ALL RESPONSES |
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dreams mean a little less,
Boreas trains snow owls
men are a little less than men,
all are banished for a brief eternity
gravity is non-existent,
a white world with no corners
every door leads to oblivion,
hearts are filled with white stones
and here, no one gives
a shit about Michelangelo
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one side of the moon was left
in the backyard fenced in
by a thin line of stark
nonsense that sketched
the necessary horizon
for men in Buddha
suits who walk with
licked thumbs stuck into
ephemeral
nowhere |
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Each labored footstep
only drives the faint horizon
further out of reach
defying relativity
Every achromatic possibility
freezes solid
poised unmoving
on eternal verge
of maybe
Oh, for the sputter of
fry oil on skillet iron,
sizzles
of heated flesh,
on rising air
smells once spurned
now promises of life
Here, there is only ice
to needle consciousness,
and short slices of sunrise,
illusory brilliance
wedged between
massive slabs of gray
Jaws of unknowable cold
clamp on limbs
and gnaw steadily
as if to savor
the agony of bones
tasting deep
the very marrow of being
and numbing
even imagination.
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That birds leave
that snow erases all form
that cold closes the door to
is where we live.
Shut in & hunched up, feet
always cold, skin the
texture of paper & just
as thin.
This place where life
moves inward, into darkness
into the quiet of falling
snow, into slumber.
Voice & body seem useless.
What is there to say?
How does a body as frozen as ice
dance, except to flex and splinter
except to melt away.
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We come in simple, sturdy ships, seeking answers
beyond what the reading of entrails reveals to priests.
Lives lay buried below the ice, songs silenced by gods
who harvest souls to feed their ravenous hunger.
Paths to Hel are open to pale heroes, who hope for
gold-filled crypts, tightly sealed against our intrusion.
The surface conceals souls locked in codes, kept beneath
frozen dreams of childhood, dreaded and forgotten.
Élivégar begins nearby, beneath the roots of Yggdrasil,
on the Shore of Corpses, far beyond the yawning void.
A flame begins to burn before our advance, lighting all
wealth strewn about the plain by those who came before
and felt compelled to lighten themselves in haste, yet
we would bypass these baubles that lay in welcome.
Hvergelmir, source of cold waters, springs close by,
pouring its gray turmoil into the sleeping earth below.
She welcomes us with ashen arms outstretched, her breath
a cloud of truth, the gift we seek. Her eyes, their light
unchanged, remember every death, and lifetime lived
in warm wet flesh, spent building ships to Niflheim.
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Velma remembers Minnesota winters
on the farm without electricity –
the contrast of fire against a room.
Surely it is cold; she nods at the window
filled with frost, but I couldn’t live
where it is always the same. A brother
died because he drank too much whiskey
in town, walked into the wind-blown
prairie toward home. Wind whistled
and he weaved to its music. Air embraced
snow and waltzed over the road, a ballroom
of ice. Velma doesn’t fault the season,
elements brooding; she clicks her tongue
and blames the boy. He knew January’s
temperament. This is Minnesota;
she proclaims, blizzards. Outside,
your words freeze; even a scream hardens,
falls and shatters, but it’s home. Home.
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Lake of the Woods
You drive out into the face of a monolith,
a giant gray hanging called granite sky.
Someone will die out here on the horizon’s
sharp blade. This is the world turned
horrified at the sight of blood. None
allowed here. No color. No reminders here.
The same direction wherever you face.
Under foot, the snow, its ancient tundra
crunch. People are sent here to die.
People are strangled here by cold.
Even the wind has died. Don’t face this
alone, not for long. People go mad here.
Thoughts freeze. Everything turns Soviet.
Look, if you can, at your eyebrows; gray, too.
When your bones are found, they’ll be charcoal.
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I am no stranger to death.
Each year blue ghosts haunt
as winter shadows stretch
skeletal fingers across my path.
God has forsaken me.
I am the child’s blue face
floating below the ice,
crossed over
into wrong side of mirror.
I am a fish swimming
murky, lake depths,
groping blind the bottom
rather than near the cage wall.
I am the weight of snow suffocating
as thick snowflakes
bury earth in an early grave.
I am the ice frozen solid
before cracks begin to show.
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He sat in a corner, writing poems and shit, eating half pound burgers with fries. A pitcher of beer opened the overhead door of heaven. The waitress could read his mind to a point, half past Michelob, but after that it got ugly. That’s when the service slowed way down, and he knew it was time to head back to the trailer. The glow greeted him there on the outskirts of Baxley, Minnesota, like a friend always ready to listen and remember everything. What went on was halfway between Nashville and The Paris Review. If it weren’t for the worker’s comp, he’d still be in the lumberyard, scribbling out verse for greeting cards on weekends. This way, he had total artistic freedom.
