Thirteen feet
from Mrs. Brown's step,
it showed just enough
to cause generations
of scars and bruises.
I dreamed of using TNT
to blast it loose
not foreseeing
a landing in
this garden
prone to knotweed.
What boy could imagine
that the man would know
the rock at second clank
but not have the back
to build the wall
of boyhood dreams? --
settle for just
a doorstop.
Cannoball
We met at your obituary:
Emanuel Zacchini, dead at 84,
set the human cannonball
record: 175 feet, 54 MPH in 1940.
(Only one “n” in cannonball)
You returned me to childhood,
a one-ring circus, a sideshow
featuring an exotic dancer.
Even if I’d had the money
I was too young to enter
so I lifted a tent flaps
as if skirts
but couldn’t locate her.
I settled for the cannon man.
I saw his pockmarked face.
A cigarette fighting
a shaky hand
down to fingertips.
His costume was the grey
of his launcher.
Even his cape was patched.
He seemed unaware
of any record worth breaking
except one that would fire him
through the “little top”
and into peaceful orbit.
The blast wasn’t in sync
with the spring.
He hit the net previous
to the cloud of smoke.
I imagined the boom a sound
effect from that exotic
dancer’s delicious bumps.
The obit reported
no worldwide memorial
cannon salutes
nor clear sky turning
gun metal grey.
No clergyman praying
that all your years
of eternity
feel like nineteen-forty.
Steel Shot Zone
Bars line the shopping center
gun shop windows.
The owner is authorized
to sell Remington,
Browning, Smith & Wesson.
A sign asks, “What politician’s
Oldsmobile killed more
people than my gun?”
A Jersey barrier sits
sidewalk width
from the door.
There’s blue-red revolver
and rifle neon in the transom.
This is a Winchester
Steel Shot Zone
and there’s Nitex
to polish your firearms.
Sitting outside in your car
with coffee and newspaper
any April, June or November
morn you might hear
Dion singing on the radio
recall where you were
two of the shootings.
At the gun shop you can buy
Yellowjacket ammo,
a Weatherby Scope,
walk away with a Marlin rifle,
a speed loader for your pistol.
Mother Fog
Route 8
fog tricks
a Buick into
smashing
into a pickup
full of roadwork
cones.
Instantly
the driver dies.
One worker’s
leg, cleanly
cut just above
the knee
lies
by a pothole.
Denim rag
and sock
still life
completion.
Lifting fog
reveals in blur
the escapee
boot
voila! erect
but hides the body
like a mother’s skirts.
Wind and Sand
The record played and played
as I chased sleep on the floor.
The Sax dipped to the lowest
notes I’ve ever dreamed,
covering me like Medea’s robe.
I woke just as I started to melt.
Standing on the Lido with her,
sirocco blowing, sandy ices
dripping over our fingers,
we found the children
still alive and running
to us showing shells.
Mythic Alms
Black-winged redbirds southerly race
over a bottle-bound stranger staggering
to a house with drooping gutters,
paint cracking like winter lips.
Heady bebop jazz jumps at him
when Olympia opens the warped door.
I’m not afraid of death, he says.
It’s probably like leaping
into the ocean’s hip pocket
just fine when your eyes adjust
much like a movie house.
But at the moment cheese.
The music distracts her
and she thinks of melodies
rushing in menthol rivers crushed
in a red mill’s pokey wheel.
I’ve seen you before she says,
on a listing liner in a seaweed tux,
pint after pint pinching you
past the cheeks of calendars and clocks.
Cheese, everyday American in all I ask.
Last time you wanted scarlet
stories warbled from pages made
of feathers from my mattress
atop a bed of decaying brass.
Ah, the sonata of fondling,
the parchment laughter!
Cheese first, lady.
The birds are gone, she says,
so crack the pact with Ahab,
he’s no birder; tanagers have
never showered in the mist
of leviathans.
Bluesy harmonica for some cheese!
I’ll ballpoint scrimshaw
on your boney back, he says,
crossing his eyes and drooling.
A grackle flies in the door
and Olympia applauds.
No scarlet, but he or she will do
the singing to trail the bloody
echo searching for silence
in this squeaky cottage mansion.
