Spring
When
Lefty Bowman
fumbled a board and sawed away
all his right hand fingers,
I kept the one they couldn’t find.
It wore a ring and I left the ring on.
Sitting in Nodd Creek, Lefty’s finger
between my knees, I waved
a hickory wand over it seven times.
At midnight I stood in a field,
held the finger in my cupped palms
and offered it to the full moon.
I made a hole in the ground; clouds
gathered and rolled above my head.
Rain began to fill the darkness.
Where I planted Lefty’s finger,
a white flower curled from the dirt.
Summer
Mostly
we sat and watched the road.
Chaingang Six from Camp Reed
drove by in trucks every dawn
and back again at dusk.
Our children spat, threw rocks,
danced crazy jigs and teased.
We let them, ignoring
the hateful stares of convicts.
Some nights, drunk soldiers
wandered into the yard.
In a line, arms locked around necks,
they’d stagger and fall as one:
a beast with many heads
crawling and singing and puking.
Maylee always tried to squash it
with a broom, sweep it back to town.
Fall
I
found Henry Jordan in his barn.
He swung naked from the hayloft.
Behind the house he’d cut off the heads
of all his best hens, fixed a fire
for every stitch of clothes
his dead father left him.
Pinned through his right hand
a note said Kiss My Ass You Sons A Bitches.
The
county paid his burial
and auctioned the farm piece by piece.
We bought Henry’s bed for ten dollars,
hauled it home, used it a week.
Each night Maylee and I loved on it
she said she felt someone watching.
We pushed the bed into the yard, lit it,
cooked breakfast sausage over the flames.
Winter
I
had to hurt Juke Hudson
when he started on me at the tavern.
I didn’t want it, but he was too drunk
for any sense beyond a fist.
From the shadow of the back corner
he stuttered and ranted and insisted
that I had cheated him
out of Maylee, out of my own wife.
Then
he ran and leapt. I put out
his eye with a beer bottle. No one moved
when Juke dropped and screamed.
Or when I kicked his head
until he was silent. I drug Juke
by his boots to the door, the icy rain outside.
When the sheriff asked around later,
nobody had seen a goddamn thing.
**
The Miracles of St. Marjorie
Marjorie
loves to watch crows caw
from the barn roof, fall to the rows
of corn, then lift and snap in a slow whip.
She’ll smile, crawl among them to wait.
Sometimes the birds bring storms,
nails of rain shredding the fields.
Sometimes they bring taverns,
nights in trucks and fast loud cars.
Every sunday she rides
a drunken farmboy through sunrise.
Hidden in the furrows, Marjorie makes love
to the black wings blotting the sky,
her knuckles wet, fingers sliding easy,
consecrating the darkness between her thighs.
Marjorie Walks On Water
She
sits talking to the crickets and rain,
the glow of town melting
to the flat black mud of Coles County.
This morning she heard music from the sky,
rolls of thunder teasing her into the fields.
She followed across gulleys and creeks,
each rumble a revelation just out of reach.
Hours later she found herself wet and alone.
When the moon came her breasts ached,
her monthly blood bitter and warm.
She sits rocking, rocking in the darkness,
telling it that always magical story
of how all she ever wanted
was to heal the sick and raise the dead.
Marjorie In Season
She
feels the winter move in,
arranging itself around her.
Even as she watches
the landscape reassembles:
insects gone to husks,
leaves diving, animals buried
in snow. Then the ache, the
desire to undo everything
and push toward the sky like smoke.
She thinks she must tell him,
this new boy, tell him now to go
before she changes, finds herself
feathered and black. Already
she is on the barn roof. Already
her arms are in motion. Winged
and weightless she caws to the clouds.
The fields rise in welcome.
Marjorie Among the Crows
Marjorie
draws in her coat against the cold
Days have passed since the boy left, yet
she can still feel his hands and his tongue,
a drop of him burning her cheek.
He said he dreamed her at night, her hair
and mouth. She laughed, rolled away,
pressed her face into the pillow.
Thinking of him now makes him nothing,
a less than nothing she will again
cut loose like a withered arm.
Marjorie stands among the crows and cries,
their beauty useless in the evening light.
The
Baths of St. Marjorie
Marjorie’s
eyes are bursting
but she will wear this night
Stars sharp tacks in hand
Gravity a breeze through hair
She
is dying again
Fingers around throat
tongue plugging lips
cold bathwater breast-high
The clicking in her ears
says Let go and breathe
She
won’t listen
until the song is upon her
the flash in her brain
beautiful as a burning barn
Somewhere
coyotes yowl
crickets fall silent
the sky rains ice
Somewhere the ground shakes
Men thunder to their knees
In
Coles County Illinois
Marjorie inhales the moon
Marjorie in Exile
It’s
true river towns never make her happy.
All that filthy water, all those filthy people…
sometimes she wants to open her shirt,
press her breasts against a mirror
and melt into a puddle of foul levee mud.
Or write her ex-husbands love letters
saying she loved them more than cigarettes,
more than Tammy loved George, anything for a hoot.
This morning she woke to a vision: a parade
of Christs floating outside her motel window.
She wondered Who does their laundry? Their hair?
On a good day she might shake it off
and sing hymns to the pulse in her temples.
But today is not a good day. The river stinks,
she’s on the move, and Jesus makes her crazy.
**
