Fountain Street

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Title: Fountain Street
Author: Jazno Francoeur
Editor: Rush and Steven McElveen Rankin
Release Date: January 1, 2007 [eBook #20240]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FOUNTAIN STREET***
Copyright (C) 2000 by Jazno Francoeur, with Robert L. Francoeur. All rights reserved.
Fountain Street
by Jazno Francoeur?commentary by Robert L. Francoeur
edited by Rush Rankin and Steven McElveen
?2000 by Jazno Francoeur, with Robert L. Francoeur. All rights reserved.
Published by Nettle Media, P.O. Box 536583, Orlando, FL 32803
ISBN 0967303001
Library of Congress Card Number: 00-190117
Every effective poem has to maintain a state?of tension between assertion and humility, the?mundane and the grand, the specific and the general,?the explicit and the suggestive.
? Rush Rankin
Contents
Part One
home?Fountain Street?cathexis?femme inspiratrice?the inevitable?desire?infidelity?1974?the spell?Cherryvale?ice breaking?Leadville?grandfather?oracle
Part Two
the beginning of a scene?Locust Street?Appalachia?visitation?understanding the ancients?palimpsest
Part Three
sympathetic magic?St. Catherine's head?chant?epiphany?the first coming?ipsissima verba?Camille Paglia?O felix culpa
Part Four
bodies?the kiss?touch?lament in three colors?light?prediction?twelve hours in the future?surrender?one metaphor
Part One
Home
Our life was an accident, the flames were conjured?by an indifferent couple.
So much time has passed, their union?dissipated with the dumb carcass of our home.
This house has been all of our housesD?our parents colluded with emptiness to conceal this fact.
We live from cairn to cairn, burning refugee hearts,?each mistake receding in the rear-view mirror,
each incipient disaster breaking the night?like headlights falling on a new city.
Fountain Street
there is a large hand unfolding?above me, discreetly
it conceals a black man?surrounded by a thin tincture of green?like the moon eclipsing the sun
I am to give obeisance to him?and his firm brothers lurking in the gardenDD?they strip me of my childhood casually?with the relative calm of a standard play,?the rising action, apex, and d?nouementDD
in the formation of sleepwalkers?they withdraw silently into the past
commentary:
no one can explain why they came?to shape the hidden aquifers of your life,?but it is here, on Fountain Street,?where you first stepped out of the unseen
cathexis
upstairs, my uncle relived his boyhood,?looking from the garret window?to the tree he had been tied to?and into the corners of the yard?where his impulses formed
he drove us to the pond?by the frozen reservoirDD?my brother became pallid?as animals do when divining pain,?and we clambered out of the cab toward him
we undressed in a snowbank?waiting for him to break the ice--?he circled around, motioning to me
I conjoined with his hammer?poised over the immutable sheen,?though I was only a boy?and could barely anticipate?the future blows of initiation and affection
commentary:
affection between men?has always been?circumscribed by pain
here, in the balance?between love and brutality?lies the origin of sport,?the first act?of civilization
femme inspiratrice
she waited under the stairs?in the basement where I learned?to feel and see without the advantages of light
she held me tightly to the ground and I complied?with the conspicuous duties?she created for me
I drifted to her daily, down the damp steps?and found a love in her remorse?that I could not find in myself
there she lay in the old air, suspended?in the dark webs under the stairs?whispering to me?when I slept, and pleasing me
the inevitable
a man runs in the rain?toward this small house
the window clouds up from his breath?even though he is a mile away
his silhouette begins to blot out the moon,?beads of water race down the glass
he will exact something from me, I can tell?as he slips down the hill, muscles tensed
desire
it begins in childhood?with an awkward moment?behind the house?then shatters outward, exploding?into adulthood
here one collects fragments?and reconstructs the face?of the large boy who touched you?but the eyes are always missingDD?only the lips remain,?directing you downward
infidelity
a large dog fills up the backyard,?the children are afraid?to leave the house
each night, the dog inhales?and exhales,?its muscles contract against the walls
the dog's warm breath fills the attic?as its teeth push slowly?through the ceiling
the room dims,?the lining of its black lips?slides gradually over the windows
1974
I.
in the attic, a plank extended?between the crossbeams?over the living room ceiling?to the room built by your father
women followed him there?then departed hours later?down the ladder recessed into the wall
one night his leg?burst through the ceiling?then snaked back through the hole
II.
your mother is busy?in the next room?with her new lover
you watch the changing colors?of your father's injury?as he sleeps on the couch
the spell
my mother used to compel me?with her distance?it was a diffident spell?that made me imagine?we were connected
but the vagaries of haunted girls?look unhealthy in women?and harden into caricature?in old age
Cherryvale
I place my ear?against the glass
the cicadas are chirring,?there is a light breeze
a dust cloud forms on the horizon?lit up by headlights
the engine?rumbles closer
gravel knocks against the underbelly,?wheels turn toward my