In the camp where we all live
The fire flickers fast
The flies swarm in and eat our dreams
And the water never lasts.
On summer nights the old man
told stories,
we never remembered,
and tapered hours
over his pipe puffing
cherry smoke that danced to
Bev's guitar.
Babies rolled from between her legs
on the grass with ours
And the damp dark promised to
tell the secret of how or why,
if not that night,
we'd laugh enough
the next
for sure.
String beans snapped
under hardened hands and watched
nonlooking, drive by-standers,
who earned more
than their keep
and Naught saw us,
Nor laid aside the tracks.
But, like the evening momma wailed
pleated their noses while
they snuffed our noise.
No winter has brought a day as cold
As this dead child in my arms.
A sea of scalding tears would not thaw
That part of my spirit frozen and gone
With his last breath.
The child you thought I shouldn't want
lips fell blue before he ever laughed.
Tiny fingers shuddered in my hand for minutes
while you dismissed
his unbecoming life
a blessing in disguise.
Years later and from now on
The whisper weight of his stillness bears on
these muscles and
torn flesh still stings from being
stolen from my arms
carved from the cradle in my breast.
When the g-string broke on Bev's guitar
So did she.
A half-written letter
to her husband
in prison
a half-bottle of rot gut,
and half the pills that
shouldn't have been enough
were next to her
next to her babies
next to the new-born
maggots in the urine in the crib.
At the Mayflower honky-tonk
after the wake,
Catfish frying up
the sweet-juices of the Mississippi
pulled our tongues
stung by Jim Beam
over greasy faces napping
in gangling wooden booths,
to the dance floor,
where nickels from nowhere
spilled more Hank.
Gramma peddled mamma,
into a fox trot;
pumping their knees over
their ears they forced
the blues to giggle at their inside joke.
Then Uncle Bunker
yodeled "The Tennessee
Waltz"
again,
to a now
diminished downbeat of belly-aches,
not because
he'd actually been to Tennessee
but by knowing that
the dress he'd bought Bev
to be buried in would've made
her smile,
so could we.
In the camp where we all live
The fire flickers fast
The flies swarm in and eat our dreams
And the water never lasts
Fran, Bev's oldest,
was
put with proper folk
And they believed them when
they found the cum
of the family dog
running down her leg
zippered with blood
because she was
sex-crazed.
Though Frannie said they'd
snickered and clapped
because she'd yelped
the whole time
just like the dog.
They locked her away
where her kind belonged
which she said was okay
because after that nobody'd
want her
again.
I wanted her
again.
Growing what I
prayed to God
would be breasts,
Gramma'd been right
to snort,
"If you don't quit
gawkin' at yer titties,
yer gonna git yer ass
in trouble."
Frannie'd already plucked
that bud, and the sap
had dripped into
our every crack and bucked us to
other-places.
The river
had escaped.
Not as young and less naive,
we outwitted Hope.
Running, running
across and away
from the crew-cutted courtyard
of the nut-house,
we made only the promises
we knew we could not keep.
But still, when stilled, we
let our braided
fingers trace them on each other's
palms years later, and still later
when first she, then I
would sing.
No winter has brought a day as cold
As this dead child in my arms.
A sea of scalding tears would not thaw
That part of my spirit frozen and gone
With her last breath.
The child you thought I shouldn't want
lips fell blue before she ever laughed.
Tiny fingers shuddered in my hand for minutes
while you dismissed
her unbecoming life
a blessing in disguise.
Years later and from now on
The whisper weight of her stillness bears on
these muscles and
torn flesh still stings from being
stolen from my arms
carved from the cradle in my breast.
Since, we'd been swindled
from burying the babies
next to Gramma,
and the Mayflower
had gone belly-up,
we sipped the old man's stories
we couldn't remember in a parking lot
straight from the bottle.
Repacking the pipe came easier
than the smoke from our noses
teaming up with the whiskey
and spraying chortles down our chins,
when
we realized that we finally
owned some land.
Frannie's numbed tongue spoiled
the joke
and slopped up my chin
into a soiled, so-long kiss.
We poured the rest
of that-day's bottle
down a non-looker's gas tank.
Caked on our nerves,
the ballad faded
for now,
for them,
and for sure.
In the camp where we all live
The fire flickers fast
The flies swarm in and eat our dreams
And the water never lasts.
