Saturday, May 07, 2005
Mexican Vanilla
This one was marble-ized.
[stray door]
how many fathers do you father
[stray door]
how many fathers do you father
at 14 on a Detroit horse track
lost in the downtown rivers
the look he throws you across
the ground at play, seventeen winters
or past the time of worry
a time of sensible wear
go to Saint Anthony
go to Saint Anthony
walk the gloom of Travis Park
invent a snow day in March
all your hearts melting in
blue noon, orange flame
playland in feral bloom
Calliope seated in her chapel
her marble knees
picture instead gray corridor
picture instead gray corridor
cedar mounting eyes stray
door to door, the gloom of west Texas
on the sands of India
Gandhi salt, not his taking
death by drowning, she says,
death by drowning, she says,
he lay in wait, act of mercy
stone cold on the floor
no more waiting
in a field of white teeth
no songs but a different chatter
ankle deep.
[quad's alias: post-levine: tres leches]
Anybody out there know the Olson canon on right-aligned? Just plain goofy, or did he perhaps discover it himself down in the Yucatan? He's a big dude - big enough to get back here, him and Creeley on a BIG road trip.
[quad's alias: post-levine: tres leches]
Anybody out there know the Olson canon on right-aligned? Just plain goofy, or did he perhaps discover it himself down in the Yucatan? He's a big dude - big enough to get back here, him and Creeley on a BIG road trip.
i.
Olson’s hand pillows his bristled cheek, shields his face from cold and damp tile. Eighty-two fetal inches curl against a plywood door, alcove of the abandoned theater. A wilier derelict would have pried open the box office, sat warmly adrift the fog and mist of Fredericksburg Road. Wilier and smaller. This leviathan is neither.
The cold is the least of his worries. Dead of San Antonio winter is nothing to his howling Gloucester. He’s walked daytime streets in postal blue, prowled – blearycold and frazzled – dogroads at night. Ice in his brain, ice floes in the arteries of his long body, ice that gathered him in, took him down and beyond all known landmarks of cold, grim catacombs of rimed ghosts, bearded death. Vaults where hunger whispered, despair echoed, and hope died. Olson’s many deaths.
His unpillowed eye opens. Streetlight moons bleed into the night’s gauze; one is Luna herself. A rat crosses to the curb, fidgets in the garbage bag dumped there. Bag and rat absorb the night’s moons, the green neon flicker from a Money Box across the street, the infernal flame of Olson’s gaze. Where have I landed?, he wonders to the rat, then remembers that he pilfered the bag first. Hot dog buns, Chinese food cartons, donuts. Mostly dry wastepaper trash besides, thank God. Slim pickings for the rat.
Olson creaks up to sitting, fumbles in his jacket for cigarettes, lights one. The rat stops and notes the tiny blaze, goes back to rummaging.
You’re the asshole got to this bag first, fuck you, thinks Olson for the rat. Newly back from the dead, he’s not sure if people actually see him; he does a lot of talking and thinking for others. The rat pulls out the hot dog bun left behind, looks his way. You got that right.
“Knock yourself out, you little shit.” Olson has the seafarer’s ease with vermin, we’re all on this stinking sinking ship, though he’s never shipped out of Gloucester, never shipped out of anywhere. His father, who sailed from Norway, has the landlubber’s dread. Wartime D.C. bureaucrats were inoculation enough for the likes of this curbside friend. He takes a last drag on his cigarette, flicks the butt in an arc over the rat’s head.
Two headlights troll slowly up the street. Yellow cab. Olson thinks to hail it, not for the ride, but for the company. The driver sees him, slows, stops just past the rat. Red tail lights mix with Money Box green. Merry Christmas.
Olson waves the driver off, looks at the rat polishing off the bun.
“You and me, buddy.”
The rat runs off. Think again, chump.
Olson’s hand pillows his bristled cheek, shields his face from cold and damp tile. Eighty-two fetal inches curl against a plywood door, alcove of the abandoned theater. A wilier derelict would have pried open the box office, sat warmly adrift the fog and mist of Fredericksburg Road. Wilier and smaller. This leviathan is neither.
The cold is the least of his worries. Dead of San Antonio winter is nothing to his howling Gloucester. He’s walked daytime streets in postal blue, prowled – blearycold and frazzled – dogroads at night. Ice in his brain, ice floes in the arteries of his long body, ice that gathered him in, took him down and beyond all known landmarks of cold, grim catacombs of rimed ghosts, bearded death. Vaults where hunger whispered, despair echoed, and hope died. Olson’s many deaths.
His unpillowed eye opens. Streetlight moons bleed into the night’s gauze; one is Luna herself. A rat crosses to the curb, fidgets in the garbage bag dumped there. Bag and rat absorb the night’s moons, the green neon flicker from a Money Box across the street, the infernal flame of Olson’s gaze. Where have I landed?, he wonders to the rat, then remembers that he pilfered the bag first. Hot dog buns, Chinese food cartons, donuts. Mostly dry wastepaper trash besides, thank God. Slim pickings for the rat.
Olson creaks up to sitting, fumbles in his jacket for cigarettes, lights one. The rat stops and notes the tiny blaze, goes back to rummaging.
You’re the asshole got to this bag first, fuck you, thinks Olson for the rat. Newly back from the dead, he’s not sure if people actually see him; he does a lot of talking and thinking for others. The rat pulls out the hot dog bun left behind, looks his way. You got that right.
“Knock yourself out, you little shit.” Olson has the seafarer’s ease with vermin, we’re all on this stinking sinking ship, though he’s never shipped out of Gloucester, never shipped out of anywhere. His father, who sailed from Norway, has the landlubber’s dread. Wartime D.C. bureaucrats were inoculation enough for the likes of this curbside friend. He takes a last drag on his cigarette, flicks the butt in an arc over the rat’s head.
Two headlights troll slowly up the street. Yellow cab. Olson thinks to hail it, not for the ride, but for the company. The driver sees him, slows, stops just past the rat. Red tail lights mix with Money Box green. Merry Christmas.
Olson waves the driver off, looks at the rat polishing off the bun.
“You and me, buddy.”
The rat runs off. Think again, chump.
