-Sun-

The Sun will explode in five billion years

But I’ll be very old and ready to go.

I'm looking into a more stable environment for the dog

Get him out of the city before it's too late

Maybe a quiet cattle ranch in southwestern

Oklahoma where rumor has it that the Sun

Allows for certain exceptions to its inevitable end.

He can run around chasing the old pickups

Delivering farm-fresh vegetables,

Spare parts for a neighbor's cranky machinery,

And the doomed, crate-stuffed chickens
Traveling fast in the dust 

Along with the breakfast eggs they made.

The dryness of the narrow roads

Link the small distant farms with a frayed hand,

Dry planet to dry planet. Murmur of bloated tires

And the muted, throaty calls of four-

Legged animals in late afternoon are the tread-worn hymns —
The songs of rural America, lucky dog.

The luckiest chickens are the few who get to stick their beaks

Between the wire-looped slats to the rushing air for one last breath.

When the cool-blue Moon rolls over the silos everything moves

To the front porch and to stillness.

Songs of vibrating crickets harmonize with the slow

Creaking wood of the rockers under infinite skies.

Dog sleeps at their feet in southwestern Oklahoma.

As for me, I’ll be very old when the Sun explodes.

writ in 2011

                                                 

-video lips-

If it’s too beautiful you can’t hear the song.

the rhymes are good and fit neatly at the ends—

but it’s the mouth that carries everything.

she should get out of the sun,

go to the landfill where the seagulls eat.

she should rub her hand over sandpaper

for the experience.

the bird dressed like Marilyn on an off-night

who’s drunk and falls on her ass

walking to the premiere of something made a good start.

if it’s too beautiful you can’t hear the song.

                                for lana del rey

-before even the Moon-

When we ran out of nails
We used some Carpenter’s glue
Yellowing-stiff with age

I found on a dusty shelf in the cellar 

On a weathered flat of corrugated
To frame an opening.

The deeper problem of converting the Evinrude

Outboard with the rust-covered housing

To work somewhat harder than it ever did

When my Uncle Frank used it 

To power the peeling twelve-foot smack

Over the lillie-padded

Still water of Fog-Land, was overcome 

By the confidence I maintained 

In the mission.

I’m going to shoot this baby to the Moon with me in it,

And Buddy Woycehowski's going to help me do it.

The uncle was long dead. 

But his brother, nearly a stranger,
Thought I was crazy.

He kept asking me how I came to have the Evinrude,

Which he thought should have gone to him
After Uncle Frank's passing.

I promised he could have it
When I returned from the frozen

Stone of the Moon.

Sunset on the horizon dropped fast 

On the junkyard, laying in waste

Behind the backyard, painting the rust-

Headed wrecks

In covers of their own patina;—

The incandescent 

Street lights turned on

And the kids were leaving the parks.
So I climbed in.

Buddy Woycehowski readied the cherry-bombs

For a loud ignition and lift-off,

As I screamed the countdown to blastoff.

This will make my name.

Sundown found

My father confiscating the cherry-bombs

From Buddy Woycehowski.

My uncle’s brother, the guy I hardly knew,
was awarded the Evinrude on the spot

Which he never came to claim.

I stumbled from the Pod

As my Grandfather stumbled up the stairs

Dank from the cradle of the cellar asking if anyone 

Had seen his glue.

My Mother shouted us to dinner from the open

First-floor window at the clothesline's pulley—

With an invitation to join us

Extended to Buddy Woycehowski.

                                              Quequechan    

-pardon me, girl...

Faith Ventura was nine years old,—

a city ragamuffin

with the look of a dusty angel,

her cropped blonde hair stuck to her face.

a smile's a hook to reel them in

working the barrooms, double-timing
in and out of the bus station,

in and out of the train station,

she studied the schedules,

nodding on the platforms,

knocking on the windows

from taxi to taxi,

setting-up outside the theaters,

setting-up outside the public
toilets of Providence

and when the urinals stunk-up the avenue

and the businessmen walked-up
to the streets in their suits

she’d be there to shine the piss from their shoes.

a smile's a hook to reel them in.

                                    for Faith Ventura Humes

-Sandra-

the first and only time I was told

to bring the clothes in from the line

I noticed the wooden clothespins

were topped with nubs

their legs slightly open
the tips
gracefully tapered outward to accommodate
the fold of the wash on the rope.


the girls wore dresses
at the Hugo A. Dubuque School
and whatever the social circumstance,—

School, Catechism, the Wakes of their Aunts,
Saturday afternoons at the Strand,—

when they sat down in dresses their legs

opened slightly to light,
more warmly than clothespins,—
something of movement they'd soon
become conscious of.


Sandra would do this too

and like her friends
she did it without an intent to attract attention,
staying within her own attitude of attendance.
she lived on Tobin Street
a few blocks from my house.

nothing sounds like the parched

screeching of the clothesline pulley
as the rope is hauled inward toward the window.
what the christ did leukemia have to do with her?

the sheets air-dried on the line.
skin of her parentage, the light
of the Ponta Delgada.




                                    Quequechan

                                                           

                                     




     

  

-Dashboard Mocha-

Could be

The dashboard Mocha

Should glow in the dark

Like cream-colored Jesus.

