Cameos

Cameos

July, 1925

Lucille among the flamingos

is pregnant; is pained

because she cannot stoop to pluck

the plumpest green tomato

deep on the crusted vine.

Lucille considers

the flamingos, guarding in plastic cheer
the birdbath, parched

and therefore

deserted. In her womb

a dull—no, a husky ache.

If she picks it, Joe will come home

for breakfast tomorrow.

She will slice and dip it

in egg and cornmeal and fry

the tart and poison out.
Sobered by the aroma, he’ll show

for sure, and sit down

without a mumbling word.

Inconsiderate, then,

the vine that languishes

so!, and the bath sighing for water

while the diffident flamingos arrange

their torchsong tutus.

She alone is the blues. Pain drives her blank.

Lucille thinks: I can’t
even see my own feet.

Lucille lies down

between tomatoes

and the pole beans: heavenly shade.

From here everything looks

reptilian. The tomato plops

in her outstretched palm. Now

he’ll come, she thinks,

and it will be a son.

The birdbath hushes

behind a cloud
of canebreak and blossoming flame.

Night

Joe ain’t studying nobody.

He laughs his own sweet bourbon banner,

he makes it to work on time.

Late night, Joe retreats through

the straw-link-and-bauble curtain

and up to bed. Joe sleeps. Snores

gently as a child after a day of marbles.

Joe

knows somewhere

he had a father

who would have told him

how to act. Mama,

stout as a yellow turnip,

loved to bewail her wild good luck:

Blackfoot Injun, tall with

hair like a whip. Now

to do it

without him

is the problem. To walk into a day

and quietly absorb.

Joe takes after Mama.

Joe’s Mr. Magoo.

Joe

thinks, half

dreaming, if he ever finds

a place where he can think,

he’d stop clowning

and drinking and then that wife

of his would quit

sending prayers through the chimney.

Ah,

Lucille.

Those eyes, bright and bitter

as cherry bark, those

coltish shins, those thunderous hips!

No wonder he couldn’t leave

her be, no wonder whenever she began to show

he packed a fifth and split.

Joe

in funk and sorrow. Joe

in parkbench celibacy, in apostolic

factory rote, in guilt (the brief

astonishment of memory), in grief when

guilt turns monotonous.

He always knows when to go on home.

Birth

(So there you are at last—
a pip, a button in the grass.
The world’s begun
without you.

And no reception but
accumulated time.
Your face hidden but your name
shuddering on air!)

Lake Erie Skyline, 1930

He lunges, waits, then strikes again.
I’ll make them sweat, he thinks
and does a spider dance
as the fireflies shamble past.

The sky dims slowly; the sun
prefers to do its setting
on the other side of town.
This deeper blue smells
soft. The patterns in it
rearrange—he cups

another fly. (He likes to

shake them dizzy

in his hands, like dice, then

throw them out for luck.

They blink on helplessly

then stagger from the sidewalk

up and gone.)

Sometimes the night arrives

with liquor on its breath,

twice-rinsed and chemical.

Or hopped up, sparking

a nervous shimmy. Or

dangerously still, like his mother

standing next to the stove,

a Bible verse rousing her pursed lips.

He knows what gin is made from—
berries blue. He knows
that Jesus Saves. (His father
calls it Bitches’ Tea.)

And sisters—so many, their

names fantastic, myriad

as the points of a chandelier:

Corinna, Violet, Mary, Fay,

Suzanna, Kit, and Pearl. Each evening

when they came to check

his bed, he held his breath, and still

he smelled the camphor

and hair pomade. Saw

foreheads sleek, spitcurl

embellishing a cheek, lips

soft and lashes spiked

with vaseline. He waited

to be blessed.

           They were

Holy Vessels, Mother said:
each had to wait
her Turn. And he, somehow,
was part of the waiting, he was
the chain. He was, somehow,
his father.

