Back to Donna

The phone rings in the kitchen and I answer it and stay in view of the stove so I can watch the meat fry.
You say, Oh Donna’s real sick, blood coming out of her ear, I tell you she just doesn’t care even with her kidneys shot she’s still out there drinking margaritas. Well now she has one of those, what do you call them, an-yer-isms, maybe a few, and she called and said she has blood coming out of her ear, and I was like, shit just chill out and I’ll be there at the end of the month. But it’s coming out of her ear and I have to go, I’m at a greyhound station and it’ll take two whole days to get there.

and I say, 'safe travels and stay out of trouble.Straight road!'

And you laugh so loud it hurts my ear, Oh Natalie, come on, you know me! click.

I open the door to the windowless little room next to mine. The bed is neatly made. In the drawer there is a pair of plaid shorts and seven bars of soap. I take the sheets off the bed with the feeling of reverence that comes when you move something that was last touched by someone who is gone now, someone you will never see again.

RAPTURE

shes a silverhaired woman on the porch looking down at the old buffalo run that once was. shes standing on an Everest of years with a heart as light as a pebble.
this lightness it is spilling out of her like it was water over the brim of a drinking glass held to catch a waterfall and she speaks and it washes over me cold and clean and I cant say nothing else.

we’d all been inside all day for two days talking about how to help those whove fallen through the cracks to the wolves, bars, and police cars. we are taking a smoke break cause the cracks are wide and yonder dogs are hungry.
she thanks me and thanks the rest of us for this gift of a day. she smiles, lights a cigarette, says ‘good luck with that battle into medical school, we’ll look for you on the other side. Me, I’ll still be kicking. HAH!’ she shakes her head, and leans on the railing and sweeps her gaze like a hawk across the plains.

I had been standing there incredulous that she has seen all these winters, darker winters than Ive ever known naked with the wind howling through the snow. I was thinking, how in the fuck is it that she never laid down and died under the weight, even when she wanted to, even when the world pointed towards it and said ‘you must?’ but then it occurred to me that that a heavy burden long carried is not so easy to cast off. it starts to settle deep till it shapes the shoulders under it. it is even as we speak twisting through my guts like a beautiful but troublesome vine that will kill the tree if you cut it off. I put my hand to my stomach in wonderment.
but she has seen this before, knows how it is. and now above this buffalo run that’s given way to soybeans and other strange fruits, she she starts to laugh
and it catches and we roar with it, doubling over, until tears stream down our cheeks.

the itch

Everyone gotta lose it sometimes," you say, and laugh a sooty laugh. "We'll smudge your room tomorrow, get out those bad dreams thats haunting you. You sure its not anxiety from the sober life? You going sober, getting that anxiety? ..Everyone gets the damn itches sometimes."
you another light one, hitch up your fading plaid shorts, and ask me to check for lice in your cropped hair.
"Even me, I got them itches all right. I can feel them bugs, scratchin at night, man I've had some crazy nights. I tell you one night I had five of em tryin to get to the halfway house, that was back when I had my body, and shit, I tell you, two girls was clawin into the front and two was at the back door and I think the other was trying to sneak into the basement! and man oh man I had to crawl out of that window right quick fore they all caught my ass. The nurse came knockin at the door and said, GIRL, you in some trouble now! haha! So I jumped my ass out the window. I don't know what it is about them. I mean, I got girls, they tattoo my initials on their wrist or their tit, and I just say, shit you are cr-a-zy. One of em, Charyl, well she was at a party with our friends and she left and aint no one seen her after that cause she got stabbed 17 times and she died with that tattoo of my initials still on her wrist, right into the grave. We think it was one of our friends cause no one else saw her that night…I mean, some of them are so crazy. Some of em are classy, like Donna drivin the Lexus, which my daughter likes, you know, but Donna that girl is crazy. She is crazy, breakin all my plates and shit."
you shake your head sadly. the cigarettes, by now, are done, and I didnt find any nits.

bitch!

