Off Wagon





Off-Wagon


the solitude of my hands
                the secret of my arms
                                                Juan Felipe Herrara
                                                “The Secret of My Arms”

Tucked up under the coat sleeves
when the shovel is offered
and then refused, I see

the wrinkles along the wrist-cuff
to the elbow and then
the stain—which at first

was a shadow which before
that was the fat
from the frying pan

thrown not quite cool into
the air and space (your
face) between you

and her and it was
the first food you’d kept
down and quiet about

for days and the places
you came from stayed
hidden in your left

breast pocket, buttoned,
worried with dirt from
your thumb while you were

on your way to me
wondering if I’d shut you
out and it’s the burn

I want to tend today
for you, the worm
of it pimpled and picked

at and it’s the lips I want
to salve, the puss
and rough cake of blood

and mud and it’s the limp
I want to straighten, taking
the time all muscles

need to
soothe out the lactic hate
they’d zipped up

so yes, a shovel
and I hold it out
and it’s cool

on the handle and firm
and reliable smooth
not a splinter in the wood

a lot of men
before you have stroked golden
soft and even

as the inside of a quahog, silk
mother-of-pearl.  I know you
always hated work, I know

you’d take
a plate and say: ‘sis shit?
and eat it anyway

and make a place for your feet
to keep you up
and don the make

when your veins zing
and they stretch and they hiss
and we both know it, so I hold

the shovel out we need
to work this out and I could’ve
chosen another word

because once work you don’t
even try reaching you didn’t
start but didn’t you

turn away from it all tucked up
in that stain
and make your own way

again
again
again

walking to town
to a car door opening
to take you down

to make
that small pocket open
once the rubber

once the spoon
once the rock
once the fire

once the liquid
once the syringe
once the bubble

once the vein
once the prick
once the sssssssst

once the slid
once the plunge
once the orgas-ahhhh

hhhhhhhh
hhhhhhh
hhhhh

hhh
hh


_

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Birthday

Image
Rich Entel Cardboard Menagerie  Birthday It’s heavy to drag, this big sack of what you should have done.  And finally you can’t lift it anymore. …You never intended that it should come to this. William Stafford "It’s heavy to drag, this big sack..." Somewhere out in the world there’s a thirty three year old who took you up after you left, who was shocked like your cheek from the combustion of gunpowder breaching your skull and even your jaw, (the heavy pistol slid and you were awake the whole way only to slip first coma then no.)  And maybe it wasn’t like you’d planned it, maybe what you’d intended had nothing to do with her and maybe it was instead all the carefully folded clothes you carried from room to room when your sister ran the streets and your mother walked and walked and called down those Lynn alley drain pi...
Read more

Mill Girls

Image
Mill No. 4 Greenville, NH Mill Girls: A Sense of Direction When they shook the box, and poured out its chances, you were appointed to be happy.  Even in a prison they would give you the good cell…                                                                                 William Stafford                                                ...
Read more

Thanksgiving

Image
Thanksgiving Too late you learned to care that clean places make people want to need you, want to need to be sitting easy within little distraction: ants in the kitchen on the stove where the pilot light is plugged and hissing some as the jets sputter and tick and the knob stays at a perpetual leeward lean.   The last thing it lit was her cigarette and the gas wafted and could’ve killed everyone in the house but you opened the windows to get clean air in.   I want to come home and make it right for you, to fight your quiet despair with as simple a bottle as Windex and a box of your favorite wine, maybe a six pack of Narragansett.   These days   you spend too much time rubbing your permanently damaged hand, the spot where the lost last finger once, when it was first taken off completely, unthreaded itself like a sighing corset that's always been  too tight, lungs, stomach,  squished into the hourglass ...
Read more