Year
for Lowery McClendon
Dear Low,
You did it. You left the trout behind.
Sunday the corn was cut down. Apple trees
in the nearby orchard were felled which explains
the screams I heard a week ago, and the droning
of wasps.
That hill was exposed this evening at
sunset, reflected pink in the sky. Reminds me of
the women I always saw through your eyes,
their large lips and eyes,
the dark thighs particularly,
fields without their corn now shedding a purple
light like Stevens' Hartford.
And you there tonight
forsaking the schoolyard we'd walk beside
stopping to comment on that view of hills
at our favorite wall where N*ggers Pandemonium**
stalled on hot nights to
break beer bottles for your
poems' broken glass, curtains you'd pass in the
dark where your wheels would splay the stars stuck
to tar bubbles on the street
when Hart Crane beat
his words against your rhythm running down
to Montford Park.
Be quick about it then, your departure:
I walked through your house.
You left behind that crooked frying pan.
Your steaks will never taste the same again,
and that espresso pot there, too, black stains
stuck inside like little Lamont's words,
"Are we lost yet?"
Just thrown out like that
plaster of paris bone from the kitchen.
No dog would chew on that, some kind of
sentinel to Arborvale Street signaling something
fragile has passed on like Mr. McKnight's
roses given over to winter,
Indian summer
an old squaw, packed up her warm skins
and vanished like a wife or lovers.
It's like that, you know. No magic but our
own so often like that old white bone's intention
to be art,
our poems strung on the page like
slip over chicken wire, words expiring from
our clutching at them -
"You will be beautiful, make meaningful our days."
What are our names anymore, Low?
The corn is all cut down.
An old scare crow remains.
Apropos. Poetry's worn out image
stretched out on the hill forlorn in the ice,
forgiving no one, especially ourselves,
alien corn of a foundering century.
**'N*ggers Pandemonium was the name of a bar/club on 'the other side of the tracks' in a racially segregated Southern mountain town. It was black owned and its clientele were mostly black. The bar no longer exists.
Dear Low,
You did it. You left the trout behind.
Sunday the corn was cut down. Apple trees
in the nearby orchard were felled which explains
the screams I heard a week ago, and the droning
of wasps.
That hill was exposed this evening at
sunset, reflected pink in the sky. Reminds me of
the women I always saw through your eyes,
their large lips and eyes,
the dark thighs particularly,
fields without their corn now shedding a purple
light like Stevens' Hartford.
And you there tonight
forsaking the schoolyard we'd walk beside
stopping to comment on that view of hills
at our favorite wall where N*ggers Pandemonium**
stalled on hot nights to
break beer bottles for your
poems' broken glass, curtains you'd pass in the
dark where your wheels would splay the stars stuck
to tar bubbles on the street
when Hart Crane beat
his words against your rhythm running down
to Montford Park.
Be quick about it then, your departure:
I walked through your house.
You left behind that crooked frying pan.
Your steaks will never taste the same again,
and that espresso pot there, too, black stains
stuck inside like little Lamont's words,
"Are we lost yet?"
Just thrown out like that
plaster of paris bone from the kitchen.
No dog would chew on that, some kind of
sentinel to Arborvale Street signaling something
fragile has passed on like Mr. McKnight's
roses given over to winter,
Indian summer
an old squaw, packed up her warm skins
and vanished like a wife or lovers.
It's like that, you know. No magic but our
own so often like that old white bone's intention
to be art,
our poems strung on the page like
slip over chicken wire, words expiring from
our clutching at them -
"You will be beautiful, make meaningful our days."
What are our names anymore, Low?
The corn is all cut down.
An old scare crow remains.
Apropos. Poetry's worn out image
stretched out on the hill forlorn in the ice,
forgiving no one, especially ourselves,
alien corn of a foundering century.
**'N*ggers Pandemonium was the name of a bar/club on 'the other side of the tracks' in a racially segregated Southern mountain town. It was black owned and its clientele were mostly black. The bar no longer exists.
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