Steady Hum
Backhoe, piles of brown soil,
bags of donated cucumbers
for the poor (me). The mouse toy swings
like a pendulum from the empty cat tree.
The stop watch clicks from 44 to forty-three.
From 43 to 42. I close my eyes.
Suddenly, after 40 days and 40 eyes,
it starts to rain. I watch the soil,
the parrots who love to dance, the three
reasons I have nothing to prove. The cucumbers
speak to my mother, but her tree
remains cloistered. The boa constrictor swings
over the locked gate. I watch my ghost swing
and sleep beneath the iron posts. My eyes
watch Apocalypse Now Redux, the burning trees,
for maybe the fifth time this year. The soil
swirls in small tornadoes. Captain Willard finds cucumbers
and a lovely French woman three
clicks away from Cambodia. They smoke three
puffs of opium together. Naked, she swings
through the mosquito gauze of the bed canopy. Wet cucumbers
roll from a silver tray. You see her eyes
soft cut from darkness to day, light, soil.
Then Willard is back on the patrol boat brushing the trees.
I am listening as Caroline crunches marinated trees
of broccoli. It's 4:33
in the afternoon on a Thursday. The soil
humid and hot. Two Asian kids swung
onto the street on skateboards. The boy's eyes
trailed behind the girl's, separated by cucumber
patches every 15 yards. Siblings. Boxes of cucumbers
for sale as I walked to the mail. The trees
felt a little out of breath from all the eyes
watching and all the green tea the three
of us had been drinking. All arrangements swung
and ordered their potentialities in the dark brown soil.
Sleepy, Sleepy Snails
Visiting mom at the residence, I hear someone running
with pounding steps, back and forth, jumping,
maybe a four year old girl, heavy, she won't sleep,
take a nap, above us, tons of energy, can't vote
her away with my thoughts. When will this pass?
Hide the fucking M&Ms for God's sake. She pounds
and bounds. Can't take a breather. The sun has to pound
and then set, but does she? The cows have to run
and then sleep. The slow tired snails have to pass
over my mind. Sleepy, sleepy snails. She jumps
and won't quit. You can't vote
this energy out of office. Let's pray she sleeps
and doesn't grow up Republican. We'd all sleep
the sleep of doom. She would pass into law the pounding
of the elderly, euthanasia. Put your votes
to better use. Pound. Pound. Pound. Run. Run.
Death to the slow, blind, the diabetic. Half-court jump
shot. 10 years of world change passed
down the drain. Wet-bull wins passing
off for a slam dunk. My mother slapped my sleep
away with a ruler. “Riddle with no jump,
no answer,” she said. “Riddle with no pound,”
driving my car past the ape sanctuary, running
on empty. I notice all the votes
have been vandalized. A tall man votes
with tap dancing at the bus station, passing
out at midnight. Tiny frogs activate a running
trill on the sides of trees. Summer is sleeping
and almost over. A September flower pounds
yellow. Yoko Ono screams and jumps
like a butterfly on acid. Burning lilies jump
the smooth grey stones, step to vote
at the giant's door, sing, play, pound,
echo fancy, wild flute and bassoon passing
natural real sky essences, thunder like the sleep
of a fork lift. The music of nylon runs.
Classical Radio
This is the time. This is the old
station you're tuned into. The statues.
Samuel Coleridge Taylor – the black Mahler and doctor
of finales. The season is a garden
that is changing. We will celebrate water
with Grieg now. The thunder is chanting
over the old battlefield. There are 500 chants
made from concrete in the forest. Some old
statues are decorated with human teeth and water
and moss and hair. Some of the statues
were once real people. Can you contain one garden,
the hallway door wide open, trumpet teacher, doctor,
dear doctor? When it chanted, the garden
opened old doors for the statues
to watch the water's flash.
The Lilac Bush, 1966
The lilac bush was in the backyard,
not far from our garbage cans
and incinerator. Saberjets would roar
over our house, silver fuselages
armed with guns and missiles,
gleaming, glittering, roaring, booming.
Birds would sing in the lilac lushly,
its blossoms fragrant, companions
to our neighbour's purple irises. A sky
full of danger of invasion, aerial
warfare, jets looping, dogfighting,
exploding, raining metallic bits
in my mind's fear. Our dead pets
were buried under the lilac's boughs
and fertilized its roots in our battleground
country, home of blue flags,
military father's, brother's graves.
