Truck

ALL THE GOOD SHEPHERDS

I've had dreams

about heaven, Jesus and Mary

and all the good shepherds

in institutional white and formation—

I dreamt they were coming

toward me from a landing strip,

walking through plate glass.

Once, when wide awake,

I warned Satan off

by making the sign of the cross

in spite of my arms being pinned

to the bed.

Now, these shadows,

hands clasped behind their backs,

heads lowered—

they pass by my windows

in daylight, in moonlight.

I have seen them

come out from behind bushes,

from the cornfield—

perhaps they have slept

in the barn on cool nights.

My theory is they are

souls of the obdurate

in repentant contemplation

for theft, murder, adultery—

for harboring evil thoughts

during hard labor, a hard life.

And these opaque penitents

are not eyelashes casting

full-length shadows—

this is purgatory,

and I am not dreaming.

WALTER AND HIS FAT WIFE I

pay day

Walter is walking toward home

with Caribbean take-out

he is the darkest shadow at dusk

and even in late October

neighbors gather close against the chill

a woman is singing gospel on her stoop

plaiting cornrows in a child's hair

Walter nods and smiles

making his way to his fat wife

already he can hear Tito Puente

coming from an apartment in the rear

imagining his wife's hips in motion

making his way up three flights of stairs

Walter is singing

she is waiting at the door

in a red dress with tiny white flowers

and kisses him lightly on the lips

he could fall to the floor

on his knees and wrap his arms

around his wife's thighs

Walter likes the wave of her breasts

against his chest when they are dancing

sometimes they don't draw the curtains at all

and anyone could look over the sill

to see Walter holding his fat wife

she keeps the glass in the windows clean

so whether it be the moon or sun

to shine on them like candle light

in their bed, she is blue-eyed and gentle

while on the first floor a man is playing the flute.

WALTER AND HIS FAT WIFE II

A hot and sticky

Friday evening in July,

and Walter is sitting

on the hood of his '84 Buick.

Everyone is waiting

for the ice cream truck—

even the old woman two tenements up

in her pink terry slippers.

Children are wrapped around the banisters

while Walter seduces his fat wife,

reaching for her heavy hips.

She allows him her fingertips

and averts her eyes.

Everyone is watching—

she is shy.

Walter is humming

something Billie Holiday

that only his wife can hear

and he doesn't take his eyes off her—

the tender way she places her hand

in the child's hand

to go into the street—

the softness of her words

to the neighbors—

the way her eyes well up

at the unkindness of men

who are laughing.

God, how Walter loves his wife

fragile

as blue glass.

WALTER AND HIS FAT WIFE III

On a cold and clear December night

Walter walks with a bounce in his step

after a drink at the Oasis

and turning down three dances.

The guys tease him—

'Walter, man, you blind in one eye?!'

He knows it's time to go home

and dance with his wife

to Viva Bob Moore.

Women are standing in their doorways

for Friday night dates or deliveries—

'Good evenin', Walter'

and he nods with one milky eye to the ground.

Walter's wife is standing in her doorway too.

He swears his breath has made it home before him.

She is fat and lovely with that smile on her face.

Placing her warm hands on both his cheeks

they close the door,

and after they have laughed

Walter breathes the scent between her breasts—

soon she closes both his lids

with gentle fingertips

and he is dreaming

in the bluest hues.

WALTER AND HIS FAT WIFE IV

Walter's lips are in continuous motion.

His mouth is full of bright ideas

and his wife's kisses.

He is working two jobs now,

saving money to take his fat wife to Lagos

to dance the Nigerian Afro-beat at The Shrine.

Rain falls like a drum roll

on Walter's umbrella.

The street—quiet under cloudy skies—

no ice cream truck, no children,

no men, no women waiting in shadows.

Bicycles are lying on their pedals.

Walter's wife is sitting by the window

in a pale yellow light.

She sees something in the emptiness

that Walter cannot feel with one eye blind—

he feels only her absence,

and there is not a thing he can do about it.

When he arrives at home

he wraps his dark arms around her,

takes his fat wife under the red blanket

where she tells him she too is blind.

Walter whispers that she is softer than her years,

that even in the dark her blue eyes follow him.

This makes her laugh at twilight.

Somewhere on a floor above the street

Walter is dusting a feather

across his wife's chest,

and she is singing Fela Kuti’s

Afrikan Woman.

Elizabeth Vickery Haight

HOME FROM HOSPITAL

5am.

In that silent

time before dawn,

a kookaburra sings solo

outside our courtyard.

On the windowsill

my old comb lies,

full of dog’s hair.

Time is a measurement of change.

More kookaburras sing now,

like all the canned

laughter of sit coms

played out of control.

I sit at the kitchen table

(I have measured my life

in kitchen tables)

attempting to write

a final punchline

in that silent time before dawn.

BREAKFAST NOWHERE SPECIAL

Greasy spoon breakfast

in a wintry café at dawn. We play

dark corners, coastal cities, outback

towns by the perennial park where

the war memorial stands and the homeless

drink. A bleak life with scant reward —

they’re escaping nine-to-five,

just like us. We play post bop,

progeny of Miles and Trane,

Elvin and Monk — now we’re shrinking

into our own daylight skins, mumbling

smoky echoes, androgynous Phoebe

with us, on edge, in catsuit and wig.

