Locals may recognize this...
FIRST
THING I EVER STOLE
—Kevin
Jones, Elk Grove
A
willow tree
In
a burlap bag
In
a bucket outside
The
A & P. We liked it.
Bought
it, and
My
grandfather
Flung
it in the cart
With
our groceries.
“How
will we get it
Home?”
I asked.
“We’ll
just roll it
In
this,” he said.
The
clerk only followed us
Screaming
for half a block,
And
then
The
police car came.
It
was Frenchie the Cop,
Or
maybe Young Steve
Borota
(they looked
A
lot alike—thick guys
With
gray crew cuts and rueful
Smiles)
or perhaps both,
Followed
us, the willow, and
The
cart the mile
And
a half home.
Car
stopped, we
Got
tools, water,
Planted
the willow
In
the front yard.
Looked
good;
Lived
long.
By
the time
We
finished,
Cop
car and cart
Were
gone.
________________
GUAYABERA
—Tom Goff, Carmichael
My first, bought by my first lover,
in the marketplace of Santiago
Tianguistenco. What a fine skin
should do, cling to me, warm me
through chill mountain gusts,
billow with the least relieving
breeze over Acapulco sands. But
what strange disaster when I mingled
my guayabera’s banana-flesh
yellow in the wash with her pink
underthings. Ah, how the long
narrow pleats, the margarita
bloom designs made stems
to sop and sip up her divine blush
in one unerring
ready-to-wear stain pattern,
fine as any two-tone shoes
or maybe our own two tones,
distinct as banana and rose,
unmixed even as our skins
did blend under night’s dark skin.
THE EIGHTH SYMPHONY OF SIBELIUS
(believed
never completed, and the fragments destroyed)
—Tom
Goff
When you,
Sibelius, renounced your early Kullervo,
you
stamped the future seal on your Eighth’s tomb.
Never wise
to sneer at the green fruits:
Kullervo’s
notes were really
your “music vows”
of
consecration to music itself—and nation?
We doom
our youthful works, the underground
of all we
live for, our chthonic wands,
enchanted
swords, our seed-gold hoards in rubble.
Yes, if
that last symphony came stillborn
and
ritually then was consigned to fire,
it is
because of what I say: Destroy
may be
the watchword of almighty Shiva
or
Oppenheimer, but not truly of Man.
You
burned apart the pages of late work
and saw
an abyssal vision of, yes, Kullervo:
The boy
god’s radiance, glaring up at you.
We
greenly, carelessly, sow these mysteries,
deluded
to think our potency Godlike,
then act
dismayed when someone like a nun
bolt-cuts
into our discards, finding them isotopes.
This
betrayal of self, our innocent undergreen,
under the
ideal timbers of our walkways.
The Mermaid
—Painting by Howard Pyle
[Maybe this is what goes on
under the boardwalk. Lots of
"Firsts" happen there, I'm sure...]
FIRST TIME HARROWING
—Taylor Graham,
Placerville
You drove two hundred miles
for this iron-
weave with claws, this
ancient implement.
A harrow. Namesake of an
age-old form
of torture. You wrestled
it like brokeback
bedsprings this way &
that to rig it to
your 4-trak.
Back-breaking. Sun-glare on
all the angles of iron. At
last you drove
in spiral circles raising
dust, leaving a fine-
groove trail—no
deep-soil plowing, more
like the loving graze of
fingertips across
skin, pleading with earth
to take your
pasture-mix; promising to
turn sprinklers
on the field, though they
leak at the spigot—
small blessing of
free-given water for
the birds, for parched
air; begging barren
land to bear you green
children.
__________________
FIRST LETTER HOME
—Taylor Graham
Stairwells intersect like
dream; corridors
branching with blips of
rooms, cells
of a hive. Choose which
door. It snaps
shut. Will it ever open?
Here's the
kitchen. In a cast-iron
skillet, a dead moth.
What transformed it to
white napkin
folded after use? How
brief
its share of summer. The
floor is sand. Ants
march up a cabinet, over
the cornice of sink.
Garland of cobweb
festooned with gnats.
Welcome to your new home.
A fury
of wings rising, falling
like images outside
the mind. Dynasties of insects
rule.
A fly buzzes—dear Emily!—like gasping
for breath, or whatever
flies, what any
creature in extremis does.
This is my room.
_______________________
Today's LittleNip:
I remember the first time I had sex—I kept the receipt.
—Groucho Marx
____________________
—Medusa
—Photo by Michelle Kunert, Sacramento
[We have a new photo album on Medusa's Facebook page:
OH, THOSE FACES! by Michelle Kunert.
Check it out!]