The Aureole
(for E)


I stop my hand midair.

If I touch her there everything about me will be true.
The New World discovered without pick or ax.

I will be what Brenda Jones was stoned for in 1969.
I saw it as a girl but didn’t know I was taking in myself.

My hand remembers, treading the watery room,
just behind the rose-veiled eyes of memory.

Alone in the yard tucked beneath the hood of her car,
lucky clover all about her feet, green tea-sweet necklace
for her mud-pie crusty work boots.

She fends off their spit & words with silent two-handed
twists & turns of her socket wrench. A hurl of sticks &
stones and only me to whisper for her, from sidewalk far,

break my bones. A grown woman in grease-pocket overalls
inside her own sexy transmission despite the crowding of
hurled red hots. Beneath the hood of her candy-apple Camaro:

souped, shiny, low to the ground.

The stars over the Atlantic are dangling
salt crystals. The room at the Seashell Inn is
$20 a night; special winter off-season rate.
No one else here but us and the night clerk,
five floors below, alone with his cherished
stack of Spiderman. My lips are red snails
in a primal search for every constellation
hiding in the sky of your body. My hand
waits for permission, for my life to agree
to be changed, forever. Can Captain Night
Clerk hear my fingers tambourining you
there on the moon? Won’t he soon climb
the stairs and bam! on the hood of this car?
You are a woman with film reels for eyes.
Years of long talking have brought us to the
land of the body. Our skin is one endless
prayer bead of brown. If my hand ever lands,
I will fly past dreaming Australian Aborigines.
The old claw hammer and monkey wrench
that flew at Brenda Jones will fly across the
yard of ocean at me. A grease rag will be
thrust into my painter’s pants against my
will. I will never be able to wash or peel
any of this away. Before the night is over
someone I do not know will want the keys
to my ’55 silver Thunderbird. He will chase
me down the street. A gaggle of spooked
hens will fly up in my grandmother’s yard,
never to lay another egg, just as I am jump-
ed, kneed, pulled finally to the high ground
of sweet clover.

Nikky Finney
From Head Off & Split

Ok...a little hard to post this, sitting in my beautiful house, in this room which contains the litter box, trying to get into some music and such just after little kitty kitty decided to make such a stink. Yikes! Gotta get outta here! Of course, that is the reason. What other reason could there be? Same as it ever was. Same Same Same as it ever was.

One more Black Keys for now. More to come.

Made the boring drive on the BG Pkwy go by faster...

Lexington Listen Up

Just got back from Lexington. Went to hear Nikky Finney read
at Morris Book Shop. I have heard her read before--about 8
yrs ago, here. Now, she's the National Book Award for poetry
winner, and it is exciting to see how her work has progressed,
how humble she remains and excited about poetry, how surprised
she was by the numbers of people who came to hear her read.

To make the drive go by faster, I listened to the CDs my friend,
Josh, gave me for Christmas. And the Tom Waits my son gave
me. Going to have to post some Black Keys first. Fell in love
with them. My youngest son has been listening to them for some
time, but I had not listened to them until this weekend.

Lonely Boy, I think, will be first selection.

"I was both scattered and stymied, surrounded by unfinished songs and abandoned poems. I would go as far as I could and hit a wall, my own imagined limitations. And then I met a fellow who gave me his secret, and it was pretty simple. When you hit a wall, just kick it in." Patti Smith, from Just Kids

"I drank because I wanted to drown my sorrows, but now the damned things have learned to swim." Frida Kahlo

Happy Trails, Etta.

Thanks
by W. S. Merwin


Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water thanking it
smiling by the windows looking out
in our directions

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks we are saying thank you
in the faces of the officials and the rich
and of all who will never change
we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us
our lost feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is

From the new Tom Waits vinyl. Very good stuff. A shout out to some Raised Right Men!