Nine Poems by Rustin Larson

 

Chet Baker

 

Just as a junkie would fall

from a second story hotel window

 

in Amsterdam, I once fell from a jungle gym

and hit the drought dry playground

 

with the top of my Oklahoma head.

This was the autumn of 1936, the blacktop,

 

my blood, 1^st grade. From this blacktop,

angels in black suits gathered my body. The fall

 

was overlain with blinding fire, my head

was carried to the canvas cot near the window

 

in the nurse's office. Cold, wet playground

coloured paper towels sucked my eyeballs as the gym

 

squeaked with basketball shoes, and the sun

shined on my soul for a while.

 

I was a junkie dead in the red light playground

of Amsterdam, Friday the 13th, on my head,

 

May, 1988, dead, dead, dead. The fall

of living like a warm breeze in the back seat

 

of a convertible Cadillac at night on the blacktop

of jazz, palm trees, toothless trumpet window.

 

Under some circumstances, life can be a window

you fall from. Despite being a junkie, despite the pillow

 

of a woman's breasts, despite the musical blacktop,

the song, playing to my feet, the shadow, my head

 

on an autumn day on the sticky tar of a roof

in Los Angeles, that song. 

 

 

The Muse

 

She possessed the magical power

to restore youth to mortals.

Her harpsichord accompanied

the strings, flutes, and trumpets.

 

A family of sparrows occupied

the flue of the stove. It snowed

on April 16^th. I could no longer

read my handwriting; a small

 

insect landed on my nose. My bag

of paints and brushes was open.

I created a picture of an imaginary

valley where no one travelled,

 

and yet someone had tacked up

a general supply store, there

among the weeds and wildflowers

and under the rose blushed sky. 

 

 

Juxtaposition in Iowa, 1966

 

“Now, who asked you?” Randy darted.

Before and after the prosthetic eye.

The children and the rainbow parachute,

the orange hula hoops, the Zimbabwe

soccer ball, the ballet of soap bubbles.

 

Randy always used his bedroom window

to leave and return to his home.

The airport control tower flashed green

and white alternately, a beam

like a lighthouse in a sea of grass.

 

One hand held a campfire, the other hand

cupped over an ocean wave. One

half of his face was white, the other

midnight blue. He started his Jeep

at 1 a.m. He drove to work like a lighthouse

 

to his job as an inker for the Register.

He dressed like an orange penguin. His brain's tree

was half alive and half dead. He ate

an apple and a pickle during his break.

Photo: a whore and a nun sat together praying. 

 

 

I Buy Some Colombian Coffee at the British Petroleum Station

 

I am sort of dressed

like a cop today,

navy blue shirt,

beige slacks, mirror

sunglasses, short

hair. A guy with

a black beard

and a Billy Jack

hat and a knife

sheathed and as big

as the cross of Jesus

sneers at me

and tacks like

a galleon past

the green gas pumps. 

 

 

New Cat

 

His name is Fred. He looks a little

like Finnegan, only Fred's Tuxy is Tabby.

He knows the drill. I write, he becomes

quiet; the jazz age plays on FM. Rain

sits in the sky and flips us the bird.

 

The living room is filled with cat toys

again; our new child. I lay my head

on Caroline's soft hip as she brushes

past me. Guess what! It's raining now

like a lost symphony. The gardens

 

rejoice. The clarinet wanders through

the ruins of a Gothic cathedral;

a rosette window is bright

with grey rain, swollen clouds;

croquet balls of hail bounce on the grass. 

 

 

Belle and JC at the Poet's Barbecue

 

In her French beret and tight blue

jeans, Belle snapped photos of the action.

JC bit off a chaw

 

as the campfire sputtered lard.

I want you to keep the banjo, he said.

I saw how your eyes lit up when you

 

played it. The poets howled

from the diamond having scored

another run. Belle stood behind the umpire

 

with her camera, its mechanical whir

as the film advanced.

You are cooking rodents, she shouted.

 

That we are, ma'am, JC replied.

I prefer the cafeteria, Belle responded. 

 

 

Rough

 

It's roughly 100 F.

I have a rough idea

what that means.

 

The novelist

paints a green cat

for her cover.

 

My sister

snaps a photo

of where she sits

 

in her community

flower garden.