George reckons she’s a guy, and Jean-Paul

is writing her into a suite. We’re

coming down over beans and bacon,

tipping whisky into our tea when

the guy’s not looking. Shades hide our eyes

where smoke and stage lights leave

bleeding tracks. Our next stop

is regional, a cultural centre built

for ballet and opera now needing

funds. As always, cash is popular.

‘Yeah! Salt peanuts!’ Paul sings

a la Dizzy, and we all laugh.

We want the world to know

we were cooking last night,

we were someone up there. Now, here,

paradiddling in a drear city dawn,

we hang out to keep

the dream drumming.

TUNNEL VISION

As I exit, I walk by my books in

the uni library. There is a shorter

way but I choose to hear my old

words whispering off the shelf

‘in the swarm of human speech’,

as Duncan said. On the road home,

in the safe bubble of my Japanese

car, I take the tunnel and in the

humming dark inexplicably think

of my White Russian friend naked

on his Ducati, whooping loudly in

his flight across the desert,

ejaculating in ecstasy on his fuel

tank. Those were the days, my

friend. Now, my tunnel breaks into

sunlight. The poet I visited today

said, Even the poems are chatty

now, and he was right: at the red

traffic light lyrical lines come to

mind and I hurry to write them

down. The lights change and my

pen dries out. Diesel fumes invade

my thoughts as I drive so I turn the

volume up on ABC fm to drown

my annoyance. That motel has

been there for decades. I remember

the one-eyed mother, baby in a cot,

offering me her love, or something

masquerading as that, in dusky

afternoon light, a room rented after

fleeing her husband, the sound of

peak hour traffic slowing as it

banked for the suburbs. I’m in a

dream world when the car behind

me toots, and I’m on the road

again. Her name has gone but her

glass eye remains and her baby’s sweet snuffling. I turn ABC

off and tune into a pop music

station. Get out of your own head,

I advise myself. It’s not safe there,

the past is corrosive. At home I

park and leave the bubble of car

and poem with its own centrifugal

force.

MAKING BLOOM WHILE THE SUN SHINES

Which skin enriched the earth before

carrot shavings and potato peelings?

I wouldn’t have accepted those lines

as poetry before Ted Berrigan and James Tate.

Through the concrete driveway

a thistle fights for light, in

a solar-powered syntax

reminiscent of Roethke. I’m not

ashamed of my past, body

flaking daily, skin lining my poems.

Others prefer no ‘I’ in their poetry.

Let them read Ogden Nash. Once again

I’ve been wondering what poetry is

and who called it that in the first place.

Bottle brush bush is happy now,

head above parapet, making bloom

while the sun shines. That’s how it is,

individual utterance in the tribal context.

‘Take care,’ Mother said;

‘Take risks,’ the writer wrote.

Highway Blues

Driving down the highway

this morning when

out of the corner of my eye

I see my friend standing

by the bus stop outside the shopping centre

a short walk from his home,

standing like he’s forgotten something,

his thin frame and gaunt face

at odds with the sunshine

and the smart young things waiting

for their bus, dressed to

the nines, ‘taking care of business’.

He stands on the curb

in faded fawn polo neck shirt

a breeze gently flapping

his slacks, white whiskers

ruffled, wispy hair a mess.

As I speed by

on the far side of the highway,

a puzzled hand goes to his forehead

and he takes an awkward step.

Have A Nice Day

Driving to the shopping centre,

Bukovski rambling in my ear,

I’m glad to be sober

and anonymous. When I was

young, all hormones and energy,

my poetic was all about

rebellion and getting a fuck.

Today I step from my Toyota, head

full of Buk, and grab a trolley, swearing

at its bent wheels. That’ll help,

my brain pipes up, sarcastic

as ever. The old desire

to be listened to comes back

and I’m impatient at each counter,

waiting for this, waiting for that.

They employ machines now,

not people. Just key in

your late mother’s hat size

and, voila, the money is out

of your account and into theirs,

Messrs Coles and Woolies. Warmly

I remember Sandy’s décolletage

with the metal in her nose, tongue

and ears. Where is she today?

At the scrap metal yard?

This machine doesn’t rock my world.

It doesn’t have Sandy’s knowing smile,

asking sweetly through banded teeth,

Any fly bys? It’s a drive-by, fly by,

bye-bye whirled. Who’ll enjoy

fly bys on my funeral plan?

Buk’s buggered my mood, but he’s gone

and I’m still here, shopping, so

who’s to complain. The machine

says, Have a nice day with

an American twang and I

kick the trolley straight again.

Bad Weather

In memory of Dorothy Porter (1954-2008)

Dear Dorothy – grey clouds are

apt today here in summertime.

Your body is still above ground.

To end novels is one thing: planned,

edited. Not life. My wife is

inside the hospital now where

they are scanning her breasts.

