Election Day
The FedEx driver has anxiety disorder.
Often, he panics and leaves packages
willy nilly on the wrong porches.
Today, like many days,
I play the role of unpaid delivery man
for a package that doesn't belong to me.
What I see on my route: nothing.
No woodchucks, birds, dogs, or helicopters.
I take a picture of myself since I'm so beautiful
in a strawberry-colored shirt. I post it.
I get 2 likes. For once the negative self-talk stops.
No one is going to sue or throw me
into jail for writing this, though even light bulbs
have shadows. The apostles threw twelve
shadows into the salt. The oak tree
had a massive soul. The man who
lives in the wall is the source of all
power, in the house at least.
What man lives in the wall?
His name is Mike. Mike, a small
and powerful man.
Election Night
Mike plays a Parisian accordion to the chime
of a hallway clock. The bass and guitar
describe the progression of a black spider
building a web in the shadows of leaves
in moonlight. There is a knock
at the door. The dream journal lies open
for everyone to read in the library.
Who is sipping sweet sherry?
That is Mike who lives inside
the library walls and is a shepherd
to electricity. The bass tells all
to walk like a camel going to church
on Christmas Eve. Someone plays sitar
for the way the angels fly. It's Mike.
Election, The Day After
You have to walk
that valley
yourself.
Harmonica
and slide guitar.
Woke up this morning,
an oft repeated phrase
in blues, as if
each dawn
births you whole, a new
creature,
nothing to lose.
The Battle of Gobbler's Knob
Armed with toy muskets, wrapped
in knitted scarves, winter coats,
we fought The Battle of Gobbler's Knob
against a fierce flock of imaginary
turkeys. We stood upon a mound of earth,
in reality the roof of a root
cellar. We had been warned a hundred
times lest we fall through to take
residence with all the other cursed skeletons
who lived there below. The battle
raged. We laughed, slaughtered.
The turkeys were upended in defeated
feathers. We feasted then lay on our backs
upon the grassy mound, our breaths
ghosting above us, sky
of late autumn heavy and dark
with the first gift of snow.
Oliver!
I attended a community theater
production of “Oliver!”
performed in the high school auditorium,
an echoey place with a large clock
that glared lest you forget
Health and Hygiene class was
precisely at 1:35 pm. There was
a disturbing portrayal of a woman
named Nancy being bludgeoned to death
by her unshaven and long-haired criminal
boyfriend. She acted the death
most convincingly with legs and shoes
a twisted disarray in shadows
of the stage. Only a few years earlier
a Spanish Language teacher at this school
was murdered, bludgeoned by two male
students in a nearby park, a place
where she walked often.
They both had failed her Spanish class,
were denied participation
on the football team. Murder
was their revenge. “Oh, the dead will walk
tonight,” I thought to myself watching
her murder in “Oliver!” a musical.
Maple Grove School, June 1957
It stood, more or less, on the corner of Southwest 9th
And Army Post Road. There was a Hamburger stand
Called The Little Drummer Boy on its south end,
A Safeway on its north. The students in the photo
Look like 4th graders. There is my brother Rick sitting
In the front row, daydreaming, chewing on an eraser.
Beside him is a girl in a white apron, head cocked, smiling.
I wonder if they had chili, peanut butter sandwiches,
Fruit cocktail for lunch. Mrs. Kinkel leans over a boy
Who wears a striped shirt: a real go-getter with a prealgebra book
Cracked open on his desk. Mrs. Kinkel is dumpling-shaped,
Dressed in a farm wife’s frock. She wears a pair of secret
Pentagon approved x-ray glasses, loves being a teacher.
67% of the students love her too. A bell rings, the alarm
That says the day is over. All the books close,
An exhaled breath in a bed of clams.
Lost in Idaho
Horizon tree line,
a vast potato field,
barbed wire fence,
two men walking,
straight gravel strip,
sun bright overhead,
shadows angled:
one o’clock sundial.
Shadows of tall trees,
ramshackle machine shed.
Man in front is black,
tall, white shirt, dark jeans,
ball cap. Other man, ten paces
behind, chambray shirt
open to a clean white
t-shirt, beige pants.
Arms hang
by their sides, slow stride
Under the sun.
Asked landowner for work?
Turned down? Fugitives, convicts?
Can they smell ham
and eggs frying? Can they
Hear the meadowlarks?
It is the Golden Light of Western Wyoming
We are outside
the dining room at the Lodge.
Mother holds me in her arms.
I squeeze her thumb
in my right hand.
I am a long one-year-old.
She had been feeding me
from a stack of pancakes
and eggs. “Where are you
putting it all?” my brother asked.
I have pudgy legs
and shoes like a micro-
Frankenstein’s Monster
with a hat like little Babe Ruth.