The latest victim won’t
get up—just lies there
in the middle of the walk
illuminating the earth
regular as breath.
He stomps and grinds
his anger in. Pulls
his foot away and yellow
streaks beneath the sole—
eggyolk flame, lurid
smear of sin.

           Sisters,

laughing, take his shoes away
and bring them scraped
and ordinary
back. Idiots,
he thinks. No wonder
there’s so many of them.

But he can’t sleep.

All night beneath his bed,

the sun is out.

Depression Years

Pearl

can’t stop eating;

she wants to live!

Those professors

have it all backwards:

after fat came merriment,

simply because she was afraid to

face the world, its lukewarm

nonchalance

that generationwise had set
her people in a stupor of

religion and

gambling debts. (Sure, her

mother was an angel

but her daddy was

her man.)

Pearl laughs
a wet red laugh.

Pearl oozes

everywhere. When she was

young, she licked the walls free of chalk; she

ate dust for the minerals.

Now she just
enjoys, and excess
hardens on her like

a shell.
She sheens.

But oh, what

tiny feet! She tipples

down the stairs. She cracks a chair.

The largest baby shoe

is neat. Pearl laughs

when Papa jokes: Why don’t

you grow yourself some feet?

Her mother calls them

devil’s hooves.

Her brother

doesn’t

care.
He has

A Brain; he doesn’t notice.

She gives him of her own

ham hock, plies him with

sweetened yams. Unravels

ratted sweaters, reworks them

into socks. In the lean years

lines his shoes

with newspaper. (Main

thing is, you don’t

miss school.)

She tells him

it’s the latest style.

He never laughs.

He reads. He

shuts her out.

Pearl thinks

she’ll never marry—

though she’d

like to have

a child.

Homework

“The Negro and his song
are inseparable.
If his music is primitive
and if it has much that
is sensuous, this is simply
a part of giving
pleasure, a quality
appealing strongly
to the Negro’s
entire being. Indeed,
his love of rhythms
and melody, his
childish faith
in dreams . . .”
Shit,
he’ll take Science, most
Exacting Art.
In school when the teacher
makes him lead
the class in song,
he’ll cough straight through.
Better
columns of figures, the thing
dissected to the bone.
Better
the clear and incurious drip
of fluid from pipet
to reassuring beaker.
“The Negro claps his hands
spontaneously; his feet
move constantly in joyful
anticipation of the drum. . . .”
Most of all
he’d like to study
the composition of the stars.

Graduation, Grammar School

Joe
holds both
fists out, palms
down. Come on boy, guess.
The boy
hesitates. He knows
there’s nothing
in either one.
(The game:
Who offers the hand
first, man or woman?
Who first lowers
the eyes? If the hand
is not received, whose
price is reduced? And
what if both are men?
Or drunk? Or one is
white? The possibilities
are infinite.)
Joe
sees his son
flicker. Although
the air is not a glass,
watches as he puts his lips to
the brim—then turns away, bored.
He is not mine, this son
who ripens, quiet
poison on a
shelf.

Painting the Town

The mirror
in the hall is red.

Pearl

giggles: Pretty
as a freshly painted

barn. She tugs

a wrinkle down.

Since she’s discovered

men would rather drown

than nibble,

she does just

fine.

She’d like to show

her brother

what it is like to crawl

up the curved walls

of the earth, or

to be that earth—but

he has other plans.

Which is alright. Which is

As It Should Be.

Let the boy reach manhood

anyway he can.

Easter Sunday, 1940

A purity
in sacrifice, a blessedness

in shame. Lucille

in full regalia, clustered

violets and crucifix.

She shoos

a hornet

back to Purgatory,

rounds the corner, finds

her son in shirtsleeves staring

from the porch into the yard
as if it were the sea.

And suddenly

she doesn’t care.

(Joe, after all, came home.)

She feels as if

she’s on her back

again, and all around her

blushing thicket.

Nightwatch. The Son.

(Aggressively adult,
they keep their
lives, to which
I am a witness.

At the other end
I orbit, pinpricked
light. I watch.
I float and grieve.)