C. D. Wright

has been written in mud and butter

and barbecue sauce. The walls and

the floors used to be gorgeous.

The socks off-white and a near match.

The quince with fire blight

but we get two pints of jelly

in the end. Long walks strengthen

the back. You with a fever blister

and myself with a sty. Eyes

have we and we are forever prey

to each other’s teeth. The torrents

go over us. Thunder has not harmed

anyone we know. The river coursing

through us is dirty and deep. The left

hand protects the rhythm. Watch

your head. No fires should be

unattended. Especially when wind. Each

receives a free swiss army knife.

The first few tongues are clearly

preparatory. The impression

made by yours I carry to my grave. It is

just so sad so creepy so beautiful.

Bless it. We have so little time

to learn, so much… The river

courses dirty and deep. Cover the lettuce.

Call it a night. O soul. Flow on. Instead.

In front of a donut shop         someone’s son is shot dead

A witness on condition of anonymity

The slow open vulgar mouth         drawing on a cigarette

In a face once called Forever Young

Now to be known as Never-a-Man

Gone to the world of the working and the prevaricating

of the warring         world of drywalling of lousy test scores

of fishing from a bridge on a brilliant afternoon

                            belt buckle blown undone

Recollect reading to her boy

reading to him in bed         overcome herself

with sleep as if drugged or slugged         then jabbed up again

Come on         Keep reading         Don’t stop         Don’t ever stop

like she was saying         Beauty cannot         she cannot marry

the Beast         and tonight as on all other rose-scented evens

He stumbles         the Beast he stumbles         from Beauty’s empty chamber

In agony         he goes in agony         the fur of his fingers

smoking         until it’s her boy he is the one saying

exclaiming         Yes Yes he will he will marry the Beast

                            until he is the one who conks out

as a light pole struck by a drunken car

And suddenly it’s raining like plastic

When she stumbles at last from the room

he is the one         who shakes himself awake

and yells         Protect me         and she is the one

who promises exclaiming         Yes Yes she will         I swear

if it kills me I will         as once the mother

of Forever Young shot in front of the donut shop

must have sworn         if it killed her she will         a boy

              So quiet         the report heard from his kin

You wouldn’t even notice him on your electric bill

              Over there         it’s a different world

              Desperate to be rejoined to this one

     Once he comes to live on the outside of her, he will not sleep

through the night or the next 400. He sleeps not, they sleep not.

Ergo they steer gradually mad. The dog’s head shifts another

paw under the desk. Over a period of 400 nights.

     You will see, she warns him. Life is full of television sets,

invoices, organs of other animals thawing on counters.

     In her first dream of him, she leaves him sleeping on Mamo’s

salt-bag quilt behind her alma mater. Leaves him to the Golden

Goblins. Sleep, pretty one, sleep.

     … the quilt that comforted her brother’s youthful bed, the

quilt he took to band camp.

     Huh oh, he says, Huh oh. His word for many months.

Merrily pouring a bottle of Pledge over the dog’s dull coat. And

with a round little belly that shakes like jelly.

     Waiting out a shower in the Border Cafe; the bartender

spoons a frozen strawberry into his palm-leaf basket while they

lift their frosted mugs in a grateful click.

     He sits up tall in his grandfather’s lap, waving and waving to

the Blue Bonnet truck. Bye, blue, bye.

     In the next dream he stands on his toes, executes a flawless

flip onto the braided rug. Resprings to crib.

     The salt-bag quilt goes everywhere, the one the bitch

Rosemary bore her litters on. The one they wrap around the

mower, and bundle with black oak leaves.

     How the bowl of Quick Quaker Oats fits his head.

     He will have her milk at 1:42, 3:26, 4 a.m. Again at 6. Bent

over the rail to settle his battling limbs down for an afternoon

nap. Eyes shut, trying to picture what in the world she has on.

     His nightlight – a snow-white pair of porcelain owls.

     They remember him toothless, with one tooth, two tooths,

five or seven scattered around in his head. They can see the day

when he throws open his jaw to display several vicious rows.

     Naked in a splash of sun, he pees into a paper plate the guest

set down in the grass as she reached for potato chips.

One was always going when the other was coming back

One was biting a green apple

The deeper the evening the louder the singing

Throwing the core out the window

An oar stirred the dark then quit

A face drenches itself in carlight

A wrist wearing a man’s watch dipped a net

Even as one turned toward an unfinished building

The other wondered what one would have on

Upon returning will the hair be fallen or cropped

If one reaches what is grasped for

Gnats go for the eyes

Will utter disappointment set in

Will it be water or milk or wine tonight

Mostly one listened in the low-intensity glow

Of events one sustains incomprehensible feelings

              It is 2005, just before landfall.

Here I am, a labyrinth, and I am a mess.

I am located at the corner of Waterway

and Bluff. I need your help. You will find me

to the left of the graveyard, where the trees

grow especially talkative at night,

where fog and alcohol rub off the edge.

We burn to make one another sing;

to stay the lake that it not boil, earth

not rock. We are running on Aztec time,

fifth and final cycle. Eyes switch on/off.

We would be mercurochrome to one another

bee balm or chamomile. We should be concrete,

glass, and spandex. We should be digital or,

at least, early. Be ivory-billed. Invisible

except to the most prepared observer.

We will be stardust. Ancient tailings

of nothing. Elapsed breath. No,

we must first be ice. Be nails. Be teeth.

                                                   Be lightning.

More years pass and the book does not leave the drawer.

According to our author the book does not begin but opens on

a typewriter near a radiator. The typing machine has been

aimed at the window overlooking a park. It’s been oiled and

blown out. At heart it is domestic as an old washer with them

white sheets coming off the platen. In the missing teeth much

has been suppressed. In the space and a half, regrettable things

have been said. Nothing can be taken back. The author wanted

this book to be friendly, to say, Come up on the porch with

me, I’ve got peaches; I don’t mind if you smoke. It would be written

in the author’s own voice. A dedication was planned to

Tyrone and Tina whose names the author read in a sidewalk on

Broad. The machine’s vocation was to type, but its avocation

was to tell everyone up before light, I love you, I always will; to

tell the sisters waiting on their amniocenteses, Everything’s

going to be fine. And to make something happen for the

hundreds of Floridians betting the quinella. It would have

dinner ready for people on their feet twelve house a day. And

something else for the ones making bread hand over fist, the

gouging s-o-bs. But the book was too dependent. Women were

scattered across pages who loved the desert, but moved into

town to meet a man. The women, understand, weren’t getting

any younger. Some of these women were pecking notes into the

text when the author was out walking. One note said: John Lee

you’re still in my dreambooks, et cetera. The author had no

foresight. In previous drafts the good died right off like notes

on an acoustic guitar. Others died of money, that is, fell of

odorless, invisible, utterly quiet wounds. The work recorded

whatever it heard: dog gnawing its rump, the stove’s clock, man

next door taking out his cans, and things that went on farther

down, below buildings and composts, all with the patience of a

dumb beast chewing grass, with the inconsolable eyes of the

herd. Basically the book was intended as a hair-raising

document of the organisms. Thus and so the book opens: I have

been meaning to write you for a long long time. I’ve been

feeling so blue John Lee.