Full Suitcases

Greg Field sails the seas...

—Poetry by Greg Field, Independence, MO
—Photos Courtesy of Public Domain

 

 

FULL SUITCASES

We wandered. Some of us
found a place—we were
suitcases seeking acceptance,
seeking a passion we could end,
perhaps some waste we could
straight-line. We found a point
that became a line. We told
a teacher we wanted a profession
that would get us high, that would
earn us the deed to this place.

We sought and found this place.
It’s a little different—no sky,
just stars, and waiting on the floor,

a large flask of silver nitrate solution.
No one understands us. No one can
develop us. Are we photo-paper
waiting for emulsion? We are in

this home—the roof is gone, the walls
are sometimes real. We wandered,
we found this place. We got ideas—
hopes, dreams, sacks of lies.

We sit here in the dark,

our suitcases full.


(prev. pub. in Uncertainties, Woodley Press, 2017)

 

 

 

 

SHADOW SOLD

At twilight, my brother called from outside Vegas.
He told me he sold his shadow.
He said he priced it right.
Some woman
stumbling
behind the old Horseshoe Casino
bought it for her son.
He said he feels
lighter
like a weight has been lifted off the heels
of his worn combat boots.
He said he does not
know how he’ll
feel
about all this tomorrow. I imagine when he
stops on his way back to
Bullhead City, steps
out of his car
in morning
sun
to survey the glowering cliffs and gulches,
he’ll notice something missing,
mutter quietly,
What the hell?
Get back in
and drive
on.

 

 

 

 

AFTER MIDNIGHT AT THE HEARTBREAK
HOTEL

Elvis has left the building,

left its small, intimate rooms.

The last angel here has plunged

from a gargoyle’s back, swooped

and risen far above the copper roof.

She’s left behind a weeping bellhop,

a boy whose keening bleeds

through the blue halls

as he wanders and imagines

sleep kissing each patron’s lips.

He thinks of those slightly wrinkled,

pink birds parted in sleepy desire

and at the window he hears

her wings beat high above Lonely Street

and feels again her softest, most magic, “No.”


(prev. pub. in Kansas City Voices, 2015, and
Uncertainties, Woodley Press, 2017) 

 

 

 

FINGERS

Sometimes the corner
of his eye will sting
and he’ll suddenly
reach up and rub
the skin at the edge
of its socket surprised
how random the world
can be, how random
his body with all
its surfaces, nooks
and crannies can
thwart his attempts
at silence as he sits
on his plastic chair
sipping his yard beer.
Forget contemplation
he thinks. To hell
with a chance at even
a tiny distance from
the world where a leaf
and a branch trouble
his hair. The world
has come to bear on
the corner of his eye
and that sting grows
into a terrible pain
that expands with each
stroke of his dry, split
fingers.

 

 

 

 

UNFOLDING

I see the knife open
like the door to a
dark room where
you stand in your
cold blue dress as if
you swam out to us
from beneath
the lake and my
questions are like
bubbles rising through
the cold dark water.
You have no answers.
I have only one. He
opened that door
because its blade
was sharp and shiny
in the dusky light.
He was lonely with
his companions
and wished to hide
its point inside one
of us standing stiff
in the sand surrounded
by the families and cars.
I warned my friends
about the blade as it
conjured red on blue
sand kissed by the lake’s
cool waves fed by the
melting glacier high above
in the mountain’s sunset
clouds—such darkness
unfolding into the
blue-black night.

 

 

 

 

WILD DILL

When we walk the trail
along the Little Blue Trace
there is a special spot
when we pass, we smell dill—
Wild dill, you say. And I say,
Somewhere out there
in the woods is some wild dill,
and I think somewhere
out there like Wild Bill
wandering the forests
that once surrounded
Deadwood, no longer worried
about someone getting
the drop on him. He’s able to
mosey along passing through
buildings and cars parked
along the street. A particle
mist of a ghostly aroma
of leather and sweat—
sharp and sweet yet smooth
as a worn holster. Spicy, my father
used to say, Yeah, that’s spicy,
as we crouched in the woods
among the wild dill.

___________________

Today’s LittleNip:

Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life.

—Jack Kerouac

___________________

Newcomer Greg Field is a writer, artist, and musician living in Independence, Missouri with his wife, poet Maryfrances Wagner, former Poet Laureate of Missouri 2021-2023, who first appeared in the Kitchen last Saturday, Aug. 3 (https://medusaskitchen.blogspot.com/search?q=maryfrances+wagner). Greg plays drums with the improvisational jazz band, River Cow Orchestra. His poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies, including New Letters and Chiron Review, and his new book, Uncertainties, comes from Woodley Press. He is a co-editor of the I-70 Review, and he lives with Maryfrances and their two dogs, Anne Sexton and Lucille Clifton. Welcome to the Kitchen, Greg, and don’t be a stranger!

____________________

—Medusa

 

 

 

 Greg on the drums

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A reminder that
The Poets Club of Lincoln
will feature
Arlene Downing-Yaconelli
today in Lincoln, 3pm.
For info about this and other
future poetry happenings in
Northern California and otherwheres,
click on
UPCOMING NORCAL EVENTS
(http://medusaskitchen.blogspot.com/p/wtf.html)
in the links at the top of this page—
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