Maybe

Jesus should shimmy and shake

Like the Mocha shakes.

Could be

The empty-headed road is paved

With the blood of the Lamb

As well as the blood

Of the Possum;

The Highway’s communion.

Maybe

The hands that grip the wheel

Are damp with sweat.

Could be

The Mocha will vibrate its icy,

Seductive dance to spill its guts.

Maybe

Puzzle wants the Mocha.

Maybe

Jesus wants the Mocha.

Maybe

Josh knows more

Than his face implies;

Face

Like the pavement's face,

Lips

Like the crooked nose of Puzzle.

Maybe

Shawn’s asleep at the wheel,—

String of mocha-spit rocking

Like the Pendulum from his open mouth.

                                   for Synthetic Division

                                   August, 2011

-Bedford bagatelle-

1.
one moment a straining

Autocar diesel lumbers by

smoking from its stack

down-shifting
approaching from the east
in the down-hill struggle
of the great rigs inhaling against
the laws of dynamics,
westward towards the river

and the connection to Interstate 95,
with the park, the church,
a couple of italian bakeries and the fierce
community of the Portuguese passing along the way.

the big-rig's driver
lives someplace else, someplace down south,
probably North Carolina.

at the same instant a young woman

passing by the observational window,
walking against the grain of the neighborhood,

seems to know her way because most-likely
she lives around here.

(maybe someplace hidden deeply behind the church,
I'd guess North Quarry near the cemetery)

she's wearing a summer dress with brightly colored patterns of..

well, I can't really say.

I don't recognize her.

the big-rig struggles westward

with a powerful back-thrust

probably heading northward to the Border City Mills

where shipments of textiles, strapped on pallets

will be unloaded on the docks.

maybe a few relatives will manage the unloading

of the pallets, working for their tenements

and their cars, and stockpiling a few bucks

for the rainy days.

meanwhile the singular summer dress flutters

(rayon, I'm assuming) in its wake and I'm struck

in the instance of the dichotomy between power and grace
within the same frame of reference.

2.
employing the upgraded
Bedford Street Applause Meter
we notice the needle drifting to 85 for the powerful
Autocar diesel,

but sweeping to 98

for the lovely young woman
walking by in her summer dress, and

it was predicted that somewhere

within the body of this afternoon's bagatelle,
both will come to find their way to me.

                                        

           

-William's Saga-

I was born at 1017

Then moved westward to 1015.

1017 to 1015.

New planet. Same furniture.

Everything I wanted from life

Was laid at my feet

Between theses numbers.

Water from heavy rainfall would

Sweep downhill from the east,

Down the slope of the street

From the edge of the Narrows

Flooding into a concave arc of pavement

Directly beneath the feet

Of the tenement houses we lived in.

There, the water stopped moving down

And instead moved up

In the art of the downpour, the eighth

Wonder of the World.

I was told by Louie Rossi

That Donald Peterson threw

A kitten down the sewer.

I was told that Pinky

Drowned at the Quarry’s

Ledge,— a still, forbidden water.

The old-timer calling for rags

Pulling his team behind him

Was dubbed “Skeleton Ghoul-Tender”—

Hid a carving knife inside

His tattered coat.

Under the porches

Dank with tuberculosis

I'd hide the Nudies

And discover the ancient smut of others.

Swift swig of beer

From behind the Billboards.

Glance of manhood.

I couldn’t hit for distance but I could run.

So I bunted my way to first,—
Then got to second base with Angela Fazzina
Behind the stage in the basement of our Church.

Albie Bernard got beaned and died in a day.

But my sister’s teenage friends were angelic.

Some whiter than the sheets of the clothesline.

Some dark as the island's olives.

Fifties girls.

I remembered them fondly each night
As I'd close my eyes beneath the sheets.

I can’t strike up better imagery

Than that.
             
                                         Quequechan

                    

  

                 

-drive by day-

Rattlesnake hunting

In the desert of New Mexico

On the line out of Jemez Pueblo

Traveling fast in a pickup

On a two lane blacktop

Cracked by Sun,

With Chez Valquez

And two of his kids who were out

For the frozen blood of rattlesnakes.

The snipped and dried rattles of their tails

Made snazzy trinkets on decorated sticks
Which clicked like the living snake.

There was a market someplace.

Some sort of need.

Lots of snakes were killed under the

Wheels of the pickups, and the beaten

Station wagons of the Pueblo,—

Rusty hulks of machines, nearly romanic

If you lived someplace else.

There’s a lot of snakes out there

And they cross the road to get to the other side.

But in the desert, that’s the same dry side
As the side they came from.

Strange and funny watching a seven

Year old girl in a dusty sundress

And little hand-me-down sandals

Chase-down a squirming rattler

Rolled from under the wheels
Of her father's working pickup.

She ran to the snake, throwing her skinny
Arms out from her sides when she stopped

Bending forward, looking curiously
From a ten foot distance.

She was told never to touch

And when’s the last time

Your mother or your father warned you
Not to touch

The rattlesnake squirming
In the middle of the road in the desert?

                                 New Mexico / 1969