Carnations

A carnation opens like a cut.

Listen, you can hear lashes

trickle out of it, smell the iron

in its blood. Touch it. The petals

feel like a pinch of torn skin.

The taste is something like raspberries

or Sunday quiche. But it looks

just like a cut. That’s because

some carnations grow in the city.

They find work in old stockrooms.

True enterprisers might open

their own nail salons, but others

carry bad memories to the office

like reptile briefcases and come noon

they’ll hit up the food carts, then

hit up the gym. They all know an uncle

who operates heavy machinery

without a license. The elders pull up roots

and move to Palm Springs. A carnation

walks into a bar, orders a drink…

Just yesterday I saw a tall one

swerve into his driveway, towing

a braid of picket fences from his wheel-well.

He clobbered through his daughter’s

kiddie pool, burbled and cursed, charged

the house and lit up the abyss

of the bare windows like a roman candle.

See them. They’re everywhere. Sick ones

bent on the side of the road, thin hands

gangrenous in the June rain.

The proudest flower I ever met

was a carnation. They get the garden

while—Apollo’s favorite—hyacinths

get the grave.

Solomon Meets My Wife

Not eyes that coo, quiver, flap like doves

trapped in a veil, but eyes that turn, rush,

                                    rollick in ways—

how Clackamas River unbolted

the valley, raked up archaic silt

from its bed and lathered on the shores

                                    all summer long.

I see your hair not as goats crossing

the slopes of Gilead, but slaking

                                    plumes of Earl Grey.

                                               

I’d follow your hands forty years through

the Sinai. It’s your voice I swallow—

not terrible as any army,

                                    but cedar strong.

I climb it rung by rung. I turn it

in my fingers like a hallowed stone

                                    unearthed in Bethel.

Under a Presbyterian Steeple

On Easter Sunday

steel bars like loaves of stale bread

split stone benches down

the center. There’s no rest

for the wicked, tired

or little Myrtle and her spider

veins. The Flock—with black nylon spider

legs—files cathedral-wise behind her. See their Sunday

dresses! Myrtle preaches, tired

from all-night quests for bread.

She eats the crust and saves the rest

for her sick little pup down

on the bench beside her. You’ve been down

all night she whispers through the spider’s

web of steel mesh where her sick pup rests

in the kennel by her legs. The Sunday

People watch her feed stale bread

through the meshing—so tired

of Myrtle and her sick little pup, tired

to the bone of her sittin’ down

askin’ for a dollar, a nickel, some bread

like a spindling, mist-eyed spider

hanging in the belfry all Sunday,

munching dog-flies, cankerworms, whatever rests

against her web. Can’t she give it a rest?

They buzz from ear to ear, eager to retire

to their pews. Today’s not just Sunday.

Today He goes up, someday He’ll come down—

He’ll descend a Silver Line like a Mighty Spider.

Save Us who broke bread—

one body, one bread—

then, Lord, slay the rest!

Now Myrtle cries, clears bone-dry spiders

from her empty kennel, scratching air with tired

fingers. Eight tears turn down

her cheeks. They gather dust, while Sunday

bells toll and clang a tired

sermon across the city, down

into the streets on Good Sunday.

The Muppet Show

My grandmother’s floor felt best when I stretched

out with my chin propped on soiled hands, Muppets

twisting, scrapping, can-canning on the tube

above me. More than others, Gonzo strummed

each thin, goofy string strung inside my chest—

that velvet tuxedo, crooked bowtie,

Fracklish nose and eyes. In the garden,

my Grandmother would rub dirt from turnips

and crouch beside yellow-flag irises

budding like the sunset. She’d race inside

at the trill of Gonzo’s ruptured trumpet

and sit beside me. Statler and Waldorf

always strummed her strings with balconisms—

adult humor. Once, Gonzo shot himself

from a cannon, into the balcony—

kid humor. I turned to her with a smile

and saw her check her pulse for the first time—

like she knew the tumor bloomed inside her.