He poured a glass of Canadian, and let Mr. Fishhead run wild through the jackpines. Ah, maybe he should give his cousin Ginger a call. This was her night off. She appreciated his writing, because she fancied herself a poet, an erotic one at that. Not bad stuff, really. So, he wrote about beer and fish, and she wrote about sex. They say it’s always best to pick a subject you know something about. If you were really good, you might make enough money to have a lake cabin and go to Belize in February. A guy could live on the lake all summer, reeling in everything. But then, you’d probably have to make appearances in Nashville at award ceremonies, which would be OK about twice a year, but otherwise was too much big city for a small town guy. He’d take the ice palace on the lake, as envisioned, and leave it at that.
Poems of drink, he thought, fill one with more information than the average mind has a thirst for. All things, in moderation, still overwhelm us in the end. To die by words alone – who would want it? If your words were to kill, lovers would die many deaths. If death repeats itself, it becomes something else; a new life. When must it stop? He had that look, mean and artsy, a cultivated sneer. Late night coffee overcame the veneer. Long, stringy hair, camo cap, goatee. But, a brightness in the eyes the beer couldn’t kill.
He wrote about waitresses, working behind a bar. Women, waiting on tables. Men, getting drunk and spending money. The ones with the big tits always get hired, until they fuck up too many times. But they love the ones who smile and joke, and know a drunk when they see it. Who cares about their shape? They are floating goddesses serving the injured and lame, and many of them are indeed very lame, having lost something dear. Sometimes, sit next to the drink station. Listen to the bartenders and waitresses, and keep your mouth shut. You will learn something about human nature. Some guy is telling the bartender his personal bullshit story, and the bartender looks at him every now and then, and says “really?”
Later that night, he wrote the following:
Pale fat men drink
cheap beer and whiskey
by a neon-lit window.
They're looking for someone
to drive a truck back
from Salt Lake City.
They call themselves
dumb old farmers,
and laugh in between
cigarettes, hugging
young waitresses
in good faith.
They will have dreams
later, of sex and
Branson, Las Vegas
winnings, powerball
tickets, beef commercials,
chocolate chip cookies
and cheesecake.
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The egg noodles were boiled for eleven minutes, strained in cold
water, patted with paper towels, and placed in the iron skillet, sizzling
with Wisconsin butter. Professor Bravo had waited all afternoon: through
one lane road construction on Selby Street; through checkout at Tobacco Road
to purchase cigars, his one publicly displayed vice. Others were private.
As the aroma drifted through his kitchen, Professor Bravo placed salt,
ketchup, and the document next to his plate and spoon swirled his
sixteen-ounce milk, thick with chocolate syrup. After exactly eleven
minutes, he pushed the steaming pile of crisp noodles onto his plate.
His wife was in Kenosha visiting her sister, she with the recurring gout,
and he was alone until Thursday. Last night, immediately after she left, he
sat by the outside, listening to the Cubs lose, and occasionally eyeing the document in his left hand like one might a solar eclipse. The night was chilly.
He munched another bite of fried noodles, ketchup oozing from the corner of
his mouth. He dabbed with a cloth napkin before taking a large swallow of
chocolate milk. He stared at the glass for a few seconds, then onto the
stove at his mother's thick iron skillet, one of the few things he had kept
from her estate. He never used it, except when he fixed fried noodles.
Today was one of those days. His wife did not understand his attachment to
fried noodles and did not particularly like them herself. Professor Bravo
had long ago understood this so he made them when he was alone.
When he was a boy, his mother often made fried noodles. He would watch her,
fascinated by her lithe movements around their tiny blue kitchen. He still
remembered the electric crackle of the cold egg noodles hitting the hot
butter in the skillet. As they fried, crisp on edges, she would ask him how
his day had gone. The cooking time, eleven minutes, was their time, and he
had cherished it. Sometimes she would suggest a book, a new Taylor Caldwell
perhaps. Later, the book and chocolate milk would materialize on his nightstand.
Weeks could go by, Professor Bravo engaged with his life, not giving his
mother much thought. Then, something like another Cubs' losing streak, or
yet another of his wife's Kenosha trips, and he almost ceremoniously would
get the skillet out from beneath the rarely used Calphalon pans, and make a
plate of fried noodles. Delays aside, today was one of those days.