10 cents
Trip Hop chipmunks. Soap stuck
in the drain. Camouflage blanket.
Dialling in radio signals from
the birth of the universe. If
we go fast enough, we travel back
to ourselves. Things made of bits
and pieces. The same telephone call
chasing us the length of our lives.
Another New Year's Jazz
We stood by the pond's ice skin, saxophone
of Zombie Girl, the piano
keys of the sidewalk at sunset, the snare
of tires through snow melt, the bass
of a barking dog, a black dog, the wind
chattering like sparrows, sky language
of curiosity. Happy New Year, mighty language
of floating luminaries, newspaper balloons, phone
booth calls of melting snow on glass.
Woody Woodpecker plays his laugh on piano.
The hound dog sheriff plays bass
on confiscated inner tubes snared
and snared again on meat hooks,
smiling the wind outside her apartment.
Cafe Time
I allow myself and everyone
to feel wonderful. It's the new
designer drug. At the hospital
I stared at the museum
display of an antique nurse's
uniform. That navy blue
cape and that starched white
cap. When she walked
to your door in 1943
with her leather kit bag
she meant business. My exam
gave me the happy face
stamp of relative health.
I waved goodbye to the antique
nurse and walked to my van
in the January chill where
multiple farmers waited
in their rusty pickup trucks.
I heard whooping cough
was making the rounds.
I chose my favourite cafe,
my kitchen, and I allowed myself
to visit 1943 and the rest
in 2024 and it's waves
of random violence.
I waited like a clam
at the mud bottom of
myself, which was a river
with a muddy yellow sun
rippling above.
Pucker Piccolo Penny Whistle
I place the tofu pot roast in the oven
as a baroque recorder virtuoso
tweedles in yellow cross-garters
through the corridor of frozen
tombstones in the dim morning cloudlight.
A herd of whitetail deer vaults
over a pasture fence bordering
the graveyard. Crows the size
of three year old children
walk calmly on the path
exactly like three year old
children imitating walking
crows, their child arms tucked
behind their backs, the children
clucking to themselves
introspectively. Huh? Just
like that, the icicles crash
into piles of rod chunks
waiting for baths in whiskey
glasses. Spanish guitar is
accompanied by women
in flower-covered aprons
near glowing bread ovens,
and Scottish bagpipes
blast from Presbyterian
members of the city council
on this third Sunday of Epiphany.
My Mother's Family
Meaning her mother, father, brother,
and herself photographed together
on what looks to be a hot
September sun-drenched afternoon.
Her brother holds a bottle of water,
smiles impishly; his hat is of
the smashed down cab driver's variety
that every male wore in the 1930s,
the proletariat hat, cocked at a rakish angle.
Her father is tall, has the required hat,
and smiles a bit apologetically, who knows why.
His wife (my grandmother) stands tall and faintly smiling.
My mother is ten years old standing
in front of her father, squinting
at the photographer with her worried
child's look. Is there enough? Will it last?
In mere weeks her father will die
in a work accident, but nobody in
the photograph knows this. For the
moment they together stand in the bright sun.
Out of Sequence
Oboe duet on the radio. Then
the furnace switches on and drowns
it all out. I hear from a friend
who sends a picture of fancy chocolates
painted with lacy white food colouring.
The nice thing about pictures is
you don't have to eat them.
I have a pan of un-boiled water
on the stove. The sparrows have moved
out of the range hood, abandoning
a clutch of speckled eggs. In
about six weeks it will be Easter.
Do I feel like a bum? Yes. It's called
narcolepsy or sleep debt. I have
to sleep because I cannot sleep
part of the night. At 4:44 am
I get the impulse to cobble shoes
with the elves, but I don't have
the gear, so I just stare at
the darkened ceiling, frowning.
Let me tell you something, Igor Stravinsky.
This table is mine and all its
dark, dark wine. And all its
dark, dark wine.
Rustin Larson's writing appears in the anthologies Wild Gods (New Rivers Press, 2021) and Wapsipinicon Almanac: Selections from Thirty Years (University of Iowa Press, 2023). His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Iowa Review, Puerto Del Sol, The Penn Review, North American Review, and Poetry East.