YOU FUCKING WHORE, FUCKING BITCH!
She accosts the shadow at the window. The shop downstairs is boarded up and there's not another person in sight all the way down the empty main street.
There is something simultaneously hopeful and cynical about her appearance—the way her jean skirt barely clears the curve of her ass, the platform shoes, the painted-on eyebrows. Tonight at the mirror, before all this started, she was becoming
something beautiful, something more than the sum of a closet full of clothes that make her look like a cheap
FUCKING SLUT, YOU FUCKING WHORE, COME THE FUCK DOWN HERE SO I CAN KICK YOUR
She demonstrates for the educational benefit of the recipient. Demands justice, now, from the street, as any thinking woman in her position would do; the judge sure as hell don't get it.
The shadow stares down guiltily but makes no plea nor contest to a late-night crime with a weak-willed man who, god love him, thought she was prettier.
Down on the street, below the painted eyebrows, the screamer's mascara is starting to run with a lifetime full of could'ves, would'ves, should'ves. She wraps her arms around her chest, making some effort to hide the plunging of her neckline. She rocks a little in the cooling night, beginning to fear she aint nothing but a spectacle shrinking smaller and smaller with each year that sags her breasts and wrinkles her eyes.

Some young compañeros roll by, honk twice at her ass, shake their heads sadly.
"Oh, these fucking women, why are they all such crazy whores?"

the eagles touch down

The saturday morning football game is a big deal for two schools bristling with generations of rivalry and racial suspicion: Here we have the Eagles from the rez vs. the Pirates from the farm town.

Our junior high boys filed out of a beat-up bluebird schoolbus opposite to the grandstand.
Their shoulder pads were reconditioned. No one had pants that were the right size, and several of the yellow Eagle jersies looked to have sustained moderate to serious dog attacks. Behind them their uncles and aunties were loud and laughing and smoking cigarettes in the early morning mist.

Across the field the rival fathers stood quiet in front of their parked pickup trucks, staring with styrofoam cups of acrid black coffee. Behind them, a John Deere tractor rumbled green behind the fence on down the highway back to all this land that is theirs now with all that fat corn yellowing in the haze.

By the time the sun burned through and the field started to heat up, the team was beading sweat and wild as colts: two touchdowns before them white boys could even blink. The Eagles bumped chests and galloped back to the starting line; the Pirates regrouped and shook their heads in disbelief.

Behind me, an uncle jumped to his feet. "hoka hey, what, you never seen colored boys, huh?"

To that, the blue-eyed sons of settlers didnt say nothing but a mutter about how them indians was probably 2 years older but couldnt pass 8th grade. The Pirate mothers in sweatshirts and sensible shoes standing behind the concession counter just averted their eyes to check the boiling hot dogs.

The boys lined back up eye to eye on the starting line. Behind me, the loud voice hollared, "hit em boys, hoo-EE, HIT EM TILL YOU SEE SNOT BUBBLES!"
And the polite silence of the other parents was punctuated with the wet smack of helmets against nylon and flesh.

Finally, with some three minutes to go, a skinny brown quarterback parted the sea of anglo-germans trying to hold him back. He was balancing the football like a delicate egg and twisting and spinning as they tried to grab him. The crowd errupted, "Look at him move!
Like the grass dancers!
you MOVE, boy!"
He paced his pursuers like he had feathers in his cleats and flew untouchable into the endzone. It was now a decisive 42-6.
Even his granny was on her feet now. He looked up at us, all grinning and grass stains,
and loped back to his team who stood shining and victorious in the center of the field for the photographs.

Without another word, the farmers turned and started to leave. Besides, there was work to be done: their hard-earned crops were ready for harvest.

field trip

put on those old black jeans with the splitting seams, wipe your running nose, and take your hands out of them empty pockets. today it dont matter cause we are gonna ride past the smashed bottles and tarpaper roof that is peeling like an old blister.
we're gonna burn a trail out of these blue few miles all the way back to the wide open rolling plains. i dont care how hot it is, how the sun's heavy fire sits on our shoulders, we will go till this damned township disappears and you walk your tall self off the cracked pavement back
to some secret memory blowing with the sweetgrass in the windy afternoon.

A mid-Sept. Cautionary Tale.

