An American Papyrus: 25 Poems | Page 5

lightly frisbeeing out?Dishes of breakfasts?Catching glimpses of Colonel North's?Photos on the front sides?Of customers' papers and?Formulating judgements?Of rebel or martyr?From an appearance?And a few words that?Drifted in when the?Hands relaxed plates to table mats;?Farmers wishing the seeds?To suddenly open to be plucked up faster?So that they are not?The last ones laid in?By their hands;?Little "third-world" nations of people hoping?For the great debtor nation to continental-drift?To bankruptcy, painless and alone;
And nearly empty of thoughts--Herb's woman, Jeanie,?Behind the Ellison Building standing?With concrete drilling its stiffness?Through her soles.?There had been a time--?With face raised from her age-smelted pose?To the ever firm stories of that building--?That she would think of receiving?her paycheck so she could?Go to K-Mart and have something.?But now years on top of each other,?Uncountable to her,?She continues guiding?The few of the masses of cars?That turn into the lot?Where to park: in winters?Conscious of the visibility?Of her cold breathing,?And summers with the scents?Of greased telephone poles?And sights of light gleaming off?Car windows, she thinks?Of buying old junk from garage sales?For her yard sales, with the same prices,?So as to recall the sounds of human voices?Other than her own.

Brumfield
His job was a novitiate where there was no operator's?manual?With which to have faith in, and no rules?But to move with the dustmop pushed before him?Along the empty corridor, and then down a staircase?Where he could descend to more passive depths in?cleaning.
At home he would smell the odor of his bare feet?coming to him;?Would see the blue under his toe nail that looked like?marble;?And these would be dominant sensations?Though he would be vaguely aware of them.?Beneath his bended legs he would sweep his hand?To capture a fuller scent as his fingers would flick?To capture a fuller scent as his fingers would flick?His unshaven face. Then in his only room where the?bare mattress?Was lain along with his leather jacket?And the dirty underwear cuddled around a clean?toilet--?Where the Rosary hung on a wall?And the guitar leaned in a corner--?he would do his push-ups.
Most of those early mornings some train?Would pour its breath to the weeds?At the edge of the tracks, losing them?In sound and mist of a voice?Screaming out, alone,?Through the cold and the living.?His arms would tremble?With the body weakening, and then demobilized, to the?floor?Before the count of fifty.?Through the fogged condensation?Of the upper corners to a window?He would glance up at the train--?Each car imagined as the girlfriend, Cindy,?Or the seminary, which he never?Grasped or rejected and so?They slipped away;?Or his mother, who with cancer?Began to close herself off to him--?Grasping one of those trains appearing at the time?With the familiarity of two strangers?Who recognized each other's desire to remain such.

Oracion A Traves De Gasshole
(Patron Saint of Respiratory Therapy Workers)

Saturday. All the same:?A silvery grey?Thin and undistinguishable?From skies to parking lot?In exact shadow; and he finds his car.?The lid, laced in rust,?By the turn of the key,?Parts the grey as it pulls up;?The grocery bag is dropped into the hole;?And the ground beef slaps down on the floor?Of the trunk as if a second slaughter,?Its grounded nerves convulsing it?A couple of inches nearer the oil stain.?That meat, in body, that last moment?After consciousness has severed itself;?Skin peeling under the fur, hidden,?But not from the last hot beams ahead?Of emerging dusk, becoming crisp?And then soaking up the hot blood, as the trachea,?With the last of the air drawing in,?begins to fold its walls; and he could imagine it?Like he could imagine, from unexact memories,?The woman, last night?At the hospital, whom he began to like--?her body pulling cell by cell?Apart before he had a chance?To finish the rescue with the hose
Descending the nostril as a rope,?and then flushing out mucus.?He gives the ground beef an air-born sommersault to the?bag?And closes the lid that is connected to the vague?light bulb of the?trunk.?The Gasshole's reflection on the trunk lid?Is lank and curved; the appearance of his face?With its facial tip of the nose and its greased?Separation of hair like a wet muskrat in a metallic?reflection.?His face moving away, he sees an old Hispanic man?Who walks from the area of cars carrying two bags?Of groceries in an embrace that could be?For weighty children; he thinks "The senescent,?Carless, careless baws--turd! A campesino!,"?And he envisions himself as that: having to pull out?the thorns?That pierce through his tennis shoes as he shovels?scattered cacti leaves from out of the back?Of the pickup to his animals;?And living in the dry ravine surrounded by houses made?of wood?That had been patted loosly together like adobes,?beside?The families of the kiln workers?Whom with him eat