The break-up with a true beauty

Claudette Beaulieu,

There's a river between us.

Construction of the four lane

Thru-truss bridge is at its shovel-ready beginnings
And the narrow, iron-grated traverse
Of the old Slade's Ferry Bridge is treacherous.

When crossed from the east

It takes me westward over the expanse of the river
Toward "Magoni’s Family Restaurant"

And the crazy "Somerset Bowl-A-Way".

Sure, I can cross its eerie erector-set construction,

Take a right at County then a left on Westhill,

Go straight for three blocks then hook a right at Middle

And another left on Longhill to get to you, and

I’m willing to do all of that and you’re certainly worth the effort,

But it's late in the day,–– the Sun will soon

Set below the roofline of your house where once

We counted twenty three pigeons squatting in a row, but

That was then and this is now, and I'll be on my bike

And don't you see–– there's a river between us.

1957? / 1958

-way the hell off Broadway-

when I die —

drop dead of the aneurysm or

by a common episode in choking or

by the general physiological constriction

of internal passageways or 

by descending stairs in the darkness,

by the slickness of ice or the heavy

density of snow,
exaggerated senility,

the last
elongation of exhaling,

the indiscriminate

maniac 

the hip-bone

the chicken-bone

the chemical boner,

will Fall River,
the heavy-handed city of longer poems,

dim its lights,—— dim

the slanting incandescent

streetlamp at the gutter

over the sewer where I once
was a fisher of baseballs?

I’m not asking for much.

perhaps the goliath 

drive-in movie screen

will rise from its ashes
above the moistened naugahyde

to flash its light for the sake of young
love's exploration

at the sweltering Ponta Delgada 

when the lid is locked-down 

when I die —

            drop dead

                        maybe of the aneurysm...

-The horizon-

Beyond the two green-

Primed leviathan water tanks

Rising to the east

At the summit of road's end

Leading to the sloping

Banks at the horizon,

The great fresh-water

Ponds of the Narrows

Split the sweeping

Watuppa Reservation

Of the fading Wampanoag.

But the road downtown

Departs westward

Toward the bridge, a muscular

Continuous through-truss beauty

Spanning the craggy banks

Of the Taunton River.

I'm below the fresh-water ponds

But above the running river

With not much recognized now

Of what was commonplace,

The stage of the hill

From where my friends were born

And with me, raised.

We knew the Narrows 

And the sweeping Watuppa

As few others knew it;

From the saddles and the pedals

Of our gleaming,

Indelible bicycles.

We knew the water around us,—

The river, the ponds, the red-

Tinctured fresh-water lakes of algae and metals,

The stiff-weeded

Inlets calmly resting at the foot
Of the sweltering textile mills,—

The salted ocean, the running water

Of two tenement rooms reserved for running water,

The frantic interiors, our revolving planets,— the crazy

Caricatures of the active inhabitants

And there isn’t a convincing explanation of this

Nor one required to forward to anyone.

                                           Quequechan

-Territorial / 1971

I worked with John Williston in Michigan

running certain documents to specific places

from the start of the day to its end. And then

from the distance of nowhere, his young wife

died at the hands of a quick, fatal illness.

The last time I saw her she was on display,––

her silent, lidded face as celestial as the outer planets.

I'm drawn to travel there, to snoop around,

maybe get a sense of the raw materials

before I wander back to the living.

John Williston's young wife is new to death.

Exotic, frigid fluids fill her arteries.

Intrusive cements petrify her muscle.

The examination laid before John is to see her

as she was in the time when she occupied her life,

when the warmth within her ignited her living breasts,

watered her eyes and her mouth which lulled him

to a trance by the simple nature of a glance.

Now John Williston's young wife

is laid-out before him exposing herself

as the contradiction to everything he knows, and this

was stored in my brain to be retrieved in the here and now,

born from within a crowded funeral home in Ypsilanti.

smart-town noir

downtown in the dead of night.

the abandoned
streets seem to whisper among themselves.

a light rain has fallen
so the atmospheric stage is set
for its final performance.

I'm on my own

and the heels of my shoes

quicken their pace, when––

from behind a streetlamp 

an assailant invades 

the unoccupied dimension between
my shadow and me, seizing

the pliable material 

at the collar of my trench coat, 

pinning me against the granite wall
below its chiseled declaration proclaiming:

“The People’s University.”

the assailant's fists tighten
their grip at the Adam’s apple

pushing the crumpled collar upward,

pressing into the scrawny neck

to the boney base of the jaw, dimming the narrow
corridor reserved for consciousness, sneering

to within an inch of my face..

“Okay, punk!....Copland or Ives”?

-the forensic findings concerning the demise

of Antoine’s novelty remain inconclusive-

today marks the first
anniversary regarding the questionable demise

of Antoine’s ideal inflatable wife,—

the warm

breath once inside her, quietly

dispersed through the stillness of nightfall.

now Antoine's payments are past-due.

mischief has been alleged.

recently, Antoine seemed annoyed
by the simplest of things;—
the unavailability of typewriter ribbon, or
by common annoyances such as

a minimum of three eggs per dozen
cracked and oozing in their cartons, knowing

the return policy is a maze of time consuming requirements.

Antoine's ideal inflatable wife once glistened, flesh-

colored caucasian cloaked in the vinyl scent of petroleum,—

her constant eyes possessed,
the alluring lead-red circle of her mouth,

the torrid grand canyon between her pliable breasts,

(especially when inflation is temporarily decreased)

and the exploration of the narrow isthmus of canal,–– but then

the slow, determined release of carbon
dioxide, –– Antoine's own breath of life

seeping into the night as he lay sleeping,

his once beloved ideal inflatable wife now punctured,

wrinkled-flat and lifeless, the diminished seeping, the moonlight

reflecting the surfaces closest to it the way it always did.

   

-celestial notations from the humdrum of a natural life-

the young woman, clearly less than half my age

standing before me in line turned swiftly

with the eyes of an assassin, scolding me to step back,

and so I stepped back, hovering briefly above her head

looking down from below the sharp florescence at the crooked

part in the middle of her head,–– 

a naked, narrow path running through a dark, tangled thicket of black.

I broke through the ceiling. I stepped back

gazing downward from beyond the pole-wires dipping with clinging birds.

I hovered briefly over the cumulus, the stratus, and nimbostratus,

I stepped back from the rushing thrust of the turbines,

and beyond them, the puckered dust of the Moon, then upward

to acid Venus exposing her false face for the sake of a glistening exhibition.

I stepped back, ducking below the dusty rings of Saturn to glimpse

the pinprick of Earth, posing for Cassini's documentation; hovered

from beyond the outer planets, iced-cold, gassed-up and empty-handed,

then outbound, glanced the Sun’s corona, stepping back, onward

and outbound, to the grieving veil of the Crab, an endless state of mourning

over the violent death of its star.

I stepped back into the deepest realms of the darkest sides of matter,

and then, and then.. and then a sharp, sudden poke to my back

from an unforgiving index finger admonished me to step forward

because down here, down here at the Stop & Shop I’m next in line

to the check-out register, rudely reminded of my proper place in the universe,

at the handlebar of a squealing metal shopping-cart holding my goods.

Friday