I taste garlic.

 

I swing

on a hammock

and dream

 

of snails. 

 

 

Owls

 

We burned twigs

in the park's barbecue.

We roasted hot dogs.

 

It was late September

and night came earlier

than it did in August.

 

We watched the embers glow.

The train from Denver

no longer stopped in our town.

 

We sat in the park

with no train whistles,

but we watched the embers

 

and felt the owls fly

above us. 

 

 

A Life in the Opera

 

Groucho had a cigar

it seemed good

as the opera woman

 

clasped her hands

and he wagged

his eyebrows

 

I saw grapeshot

and she sang one long note

like a whale

 

Groucho hurled over

the coffee table

in this whale

 

of operas

I saw war

machines

 

I saw Usian Bolt

hurdle and win

Groucho rustled

 

his newspaper

his telephones

his scribblings of Lincoln

 

and made his

electronic bird

squeak like Hawthorne

 

and Twain

pulled up

from a drawer

 

I heard him

lap up water

viewed him

 

through a pane

of glass

virtually free

 

from his blue

ceramic clock

I think of my niece

 

a new infant

from Korea

and just like that

 

she will grow up

in America

with a voice

 

like a cornfield

and a finch

Groucho

 

is on his perch now

living furiously

with fire

 

near the Mississippi

liquefying

into souls

 

glaring at us

like owls

filled with rain

Rustin Larson's poetry appears in the anthology Wild Gods (New Rivers Press, 2021). Recent poems have appeared in London Grip, Poetry East, The Lake, Poetryspace, Pirene's Fountain, and Lothlorien Poetry Journal. His chapbook The Cottage on the Hill was published by Cyberwit.net in April of 2022.

 

Five Poems by Hiromi Yoshida

 

Lady Bluebeard

 

Quid pro Quo

 

Lady of a million

snowy linens, gold plate,

and jewelled goblets—

 

greed for gold

turned your fair

countenance green,

white, your flowing

hair of tarnished

gold beneath

your towering headdress,

blue, your pubic purse.

 

Tell me, what did you find

in that forbidden room in yonder eastern

gallery of damask ottomans, curiously

 

wrought cabinets, richly embroidered

antimacassars, and baroquely

gilded mirrors?

 

(Nothing, my Lord. Nothing

at all.)

 

Lady Bluebeard,

Where is your husband?

 

(Why, he has gone hunting for the day—

Why dost thou ask?)

 

Where is the key

to the forbidden room?

 

(Anne, sister Anne,

do you see anyone coming?)

 

She sits all day atop

her castellated tower

watching dust settle upon

 

empty roads, the moon drip blood

through haggard trees.

(Sister Anne, sister Anne,

signal haste to our brothers. 

Oh, why aren’t our brothers coming?

Wherefore thy silence,

Sister Anne?)

 

She combs her dirty hag hair with a gold

gap-toothed comb, rubs a little gold key

between bony fingers, moaning, “Sister

 

Anne, Sister Anne,

O morning star of

highest heaven.”

 

Lady Bluebeard, did you know

that your sister is now a madly

mirthful strumpet?  She will not hearken to your

useless genuflections, and your brothers

 

will never come, for their bones are crumbling

in the family vault with the excrement of the years.

 

Mad mother of a million miscarried days

and stillborn Sabbath nights, she sees

the blood crawl over marbled

floors—hears the order to remove

her silken robes, unfasten her baroque

girdle, and take her place among the others.

She hears the serial bastard’s endless incantation,

 

“Wipe, wipe—

thy tears of remorse

are all in vain,”

her hair a bunch of

dirty gold in his

angry fist,

“Strike, strike—

the final hour,

commend thy soul to God.

Anne will watch her sister die

as the cock crows its zenith hour.”

 

Blind silver blur—

a million horses trample

flying hooves and

apocalypse of sound

Eustachian blood

roars cataracts and

Swoon of fiery stars

 

(Sister Anne, Sister Anne…)

 

 

Postmortem Inquest

 

Bailiff:

 

How died the very first

Lady Bluebeard?

 

Coroner:

 

She died at the cruel hand

of her wrathful Lord.

 

Bailiff:

 

What provoked the ire of

her unnaturally cruel

Lord?

 

Coroner:

 

Excess spleen

unmanly grief and

jealous attachment.

