am I here? Why did my sister disappear? Waves
of foam washing up around her comatose mouth,
helicopter worthy. Soothsayer of katydids, reader
of bees inside the pink hibiscus, who am I asking?
In the land of her absence, everyone is allotted
so many tears. To return to the living, you need
to notice the dogs at our feet, anxious for scraps,
dust rolling in from the funeral next door. Why
did my sister get tossed by her belt loop out the back
of some cinder-block excuse for a bar? Why death
beside a utility pole? Tiller of clouds, augur of
whatever, when the answer arrives, do us a favor.
How to Tie a Knot
If I eat a diet of rain and nuts, walk to the P.O.
in a loincloth, file for divorce from the world of matter,
say not-it! to the sea oats, not-it! to the sky
above the disheveled palms, not-it! to the white or green oyster boats
and the men on the bridge with their fishing rods
that resemble so many giant whiskers,
if I repeat this is not it, this is not why I’m waiting here,
will I fill the universe with all that is not-it
and allow myself to grow very still in the center of
this fishing town in winter? Will I look out past the cat
sleeping in the windowsill and say not-it! garbage can,
not-it! Long’s Video Store, until I happen upon what
is not not-it? Will I wake up and BEHOLD!
the “actual,” the “real,” the “awe-thentic,” the IS?
Instead I walk down to the Island Quicky, take a pound
of bait shrimp in an ice-filled baggie, then walk to the beach
to catch my dinner. Now waiting is the work
I’m waiting for. Now the sand crane dive-bombs the surf
of his own enlightenment because everything
is bait and lust and hard-up for supper.
I came out here to pare things down,
wanted to be wind, simple as sand, to hear each note
in the infinite orchestra of waves fizzling out
beneath the rotting dock at five o’clock in the afternoon
when the voice that I call I is a one-man boat
slapping toward the shore of a waning illusion.
Hello, waves of salty and epiphanic distance. Good day,
bird who will eventually
go blind from slamming headfirst into the water.
What do you say fat flounder out there
deep in your need, looking like sand speckled with shells,
lying so still you’re hardly there, lungs lifting
with such small air, flesh both succulent and flakey
when baked with white wine, lemon and salt, your eyes
rolling toward their one want when the line jerks, and the reel
clicks, and the rod bends, and you give up
the ocean floor for a mouthful of land.
Pluto’s Gate: Mississippi
