THE CAMERA’S SIDE OF THE STORY According to the photo album, their marriage was all cruise ship railings, cheap souvenirs from Caribbean ports, the main grandstand at a NASCAR race, an unknown beach, some kind of fairground where pigs were being judged. Nothing here of the arguments, the drifting apart, the divorce. When the bad stuff happened, they just weren’t posing. CHOICES MADE The woman picks out a slinky black dress with tight-fitting waist, sequins that sparkle in the department-store light. My wife invests her paycheck in something far plainer, more practical. One shops for the wear and tear of the office, the other for a feline saunter into a club or restaurant. I want, so much, to see my wife in an outfit that clinging, that overtly sensual, once in a while. But she makes her purchase and we leave together. This is also what I want. OBITS AND ME Rachel swallowed a bottle of blue pills and the dark swallowed Rachel. Cam was found, discovered, unearthed – take your pick of verbs – but everyone knew it was Cam on that bed except Cam. Kate’s end was more romantic, at least to some people. She floated to the lake surface like a painting by Millais – the most precious Kate in anyone’s memory though Kate’s own memory was absent Kate. They were all people I knew and who knew me. And now I’m stuck with all the knowing. THE OLD BLUESMAN He calls himself a jive cracker. The pissing dogs don’t care. He likes his hootch. And he’s a one for stepping out of line. The women flirt with him. They call it intrigue. But they’d do better to serve him up some of that crawfish bisque. The bookies are into him. Their ‘gimme gimme’ is like the breeze. And he don’t sing so much as flap like a farmhouse door. His guitar is old but the strings still come together like old war buddies, approximate a tune. He sits on his veranda, on some Carolina ridge, in sunset the color of a pitcher of beer, cracking open the blues with his gargle of a throat. Cypress wind don’t stop blowing. The moon just can’t contain itself. It wants to pick him up and carry him. WOMAN ON THE BEACH Lost and your eyes are puzzled,
already falling through houses painted different colors, too weak to emphasize their sameness, though you burst in periodic explosions crouched on a yellow rind of beach, shy like a filly when I sit beside you and, without a sound, brush the thoughts away from your brow, let your teeth show bright in your satin-tanned face, return to life with face like just-finished sculpture, a window left open at the whim of circumstance, I can tell a blonde from a mirage, you fear the frailty, a darkness where only your eyes are visible, those of a frightened adolescent, trying to remember where you live.
0 Comments
|
Categories
All
|
RSS Feed