Walking to the back yard, the stranger
pulls on his liter wine bottle.
From a window, Olympia hums an aria,
tosses cubes of blue cheese and cheddar.
The Last Episode
Mumble of rain streaming
Swiftly through
Copper gutters
But for spotty verdigris
Nearly a river of gold
Grey gloves absentmindedly
Buff the long silver handles
But for the fine wood
Sturdy staffs to guide
Through paths of wilderness
Cloudy rehearsal in a mirror
The black sheep vows
Not to break at graveside—
Schooling with hard lip
Bite and pinch cues
First dirt hits the box
Like a handful of drought
Flung against a barn
Straining, the vaguely
Welcome stray
Musters up
What hate remains
Yet does not quake
On kilter he walks
To the limo so safe
In murky disguise
Spying some stranger
In the wax fighting
The beading rain.
The World
Smile and I’ll call you the sun
; says Carlo the street man,
gut is too big
for his buttons
to a woman
whose globe earrings
remind Carlo
of ones that used to sit
atop small pencil sharpeners
in grammar school.
He tells her he had a globe
bank once and he is a planet.
Count the blue rivers,
lakes and streams
on my dying belly.
Carlo names her the sun
although she refuses
to beam.
A coin she tosses lands
with a barely audible slap
on his version
of the Mississippi
and Ohio confluence.
Her perfume mixes
with the aroma of trash
overflowing a barrel.
The scent faintly reminds
Carlo of pencil shavings
he used to empty
when he was every
nun’s pet.
Arbor Day
With the parents buried
there’s no winner posted
in the contest of care.
Strange, such a fragile
quality should splinter
so large a family
like a boy’s balsa
wood model plane
against an oak.
Now the apartment
to be cleared and each
one plots to work alone.
On a kitchen shelf,
among the herbs and spices
a long lost roll of film
catches an eye.
A son wonders what days,
what faces, are furled
tightly as swallowed grief.
His mind develops stills
of sweeter scenes
and as if stung by poison
thorns, he tosses
the find into the trash.
But thinking twice, he pulls
it from the coffee grounds
run outside and pokes
around for some soft earth.
With the hope of a child
sowing seeds of fancy,
dreaming orchards of candy
and such, he plants that roll.
Imagines black-edged leaves
against the sun, the calico
tones of a clan reborn.
Redemption
I figure sirens
panicked
the driver
into tossing
the fat wallet:
eight singles,
a Green Card
and a snapshot
of a girl
three or four
out the window.
There was cocaine
too, snug against
a laminated
Blessed Virgin
prayer.
Returning my find
intact, postage paid,
I had no regrets
although many
would argue
my act was
in no way
good.
I felt great
just helping out.
Well, think of it –
mystery me
celebrated in
duel tongues
on clicking
rosary beads,
folded into
family lore
like a lucky
dollar bill.
Dylan and the Missus
Ours was not a love story proper; it was
more a drink story. Predominately a drink
story because without the first aid of drink
it could never have gotten on its rocking feet.
-- Caitlin Thomas
Drink and brawl
and bedlam made
up the marriage
motto until it failed
him in the White
Horse Tavern, 1953.
Sprawled in St Vinnie’s
comatose, he heard
her vaguely --
like a poem
in the eye
of a howl.
She bit one
attendant,
fought
the others
but couldn’t maul
the woman sitting
at his death side.
No fray could
rouse him,
so goodbye Dylan.
What’s left?
Marry a Sicilian
film director --
outlive the poet
bastard four decades.
Share his grave
near the sea,
turn a ghost ear
to the gossip
of tourists
stone-rubbers
and tides.
Vinnie's Girls
Of the Project girls
who were nuts over Vinnie
Bern was the one
we could least understand
because she’d escaped,
married a sane guy
with a good job
who was more
handsome.
They had a kid
a mortgage and a new car
but she kept sneaking out.
One time before Vinnie got fired
from EPS it was rumored
the husband wanted to settle it
once and for all and would be
waiting near the White Tower
we walked by to get
to the Town Lounge
to watch the minute hand’s
fifteen ticks to last call.
I remember Vinnie’s switchblade
practice flashing in the rain
under a parking lot light.
