from memory wing |
by bill lavender |
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poet extracts lyric fat from a memory wing!
the creek that ran down the back yard ran under that red oak widened there to form a pool blackened by oak leaves and one day i was playing alone
and fell down dead immobile lay cheek to the dust of the ground tasting and breathing the dust of the ground and then after a suitable interval was
reborn opened my eyes looked out across the gravel and stubble to see just a couple of feet away a giant bullfrog squatting in a tuft of grass half-hidden by
the grass the wide mouth shut into its crease the eye-sphere rising out of the skull and the wiggle of the jugular under the neck skin
and how i wanted that frog how could anything be more desirable than to touch his cool skin to feel the push of his jumping legs
and then was i as quiet and still as the woods of a june afternoon shifting position by miniscule intervals bringing the down arm
quietly around drawing up my legs then quickly over lift back legs flex spring my quadrapedal leap to prey
landing laying hands on bare ground just as it splash and then the quick kick under and i saw some dark oak leaves rise to the surface
out in the middle where i couldn’t reach and stood watching the soft leaves sink back into the walnut water and i thought about the frog later
when pop was raking the leaves out of it dragging them up from the middle into a soggy pile on the drive then sorting through and picking out everything silver
and every time he found one every time he found a shiny worm he said god damn it and took the switch to me he didn’t rake up the frog
but the leaf piles writhed with tadpoles as if the old guy’d staked a claim and left his brood behind to hold on to it for him meanwhile he goes off to stake
some other pond bullfrogs are like capitalists aren’t they? leaving their little brown wiggly sperm incubating in cess pools? only at the house when
it would rain pretty good the creek would run a torrent and spread out into the yard below the pond taking the tadpoles and some of the gravel bed with it
at night i mulled its motion the slick calm and ripples from the falling leaf followed by the sudden roaring current that emptied the pond and left
things flipping in the grass my feet twisting in the tangle of the sheets sweating out night terrors i felt the water rising
black pond under black air electric charge in the atmosphere leaning forward slipping into it it opened down like a well
like the well me and johnny looked down at the right time of day and saw our faces in the bottom looking up out of a porthole
and something moving rippling the water it was a garter snake swimming around the edge butting its nose
against the slick stone sides of the shaft looking for a purchase for a head-hold we dropped sticks down at it saw our faces waver
like ghosts and then something gripped us lifted us off the ground kicking by the nape it was the hermit
and we’d fouled his well he tossed us down in the grass like trash and walked off in his dirty overalls long scrappy hair like a forest
yeti like a guardian of the woods and we went down and hid in the bobcat’s cave crouched shivering holding onto
our knees until night fell and the mouth of the cave was like moonlight reflected in a pool and we heard the bobcat coming over the leaves
saw the yellow eyes looking back from the cave’s mouth looking up from the pool and there was nothing to do but
go on in deeper and we crawled hands and knees it was cold and the ground was wet and never was there dark this dark
i felt the way along the stone the path grew narrow the ceiling fell and panic hit me the raw searing terror that old claw from the deep
and i was struggling to turn around but johnny said no we can do it just relax and next i knew the ceiling opened up and we were in a great room
standing up and raising our arms felt around us and felt nothing felt then a slight shudder in my knees the floor
dematerializing by degrees and then i floated free because there was nothing in space by which i might
check my motion johnny’s call to me sounded near then far then aged pitch bent and i struggling
to relax to remain still but panicked flailing in vacuo and my movement was of no consequence my terror
stirred not a ripple on the chthonic waters in the great well of darkness under the hermit’s shack
we could never crawl out of that cave
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