Then his hand goes tumbling to her breast—
you see what magic I am giving them
astir in frumpy velvet seats arrayed in front of my disquiet
at this brink this moment when she lets it stay.
Bert Wilson Plays Jim Pepper’s “Witchi-Tai-To” at the Midnight Sun
Don’t look up, because the ceiling is suffering
some serious violations of the electrical code,
the whole chaotic kelplike mess
about to shower us with flames.
I think I can render this clearly enough—
Bert’s saxophone hanging between his knees,
propped against the wheelchair’s seat
where his body keeps shape-shifting—
he’s Buddha then shop-vac then Buddha again,
formlessness floating on top of form.
The problem is backstory, how to get it all in,
not just Bert’s beanie and tie-dye T-shirt,
but polio too, and the tune itself, concentric ripples
widening. So now I send dead Jim Pepper
rippling out, as well as his grandfather,
fancy-dancing and chanting. How to tender
the lead-in, would phonemes do any good
(the signature DAHH, the doon doons down-marching)—
or just call it a prayer to simplify things
as Bert sends the melody way out
beyond the tidiness of circles?
Then he puts the mouthpiece aside
to bring up the words from the floor of his soul
or say from the pads of his spud-shaped feet
spraddling the footplate, if soul is too hokey
for all the misty goo inside us.
First comes the Creek part of the song
and then comes the English, when Bert throws back his chin:
his underbeard raised in a coyote salute
to the water infusing the warehouse roof.
Here, take a seat on these rickety risers
inside my head, though your life isn’t mine,
still, I have hope for your hearing
the gist of this refrain
about how glad he is that he’s not dead.
Accidental Dismemberment
From Hartford, from Allentown, they used to send their letters—
the corporate stationery featured the word LIFE.
Somewhere radio towers twinked
and garters held up the socks of men
whose fine print said that if I ever lost my arm in a buzz-saw accident—
boy, that would be the day my ship came in.
So I pictured myself shopping for produce with my feet,
a melon riding on my tarsal bones and money
smoking in my pocket. But this dream-trafficking gave way
to wondering what it took to land in jail—
for steady meals and solitude
and a tin cup to play the bars like a marimba!
You might need enough time to write a book as long as Proust’s,
yet not so much to fire up the chair they call Ol’ Sparky:
so we’re talking a fine calibration here. To elsewhere
my love and I will be speeding in the car
when he’ll clap his ears: Stop I can’t stand any more this Looosha talk!
leaving the steering wheel dangerously unattended
though I tell him many writers think about the hoosegow
as a meditative place. Especially now
when the junk mail comes in photon blips,
say from Mrs. Mobutu Sese Seko needing a little cash to tide her over
and spokespersons for the penis you have to wind on a wheel
like a garden hose. What insurance executive
walks to work anymore while dreaming
up fine print for my lost feet?
There is much to envy in that woman
who flaunts her perfect body on the Key West shore—
yet five thousand dollars still seems like a lot of money,
especially for one of these fingers I don’t use much.
Inseminating the Elephant
The zoologists who came from Germany
wore bicycle helmets and protective rubber suits.
So as not to be soiled by substances
that alchemize to produce laughter in the human species;
how does that work biochemically is a question
whose answer I have not found yet. But these are men
whose language requires difficult conjugations under any circumstance:
first, there’s the matter of the enema, which ought to come
as no surprise. Because what the news brings us
is often wheelbarrows of dung — suffering,
with photographs. And so long as there is suffering,
there should be also baby elephants — especially this messy,
headlamp-lit calling-forth. The problem lies
in deciding which side to side with: it is natural
to choose the giant rectal thermometer
over the twisted human form,
but is there something cowardly in that comic swerve?
Hurry an elephant
to carry the bundle of my pains,
another with shiny clamps and calipers
and the anodyne of laughter. So there, now I’ve alluded
to my body that grows ever more inert — better not overdo
lest you get scared; the sorrowing world
is way too big. How the zoologists start
is by facing the mirror of her flanks,
that foreboding luscious place where the gray hide
gives way to a zeroing-in of skin as vulnerable as an orchid.
Which is the place to enter, provided you are brave,
brave enough to insert your laser-guided camera
to avoid the two false openings of her “vestibule,”
much like the way of entering death, of giving birth to death,
calling it forth as described in the Tibetan Book.
And are you brave enough to side with laughter
if I face my purplish, raw reflection
and attempt the difficult entry of that chamber where
the seed-pearl of my farce and equally opalescent sorrow
lie waiting?
For the Mad Cow in Tenino
I don’t know where you rank in my list of killers:
my viral load, my sociopaths, my inattention
on the interstate, where I crane my head after the hawk
and the windshield splatters
into diamonds. Not just thinking about the hawk,
or even merely watching it, I always have to be it for a minute,
just as my mind enters the murderers
for one long flash before it stumbles out.
From your postmortem, you held us fast
while a man said It’s enough as his lungs filled
after being stabbed here near the playground,
before they milled his limbs with power tools
and scattered him beyond retrieval. Too late
to recall your brain, and the fatty white part of your spine,
already delivered to the rendering plant
and melted down into the slurry.
That night is gone and cannot be reassembled
despite my re-imagining the car
with a man dying in its trunk, a car otherwise like any other,
as we could not verify your affliction
for days after you fell. Which left the land in chaos
except for Scatter Creek’s flowing past,
wending without hurry though the coastal range
before it empties rain and blood into Willapa Bay.