 

Bailiff:

 

Duly recorded for

our Magistrate

who will consider

all these things. 

 

Cathy’s World

 

She ran wild with her sugar daddy’s horses through sunflower fields

at high noon.  The Texas sun burned steady gold heat through naked

soles, and wayward wind tangled dirty blonde hair.

 

Horizons shimmered endless summer days—apples

falling into checkered laps, strawberries drowning in fresh cream.

 

Newly laid eggs hatched breakfasts in quivering dawns, and frail colts shivered

for the weaning, tethering and breaking

beneath iron hands.  Cathy was a very fine thing,

blonde debonair purchase for the lonely old man marooned on

his Texas ranch.  He gave the orphan girl Godiva

 

chocolates packed in ice, golden keys to chandeliered rooms,

closets shimmering sequined dresses.  Still, she would whisper

into the moonwashed night a little ditty of her own:

 

“I am so lonely,

so very lonely—

will no one come

and save me?”

 

So, he gave her everything she could want

for a few minor sickbed ministrations

upon very precisely worded

instructions (sequestered behind

 

heavy breathing

damask drapes &

perspiring hothouse flowers).

 

Oozing bedpan stench, leathery gooseflesh,

cadaverous bone—washaway all in early morning mists and shimmer beneath flyaway hooves—and once again she was blonde

 

Godiva rising on the heels

of dewy dawn—riding

all those pretty, pretty horses

blowing silky manes and tails.

 

Twenty years later, the gnarled apple trees

bore no more fruit; thick brambles

choked strawberry fields, and sunflowers hung

their weedy heads.  Dry winds swept forlorn

feathers through deserted

chicken coops 

 

(But where are all those pretty,

pretty horses?  Why, they must have run

away—run far away from home!)

 

They say a disheveled hag ghost wanders

through these forgotten parts when mist obscures new moons

 

and the lonesome traveller’s sudden

step startles midnight birds. 

 

The ghost throws back her head and laughs—a highball tinkling

in her bony hand, her nightdress unraveling

ribbon shreds—her hair a dirty moonlit tangle.

Her plaintive voice calls out to him:

 

“I am so lonely,

so very lonely—

will no one come

and save me?”

 

Midwives whisper to each other, plucking fat

guinea hens—stuffing them for Sunday roast.

 

 

Midwife 1                                                       

Y’all know what happened                            

to that sleazy old millionaire guy?                            

 

Midwife 2

That sly vixen, Cathy, must’ve done

him in, all right.

 

Midwife 1

Yeah, but what about the will?

 

Midwife 2

Everything given over to her.                        

 

Midwife 1

So of course, she’d run a brothel                   

that flopped bigtime.             

 

Midwife 2

Yeah, that heavy-duty drinking

didn’t help none.

 

Midwife 1

All slipped through her lily-                          

white fingers.  So what’s she up to

these days?                 

 

Midwife 2

Heaven knows.

 

Midwife 1

She still runnin’ wild?                                   

 

Midwife 2

That’s what they say.

 

Midwife 1

And the ghost—that be her?                                                                          

 

Midwife 2

God knows.

 

East of the Sun & West of the Moon

The candle stub in her

faltering hand shed

hot wax tears on

the sleeping prince—

 

the spillage was

her undoing—dissolving

maidenhead of her blinking

eye, binding her

in oppositional directions: East of the Sun,

and West of the Moon. She

 

bundled her three clean,

well-mended dresses, wrapped her

braids three times round

her drooping

head, and the East Wind lifted her up—

blowing her toward the three

other points of the wildly

spinning compass till she landed

with a painful thud

before the castle

that stood East of the Sun,

and West of the Moon, her

rude awakening was

her interaction with her rival,

the pimping troll princess with the extra-long nose

and her indecent proposal

to exchange nights with her

fiancé, the prince, for any gold

 

thing the maiden had handpicked along the long winding windblown way

                                till it all culminated in a shirt-washing contest (no Clorox)—

washaway the residual stain of desire like a good, Christian maiden (whiteness and

                                virginity being the only acceptable qualifications for inheriting the gold and silver kingdom through the awakened prince),

                                 now cross-eyed; one eye looking toward the east, the other, toward the west, the gaze of both eyes converging at the tip of his shapely nose.