We stand in the morning’s
orange juice light.
We are framed,
our sun-bright bodies,
by a pure
Obsidian monolith.
My lips are forming
the words “Toot! Toot!”
I am the engineer of “The Little Train
That Could.” I will roll
on wheels to Old Faithful,
watch the water fly
its boiling clouds
against the blue.
Who am I? Toot-toot!
Who am I? Toot-toot!
The Last Time I Was in Chicago
I ate some bao at a stand in Union Station.
I had never been so still. Every time I looked up
At the clock,
I saw the workings of my interior.
It stayed that way for a long time:
No happy, no sad, just tick, tick, tick.
On the train heading east, through the mysterious
Ruins of industrial cathedrals: me, weed country,
Fires of homeless tribes, loading docks
In long rows, dozens of abandoned
Passenger stations, rural backyards,
Someone, always, riding a lawn mower
Spewing a mist of wet grass. I’d lean
My head against the window and dream--
Robin chirping, the sound of a clothes
Dryer tumbling, my mother humming
As I napped in a window square of sunlight,
A cat on the carpet.
Shadow of Venetian Blinds
A detective story: the woman had returned from Syria
With large pieces of black luggage.
My cat rested
On her roof like a sphynx. I had been playing
Solitaire all afternoon, drinking a lemon cocktail.
Should I go
Water the bleeding hearts, wind
The web of the brown recluse
around a sharp stick?
A large brown mantis
Clings and bobs on the porch railing.
My cross-street neighbor ponders me because
She thinks I died sitting on my porch rocker.
The frozen foods truck delivers peach pies
Throughout the neighborhood. My socks feel good and brown.
My lemon drink is gone. I believe
In sound. My mother, daughters and Caroline
All call out to me at once.
Labor Day
We’re all in this together. I remember
The slogan for Falstaff Beer, the cans
Piled on the lawns, watermelon rinds,
Ashtrays heaping with cigarette butts, the last
Firecrackers shot off in a muddy
Bank of the Raccoon River.
Hamburgers were grilled
On dirty park barbecues. Ants drowned
Themselves
In red pools of catsup. Crows cawed five times
When they saw me. They still do. There is a toy
Mouse on the floor now, and a peanut butter jar
Full of water and trimmed pink cosmos. I drink cans
Of Limoncello sparkling water, rest from my labors.
The skyscraper is not being built today. I make a boat
From newspaper and watch it float downstream.
More Hamburgers
--my brother Rick
I stop at The Little Drummer Boy,
Not McDonald’s. I leave the motor
Running in my ’36 Chevy Coupe.
I leave the headlights on
As it rains dark gray droplets
That once lived on the Missouri border.
The radio still works. I listen
To the Lincoln vs Tech football game
For a while and eat fries. I have a red star
Sapphire engagement ring in the warm pocket
Of my maroon and gold letter jacket.
I have gold leather arms. I will
Not be drafted into the army. We will live
In a trailer in Ames, Iowa and catch
Bumble bees in jars
Cotton balled
With chloroform. Lincoln scores.
I hear it from
A quarter mile
In the night air
Before
They announce it on the radio.
It’s pay day, and I feel dollar bills
Wadded up in my blue jeans.
I sing Da Doo Ron Ron.
The Kiss
Box of photos, pictures of your parents
In their wedding clothes, kissing late
Summer September on the lawn
Of the Lutheran parsonage in St. Ansgar.
Shadows sag, 2 pm long
And cool,
A picture of the beginning of you,
All the other pictures
Floating
Paper boats
In a rain puddle, the unborn
Granddaughter laughing in the raspberry
Bush, playground
In the one day
Evaporated neighborhood, Christmas box
Of chocolates and fruitcakes,
Red head
Hippie from Canada sloshed uncle
With a can of Falstaff, Christmas tree
Bulging with Dicken’s ghosts, a spring
Loaded rocking horse,
The you of tiger lilies.
Blue Kitchen, October 1965, Des Moines
I am wearing a fake fur raccoon cap,
Crisscross bandoliers of black
Plastic. Winter punch is poured,
The cake is cherry bit frosting, six
Candles. We belong to an obscure
Religious sect of produce
Worshippers.
Portraits of cucumbers, crookneck
Squash adorn the wall. Doug, Diane,
Pam, and Lloyd
Are my guests.
A paper cowboy
With a black hat
Stands
On the center of the table.
A lean music of blue maple leaves
Pulses from drapery. My sister
Serves another glass of red punch
To Doug. My brown plastic musket
Is propped up by a corner of the blue
Room. A yellow balloon
Dangles by a ribbon from a light
Fixture above us. Not in the photo
Is our dog, Penny, my Mother,
The artist of this day. In a way,
It looks like DaVinci’s Last Supper.
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