You had better wake up while you can or you just might end up wearing a ratty sweatsuit on the filthy floor of a truckstop bathroom in nowhere, Nebraska, with your insides being eaten alive by crystal meth and bits of your stringy hair stuck in the corner of your dry mouth screaming how god did it come to this o lord jesus just let me die with dignity not right here next to the toilet that someone didnt

the manicure

she eases down into the cheap folding chair, and starts to unconsciously drum her fists on the table while we wait for the boss. her knuckles are tattooed
B-A-B-Y B-L-U-E
atop hands that hold a highway of lines and a lifetime of shifting horizons. their tectonic power is quite evident: these hands have long known a weary strength like the Mississippi slowly wearing down the rocks of its riverbed.
the boss is late. so we sit and shoot the shit and she presses her large palms together. she folds and unfolds these witnesses to war, misdeed, and other things done in desperation or maybe in bravery
some long gone winter night.

wind madness

the air never really stops out on the plains. today it started whistling blue from the north in earnest, knotting my hair and making the kids ask for sweatshirts.
when the settlers first came in grim lines of white like hungry teeth stretched across the horizon, this same wind teased the pale sails of their covered wagons. all the bearded men in dirty buckskin were obliged to walk with heads down and one hand on their sweatstained hats while beneath the billowing canvas their women were going mad.
this was because the wind blew right through the tents and into their dreams; no one could get proper sleep while it was sticking cold hands in their quilts and moaning like some strange heathen ghost.
when they couldnt take it any more, they tore up the earth for sod houses but the wind still pressed in through the roots. so, still tossing and turning and fed up, they built heavy log cabins but the wind wound in through the inevitable cracks, the window panes, the chimney.
it battered the laundry, toppled new flag poles, wouldn't stop touching their faces.
folks say that finally the wind drove some of them settlers so crazy that those who could not swim walked into the lake, and those who never hunted finally knelt and squeezed the trigger.
so now the wind whips the long grass against their headstones.

dream journal, sioux reservation, no. three: the swine

today I woke up laughing so hard.
I recognized an old boyfriend of mine—one who caused much grief last year, and who entered alcohol treatment at the end of the winter. We sat in a dark pub and I asked him why he was drinking. He said he was learning to limit his consumption to three beers only. Even in real life, I would have laughed. After the first beer, I realized he was slowly expanding until he looked 10 pounds heavier. After he downed the second one, he was so round his face was almost unrecognizable. When the third was through his voice started changing tones, and strange squeals kept erupting in place of vowels. I tried not to acknowledge it, and the conversation withered.
He finally turned, as usual, to check his reflection the mirror. When he turned back I saw that his shapely nose was now a snout and his hands were fusing into hooves that couldn't grasp the pint glass. Before I could react, an angry farmer cursed in the distance and dozens of filthy pink-skinned pigs came bursting in with their enormous stink, squealing
and breaking dishes. Without another word he fell into the herd, knowing his place with the new curly tail splitting his levis.

dream journal, sioux reservation, no. two: the horse

I woke up twisted in my blankets and full of anguish.
I was riding a fast white horse bareback with my long hair flowing wild behind me. as the plains were flying by, a teenage boy—the son of someone important—stepped out with an ax and struck the horse down.
we tumbled and I rolled to a stop and saw the horse's body disappear before my eyes, leaving long elegant bones but for the head whose flesh remained. The boy had gone. With tremendous grief I gathered up its bones—especially the broken shin—for the long walk alone to demand justice at the court house.

dream journal, sioux reservation, no. one: the lion

I woke up with the feeling of feline teeth pressing gently on my neck. I had been holding a large mountain lion by a piece of rope wrapped around its neck. It kept turning, snarling, jumping on me, trying to bring me to the ground. I was standing in a gully with the blue sky and rolling dry country silent all around me.
There was the achy feeling that everyone had moved on and that I was left behind.
Every time the lion would turn and lunge, I would grip the rope more tightly in my hands instead of fighting. I could feel its muscular body trying to push me down, and I stumbled and finally its hot breath was on my face and my ears were splitting from its fearsome roar but I would not let go of the rope.