Tusks

Her apron hangs on the kitchen hook—

the butcher hands pulp-stamped

on bulky pockets  Black hairnet

Marlboro Reds like skinny missiles

the key to the stationwagon

slapped beside the burner

where the meat pops

           

We let her have her

time alone—

tummies empty as the house

She sold the piano when Dad left—

used to tickle the ivory keys while

he crashed the cue in his makeshift

billiard room  He’d let us spin

the ice in his glass

She sold the white dominoes, the leather

couches, the pretty fan, the pool balls, Great Great

Grandma’s false teeth—

now we can eat

She works

in provisions, she says  But

I saw her at the Meat Pantry

clawing guts from a stomach

snapping ribs with her tiny hands

The meat spits from the pan, turns

tumor-gray, gurgles, laughs, spits

Nine o’clock  Mom sweeps

into the room, singing French, all teeth

The dressing gown burns a long silver road at her feet

           

            A movie star

with those two crème hairsticks

those slim whittled tusks

her last line of defense—

like spotlights

swung against the night

Crossing the Wasatch

They tic-a-tac when she talks—

her tinny yellow teeth.

Got Donners in my bloodline

Great Great Dinah

kilt a cousin

in the Wasatch Mountains

tic-a-tic.

Generations later, this Donner still looks hungry—

face like a ferret, plum-pit eyes

tinny yellow teeth

that clack inside the classroom.

Took a cutoff

to the mountains

All the oxen

took a turn for the worse

      tic-tic           

      teeth against a can of cherry coke—

            hooves tic-a-clack against the stones

until the snow comes, sieved

by long blades of brome grass

then everything’s

      pith-a-pith

and winds keep whipping

the wagon flaps agape.

We plug the gaps

but chills keep whisking

            pith-a-pithing

hungry for holes

worming through blankets

            sweaters, linen, burlap

whittling under our skin—

a last bit of tail whips like a noodle

slurped between the lips—

      pith-a-pith-a-pith

at the pit of my stomach,

chewing on what’s left

of the balmy valley sun.

Names

I.

Reckless, rallying full-hearted,

we cut our names into the city:

Jackson, Richard, Jordan

           with jackolantern blade

bright as a cardinal,

muck-white laces catching

leaves of rust from

Old Town’s Steel Bridge—

stoic, double-decked,

Braille-plated for battle.

T-bone, Ryan and the 1414 Kids

           In Cathedral Park,

where we ate a handful

of the wrong mushrooms—

under the holy arches

of Saint John—

we made our covenant,

anxious, drooling, pious

below Narnian lamps:

           to better ourselves

           before tomorrow.

II.

Paul and Matthew

at the foot of the dead

Harvey W. Scott—

ever-standing, pigeon-shitted,

pointing sun-bound digit

across the breast of Good Mount Tabor.

            —O, there is Hawthorne!

between the trees,

beyond the reservoir,

its bright theater straight as bone,

carving passage through southeast

to the tourniquet of muddy Willamette.

Cambria, Keenzy, Kevin

down to Zach’s Shack for

the Dylan, Sgt. Peppers, Los Lobos

and a beer.

III.

Wes, Radtke, J-bird, Megan

thrashing, bright and brass as a bull

through Pittock Mansion—

            how here we get?—

we lean until we tip

down 21^st staring up

at the pink gloaming

on William Temple’s House.

Under Blue Moon and

big blue Volvo and

onto the skinny steps

of the old mausoleum

where we drink tonight,

            where we will wake tomorrow

and stagger forth for Genie’s,

for Madison’s for Thatcher’s,

for Cricket, Gravy, Tonic,

the blessed Cup and Saucer,

to Mother’s Bar or My Father’s Place,

J and M, OPH, O’Connor’s,

to the Tin Shed,

to the Florida Room,

to Delta,

to Toast our Bloody Marys elbow-high

and start again.

                        But now to sleep

                        on grated beds,

                        on ragged steps,

                        with hard dreams

                        straight from the boneyard.