 

The laundry contest winner, the maiden unleashed her golden hair—

                     bundled the prince’s three other unwashed shirts to flee with him on the back of the North Wind—far, faraway from the burning castle that had stood East of 

                     the Sun, and West of the Moon—sunlight spilling across the bleached horizon.   

 

The Goose Girl

 

That Charmed Moment

 

Her ivory neck drooped beneath

the burden of her dusty unravelling head-

dress—so long since she’d had a drink of water.

 

“Lady-in waiting, will you stop

and give me some reprieve

to alleviate my burning thirst?”

 

“No, Milady, that’s a concern only you

can attend for your own self.” Their horses plodded along at high noon—

 

the sun beating down upon the two women (Did it not occur to the

Princess her lady-in-waiting and their horses

would need some water too?)   Survival of the fittest, they plodded along.

 

“Lady-in-waiting, I beseech you to stop.

I cannot proceed without some water.”

 

“Dismount, and get it yourself, bitch.

You got two good legs, haven’t ye?”

 

Her ivory neck drooped further still—

her headdress completely undone around

her sloping shoulders. They plodded on in silence.

 

“Lady-in-waiting, stop

and give me some water, for surely, I shall perish.”

 

“Fuck you, Milady.

Go get it yourself.”

 

The Princess slid out of her saddle—hot tears blurring her blue eyes. She

                   bent over the flowing river water, and the protective charm dropped from

                                      her bosom—floating away, breaking the spellbound hierarchy. 

 

The Lady was no longer waiting

for that charmed moment,

and the Princess was no longer

a shielded vermilion virgin as they exchanged

                   garments, horses, names—plodding on toward

                          the King’s palace, the sun no longer a gold beast of burden in the burnished sky, extracting thirst from querulous throats.

The Silly-Goose Chase for “Happily Ever After”

 

Arriving at the betrothal destination,

the decapitated Princess horse was named “Falada,” and the Princess became

the Goose Girl—gold hair streaming in the sun—combing away

—the wind being her friend—

          Conrad’s coxcomb hat floating above fields of cackling geese—a silly-goose diversion.

 

Free—

she was, picking up pearls like the eyeballs of swine,

no longer the Princess

in jewelled chastity belts, no longer

the exorbitant chattel,

royal dowry item.

 

When the King got wind of these wayward

things in the fields, the one-eyed strumpet broke

                the pearly string of silent days—and the charwoman burst out of the scullery,

the oven spitting out ashes.

 

Happily-ever-after was inevitable, of course,

standard fairy-tale ending.

 

But not for the upstart woman (aka. Lady who waited for that

charmed moment)—stout, persevering upward mobility achiever,

whose naked spiked ass was not exactly

creamy Godiva’s.

 

The King acquired a wife;

The Goose Girl lost her freedom, and

Falada stopped speaking. 

 

Paraplegic

 

 

She speeds down vast expanses of flooring at College Mall, Bloomington, before Macy’s was torn down as though toxic storm clouds were chasing her—when, in fact, she was stressing about her upcoming wedding, and her dissertation defence, as usual, steeling herself against impudent stares.

Enthroned in her wheelchair, she smiles, blinks, then glares across vast florescent spaces—after all, questions about her most intimate possibilities are needlessly offensive when all that information is accessible via Google—that long florescent grapevine—straight as her reset spine that had been fractured.

She had flown to Japan to weave alternate Genji tales, overripe persimmons falling around her—assiduously learned kanji brush strokes twisting into the corroded barbed wire underside of the car beneath which she had been trapped; that accident from which she emerged—as all along her spinal cord, the neurons flickered away like dying fireflies.

 

The florescence of public spaces is now her kingdom—the Google grapevine a desiccated snakeskin

slithering away like a wily question mark.

Hiromi Yoshida - Author of one full-length poetry collection and four poetry chapbooks, Hiromi Yoshida is a finalist for the New Women’s Voices Poetry Prize, and a semifinalist for the Gerald Cable Book Award. While serving as a poetry reader for Flying Island Journal, she coordinates the Last Sunday Poetry reading series for the Writers Guild at Bloomington. Her second full-length poetry book, Green Roses Bloom for Icarus, is forthcoming from Roadside Press in October 2024.