At the rivers edge
Originally uploaded by radiann.
Photo by Radiann Porter.
Wow, Amen.
Ode to Seven
"But they are dead; those two are dead!
Their spirits are in heaven!"
William Wordsworth, We Are Seven
The Seance
If Elvis was here
he could do it
but we lost him
in the back seat
of a bluebird.
Me and Sarah
sobered up like
Katherine in the closet
when we asked
Lori's dead dad to knock,
we all sobered up,
kicked our way out-
saw locked windows and doors
all around, pleasant grass outside
not the fake kind
but real stable grass,
Country Squire in the carport,
the avocado Frigidaire
opened and closed
bilaterally, as was the style.
Squirrel Duende
St. Pat's let out at three
no one moved until
Sister Josepha left with her
cross kissing Judas stories
hanging around her ankles
like worn out socks on a poor kid,
no one dared.
A squirrel huddled
behind 15 miles an hour,
tried to give me rabies
in trade for my cuddle,
his eye a brown globe
the color of a monk.
I denied this in the confessions.
Mary Estrada's OD
Mary, Mary quite contrary
how did your urgent need grow?
Knick Knack, Paddy Whack,
your old man rolled home.
Here we go round the Mulberry Bush,
so he beat the shit out of her.
She died in her own vomit
several years later,
her bracelet landing
on heaven in the hopskotch.
Burn
We tried to burn
the town down,
a stampede put it out
as an afterthought
right near the big circle
that drains into
several asphalt tributaries-
Wood Canyon, Spring Canyon
Pearly Street.
We should have known
by the water marks
on the library walls
the flood couldn't take
it down neither,
a hundred some years before.
It just kept on melting.
Meditation
Old Man Ham
had a Folger's can,
his wife was really lean
she kept a tidy house
no smoke inside, her pies never burned.
He stood and puffed
out by the garden gate,
watched the cottonwoods
say: wow amen.
Us
All our fights looked the same,
mom's skirts blowed up
as she fell down
her soft perfect ass
as clean as a whistle.
Old man Ham nearly fell over
when we pushed him out the door,
his false teeth clicked
in the roof of his mouth.
Inside his house Grace popped
her gum incessantly
near something they called an ottoman.
Sometimes we felt a little poor.
After He Died
At night one night
running past the ankle high
black gully windows,
wicked little transoms
under houses built on flash floods,
up past the garden gate,
his chair under that pear tree
almost empty,
the air was very clear.
Through our newest
hollow door I kept running
on and on the last breath
I summoned his soul
from the under the cotton we kicked
off our shoes in Autumn.
When I told mom this,
she called for a Nitro.
This is how I remember it.
Grace Ham's Addendum
On a muggy afternoon
in late summer three-quarters
of the way from Tucson,
Grace Ham's daughter
took a turn for the worse on I-10.
Mom turned into puddles
all around the house.
It was wetter than the day
our Spaniel Maxi got rigor
mortis on the front porch.