..into the desert

manaña slowly turns the san juan valley into a frying pan till the sun boils dead overhead and the hot air sucks the water right out of your skin like a lover greedy with the need.
out here the mountains overwhelm the steeples, so that believers bow instead among the cactus,yucca, and other razors of faith.
redtail hawks float spread-winged in the electric blue sky like archangels above this flock on their knees who still wait with their skin leathering in the heat and lungs that wheeze in the sage and dust.
they finally break and lay back, shirts soaked from their labor, and sit in the silver shade of the piñon. no one speaks but sometimes their chapped lips move vaguely, wondering when the sangre de christo gonna wet these arroyos again.

leavin new england

swept the last of everything out of the house in amherst. dusted my dust of the mantle, gathered the hairpins and worn shoes, dragged my battered bags to the curb. gathering my possessions has taken on all the cheer of dressing for a wake; loading them is like pulling the coffin.
but it is done and we are sweating a little on the grave in the latent, weary, slanted end of august sun. i wish it would stay this hot but shes gotta go, like all the rest of us.

so we pull on to the road and i am homeless, again, and the road is clear but the adventure is fading. our whiskey-shot eyes have eyes only for the chaos, the uneasiness, the half full bottle rolling and cracking in the back seat of the aged volvo im riding shotgun. i leave everything but the malaise that grows like snakes crawling up my belly.
i am not wiser, but maybe older since last august—more tired,
worn down, increasingly bowed with the unbearable lightness of being: all this heaviness in my boots, all these miles i've put on, but leaving no real footprint no matter how deep the mud.

relief

'..and then you've got your opioids.' she sits back and cracks her beefy knuckles satisfactorily, which causes her huge breasts to swell forth and strain the fabric of her faded beach-scene tshirt.
'you can take them through the three points of power,' she indicates the soft corner of her elephantine elbows, her papery mouth, her dripping delicate nose.
'opioids have been shown to give you the optimum exposure to the breath of jesus. that's why, obviously, it's illegal. if everyone was breathing with jesus there'd be no reason to pay taxes.'
she draws silent and fixes her blue gaze on yonder clouds, smiling a little, shivering and shaking with the need.

१२:००(repost)

in bed my eyes wander outside. moonlight has turned scars to pearls and rimmed our unslept undereyes with precious onyx.

this evening the silent silver highway outside my door could go anywhere and its strewn garbage could be gleaming undersea treasures wrapped in the weeds of these forgotten farms.
our overripe moon is bursting above the clearcut meadows
which are still exhaling copper dust from their conquest.
high moon midnight casts man's industry as glamorous: the factories emit rivers of warm gold, the sawmills sing shakespeare and the smokestacks billow holy odes to god in the sky...
i finally snap to as a truck thunders through, shakes the panes, and hushes the crickets:
its headlights cast a coke can as a coke can once again.

madeline-mary

i could sleep, but someone is tapping gently and persistently on the other side of the basement door. behind my squeezed shut eyes the door yawns open into empty silence breathing old air.
it is punctuated now with the delicate sound of fingernails scraping painted wood. i do not get up to answer it.

old man of king st.

even now, as you read this, he is probably sitting on his front porch.
he sits unmoving through the hot afternoon, as the lengthening shadows stripe his grizzled face, as the wind picks up and the afternoon rain soaks his stained trucker hat. he blinks eyes that are focused on some far-off time, and the water drips down his sunspotted nose, but his hands don’t move.
darkness comes, obscures him,but he remains patient and silent in his chair. the weeds—on the other hand—are restless, and growing taller by the minute in the cracks of his sidewalk that no one ever walks up.

"I love you

." he says to me. I look up, startled, hide the bottle under my bag. I am sitting alone on a park bench in Northampton. The sun is setting. I remind him he doesn’t even know my name.
He apologizes. Asks my name. I say if I tell you, I imagine youre gonna start making all kinds of declarations. He has a moon-shaped smooth boy face on a man's body. His hands are lonely, anxious, bunching and unbunching the pockets of his cheap corduroys.
“No,” he says, “I just wanted to know your name.”

the tourist

the light comes into focus. i am not supposed to be here, clutched like this between the tired hip brick walls of williamsburg. the tiny window frames a sky of steel painted sepia with smog.
i am still coming down. i am descending into the subway with my done deeds on my back in lieu of the bags i didnt pack. life perseveres down here, but it is brown and crumpled as the liquor store bag whispering from the tracks: even now a beetle appears from under it.
my shorts were so tight and they were thick like months to a lightbulb at midnight, so that i imagined that if i touched them they would fall. to meet their fate at the lightbulb,
when all they wanted was to swarm and touch wings and make something of their eyeblink long life.