After finishing the last crispy noodle, Bravo washed the skillet
under tap, swirled the last bit of chocolate from the glass with cold water and
placed it in the sink, the skillet by his fedora. He sighed, ever slightly, signed the divorce document, folded it, and placed it on the counter. He'd had it two months, yet it had taken only 20 seconds to sign it. Before he left, he placed his red wool stocking cap on his slightly balding head. After all, the radio had informed him it was the coldest evening of the year. So far.
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He watched a John Wayne movie. The lake outside the hospital was frozen.
She said to him, “I changed my mind! I don’t want to have a baby!”
He was 18. She was 17. There was nothing they could do.
The sun went down. It was the coldest day of that year.
She said to him, “I changed my mind! I don’t want to have a baby!”
Her parents had driven her in from the farm.
The sun went down. It was the coldest day of that year.
In town, the baby would be born at the hospital.
Her parents had driven her in from the farm.
His parents sat with him in the lobby.
In town, the baby would be born at the hospital.
She tried to keep the baby inside her but she couldn’t.
His parents sat with him in the lobby.
The baby was coming. There was no good time for the baby to come.
She tried to keep the baby inside her but she couldn’t.
The baby tried to stay inside her but she couldn’t.
The baby was coming. There was no good time for the baby to come.
Tomorrow is the most important thing in life.
The baby tried to stay inside her but she couldn’t.
Comes into us at midnight very clean.
Tomorrow is the most important thing in life.
It’s perfect when it arrives, puts itself in our hands.
Comes into us at midnight very clean.
It hopes we’ve learned something from yesterday.
It’s perfect when it arrives, puts itself in our hands.
He was 18. She was 17. There was nothing they could do.
It hopes we’ve learned something from yesterday.
He watched a John Wayne movie. The lake outside the hospital was frozen. |
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Soon
you will be returning to the darkness
cavernous nights drawing you outward
to hungering fields wracked with winter
nights familiar, wind brushed low hills,
dwindling the light, spare when it comes,
unforgiving and your own
you will fall to your knees, lose yourself
to the frostbitten ground, tear at silence
inside of you while calling your own name
as from nothing, something opens
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Here are the poems written on the ice last week. My thanks goes out to those who helped me with them.
The Smell
You notice it only for a minute, when the filet knife first slices through scales,
minnows are replaced on jigs and hooks, and the bag fills up with bones
and heads, pale eyes finished. Is it fish that smell, or is it fishermen, with no shower
or change of clothes for three days of hygienic disregard? We brush teeth,
wash faces, and rinse hands in ritual water from the jug. Our catch, no longer
an olfactory threat, gutted and beheaded, travels back. We will indulge
in decadent baths with warm towels, and gaze cleanly into a mirror above the sink.
On Ice
I look out the window, watching snow blow across miles of ice.
Some of us huddle inside insulated islands of heat and light,
portals to walleye, allowing them access to the civilized warmth
of a frying pan. A filet knife liberates them from bones and life.
We sleep on stomachs full of fish and dreams, of the crowded place
left behind, the programmed tools and sputtering machines, screens
awash with breaking news and the gift of pop culture. Here in this
icy world, there is comfort, music, vodka, and empty gray sky.
The lights of Baudette shine in the south, reminding us of home,
and a radio station reminds us we are not the only ones here on ice.
Eel Pout
Did the line tighten, or is it a tiny dream
seen from the corner of my eye? Again,
touch the line, pick it up slowly,
inches from the bottom. This time, nothing.
Prayers and chants are never heard by fish.
They scare them away. Wait -
Here it comes, at last!
It’s big. A fish with lips.
No scales. The fatted cod,
disdained by most,
but loved by those
who crave the catch,
fried white flesh, and beer.
Cold Water
I love the cold, clear lake.
It sustains, nourishes,
and cloaks death in mystery.
Little light reaches arenas,
contests of flesh,
where stories are played out
as simple songs of nature,
her art written in water.
This fertile feeding ground
provides people with protein.
Ojibwe cast nets for life.
Others make brief visits, to escape
from everything they think they need,
for offerings of open earth, clear sky,
and cold water.
Fish
We pulled him up.
A heavy one he was,
fighting strong and golden,
reflecting every ray.
You and I, taking
what the earth gives us
for food or something more,
pulled the catch into the craft
built of sticks and tar.
There he is, pissed off.
He thought he had lunch,
an easy thing, pretty, flirting,
seductively jiggling
its perfect colors,
and the movement he sought.
It was instinctual to kill,
only to be killed, and eaten by something
hungrier, who knew what he wanted. |
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Silence
is not always golden.
I miss your laugh.
I miss your whispers.
I miss hearing you
say my name.
Is it cold where you are?
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