Hubby showed and a deal
was struck without bloodshed
that led to Bern’s divorce
and loss of custody.
I last saw her outside a Five & Dime.
Lighting a cigarette she was shaky,
but smiled.
After Vinnie’s luck ran out,
Bern and the other Project girls
liked how dependable
prison made him.
They might have fought over
who talked through the screen first
but in time release a bullet
to the temple
set up the graveyard hours.
When the gate was locked
the stone wall wasn't tall.
Petal Smoke
The Sleeping Giant
is more than a landscape
in the hills
to climbers
who have tumbled
to death.
He mingles in dreams
restless seeds
and corms collect.
The Giant gathers
his ghosts
at Castle Craig
less for haunting
than to cheer brethren
carrying their fire.
Bulbs like fists of altar boys
raise daffodils
as if candle snuffers
that will turn
upon themselves
as the ghosts and their Giant
inhale petal smoke
like old men
savoring
burning leaves.
Hal Lives
Seventeen years a prisoner:
robbery, kidnapping, assault,
mostly a frame-up he says.
Yet he fought one more
Garden fight, age 42,
knocked out cold.
Ten days later buying a suit,
a shotgun blast
ripped through his palm
claimed eight teeth
and his upper lip.
A thirty-eight slug
in the gut, two in the chest,
eleven more scattered
as if the contract read
so many ounces of lead.
One sh
otgun round laced
his butt for the finale.
But Hal lives
in a flat without power.
His top denture slips
when he explains that
young boxers are meeker
than in old times.
The hand he uses to cross
himself passing Our Lady
of Mount Carmel Church
still blurs speed bags.
(Inspiration: NYT article by Ian Fisher)
Corpse Work
The golf club Luke uses for a cane
is beside him on the sidewalk
like a pratfall prop.
The V.A. has flattened him again!
He’s a stunt man for experimental drugs.
Resting on his elbows,
Luke imagines a clown film showing
on the garage across the street.
They are falling like drunks
and sick old veterans.
Their costumes are his
mismatched plaids.
His sneakers are as big
as Bozo shoes yet won’t tie
right his feet keep swelling.
This tumble is not as bad
as the one last July
when Luke was on his back
for half a day.
Nice the TV was on for company.
Someone will pick him up soon.
Maybe a guy who just lost his dad
and didn’t get to say goodbye.
The kid might buy some beer.
Luke will play the father,
smile, nod and forgive,
say everything is fine
like an old stunt man
who has taken falls enough
to appreciate corpse work.
A STUDENT’S WILLIAMS, YEATS, FROST,
CRANE AND THOMAS UNDERLININGS
IN A NORTON ANTHOLGY
MINGLED WITH HER NOTES.
The puppets on her spring
break are wool gathering.
The robots of St. Louis
stop the desire to be whole
and she embraces the split
image like two strangers.
A child looks like what
she imagines her
unreachable lover looked
like as a boy.
His austere beauty
is not romanticized.
Reality is not superior
to environmental
inhibitors.
A glacier can only go so
so far and then retreat.
Even Augustine
could not give
his mistress up.
But this boy is ignorant
of the cinema myth
as this day ends
for businessmen.
The fusion of nature
and technology
failed again.
So what was that
little object you were
searching for?
Sarajevo Smoke Break
No blossoms,
real or everlasting.
Just fleeting ones.
two cigarettes
like cuttings
set in soil
remembering
nicotina.
Stanislav smoked fervently
so first death anniversary
his sister and mother
share his greatest joy.
The girl thinks her brother
would have cheered the film
star who said the fault lies
in the face not tobacco—
a single mouth to enjoy it.
She smiles and exhales
out her nose.
Her mother wonders how to quit.
A year would clean her lungs
which serves to remind her
of ethnic cleansing.
She inhales deeply
as if recreating
her son’s last breath.
The fumes find no ring
but a rose
in her lungs
like in a lavish garden
she half recalls.
She offers it to Stanislav
and it survives
dull scissor snips of air.
She controls her coughing
as if a chant.
(Inspired by Rachel Cobb photograph)
Among Thieves
When Robby
OD’d, Charlie got
a lot of flack
for going to the wake.
It went back
to the burglary