Brings me back to reality, if I

ever left it. Light rain falls. I lean on a railing

and watch the river ripple. In the halls

of academe and in the literary press, they'll speak

of your writing as 'her work,' complete,

reading meaning into its inconclusiveness.

Friends will file away

your ironic smile with your titles.

Rain falls heavier now, hailstones

ping off cars below. My mind shrugs:

questions of mortality are

stale. If we could rewrite

your final pages, we would,

we would.

Andrew Burke

STARDUST MEMORIES, SEPTEMBER 16, 2001

Our dog is a huge mutt combo, Shepherd and Rottie.

with the jaws of a wolf, a manic prance.

Ninety-two pounds of him, he leaps on our bed,

leans to slurp, bares his teeth in a hound-grin,

then chases a cat and barks like an a posthorn.

But in this morning's sunlight he lays playing dead

on the comforter, paws drawn up, wanting the touch of my hands

to rub his stomach, massage his great ribcage, stroke

the side of his face at perfect rest, eyes half-closed.

Here, now, he is quiescent, wants only this peace,

craves my touch, my whisper and kiss on the side of his wolf-face.

And in this moment he passes into me the sweetest of losses,

perfect forgetfulness of what I have lately seen.

He casts from me the unpurgeable sight:

a mobile of Hell hanging in my vision, of a city burning,

daymares of death spinning from the sky.

He is all Present, our Hound of Heaven, time beyond time,

and I hear only his breathing, my own stopped,

and in the background on the jazz station, Torme eternal,

singing "Stardust" that rains down life upon us,

Eternity the feast of Here.

THE HOUSE OF THE SPIRITS

(ON LEARNING SHE IS MOVING FROM THE HOUSE WE LIVED IN)

1

First me, then our sons, now you.

2

The first day we were there I left

to buy new knobs for all the bedroom doors–

for Ben, our three-year-old son, immured himself

cackling in his brand-new room, and I, with

the instincts of a housebreaker,

had to use a screwdriver to pick the lock.

3

Five years beyond that marriage house, memories

still flood the spaces.

They fall like grand pianos in a shipwreck.

Boilers crash into the prow,

harps jangle and steam scalds.

4

The fall was bottomed long ago. Serene now,

the hulk rests in the silt, destined for the bottom

by its makers’ arrogance.

Fish swim through it, past extinguished chandeliers.

Life continues somehow, at its own depth.

5

Hawthorne blessed the pure emotion, dreaded a life

where perfect good or evil are in short supply.

Impurity was everywhere, secrets—mine, ours—buckled the walls,

concealed like whiskey bottles in a briefcase,

breakable as locks on bedroom doors.

6

“I hope,” Ben says, “no one ever lives there again,”

and my mind runs to riot as it always has.

In medieval Europe villages sat emptied by the Plague.

Houses where no one would ever live again

were unprotected from starving dogs and feral cats,

doors swung back and forth while the winds

blew through the empty space.

7

Ben can dream. I can nightmare.

We will both be disappointed.

8

I do not believe in curses upon houses.

No Unholy Spirits will penetrate the brickwork.

No Anne Boleyn will wander the downstairs hall

carrying her severed head across the ratty carpet.

9

You will leave and strangers will live in the house

that was a house of strangers.

The house will look like grade schools we attended,

turned from reality to a place we could not believe

ever contained what happened there.

TRUST

(Columbus Circle, 1998)

True I swear it: in the middle of New York at rush hour

the strangest of intimacies never gets itself going

because one is insane to offer and the other is too sane for comfort

so all that comes are rationalizations for why it was not a Good Idea.

I am in the Circle, walking north on a winter evening from my job

for my weekly visit to my shrink so I can tell a few truths

a few lies a few things still not sorted out

and then there is this woman, maybe early middle age,

blond hair poking under her winter coat hood,

not at all unpleasant to look at, and she says

in a very demure voice

"Pardon me, would you like to come up to my apartment

and relax for a little while?"

Of course I am shocked like Captain Renault who finds

gambling going on here so I ask her to repeat it

and she does, but of course (of course!) I back away

and say "No, no, sorry, I really can't"

and she nods and I turn and walk away bemused

thinking "What in the hell was that about, I'm no great beauty,

why me," the rationalizations start: Maybe she is an escort

too old for the out-call business anymore, or maybe she trusts me,

I have one of those faces women can trust,

because how could she know I won't go up there and

do a Joseph Kallinger on her uterus,

and how do I know she doesn't have a friend in the house

waiting to steal my wallet and my clothes,

emasculate anything my wife left over,

stick a shank in me and leave me for dead,

and how do I know she isn't a pro in search of an easy mark

and do I have SO LONELY I WOULD BANG A KEYHOLE all over me?

Goddamn bitch how dare you read me so easily?

and by the time I pass Lincoln Stationers my head has taken me

to all those places, inside her, nipples in my mouth,

or her friend's auto-knife held to my throat

gulping with terror

and I wonder why people don't think I'm a risk taker

I am not because strange women not even holding swords

make for a lousy system of love

but I have perhaps turned my back for the hundredth time

on what might have been a gift

Hard to say which it is when you've got my imagination isn't it?

Ken Wolman