by Adam Sol
Is that me?
In the Jeremiah mind the fields of Upper Sandusky are as desperate as the flophouses of Brooklyn, and he is on his way to the city to seek clues and offer comfort and admonishment.
In the Jeremiah mind the people will shout with him in the end.
HITCHING A RIDE OUT OF CALIFORNIA, PA
If not for the moon which grows fainter each night,
the Taco Bell would be the only light for miles.
Who will stop for me, here on this terrible gravel?
Who will be my comfort and my keep?
I have counted six vans with their familiar passengers
blasting exhaust on their way toward more fluorescent light.
They are all destined for dinner,
and I for a mouthful of soot.
Who will take me if I raise my shoulder to the road?
Who will remember the promises on the sign outside of town:
Welcome to California.
Well, come. For this battered brain basket, California has been
a wretched bench, a lonely layover, a wash.
Even the secretaries smoking menthols outside the Third Fifth Bank
dismissed my heartbreak.
They know more about the end of the world
than the ends of their evenings.
Who will take me from this place
and speak casually in the dashboard corona?
Who will let me climb into her flatbed?
I have washed my knees of the blood I lost from falling in the river,
but am still stranded and far from my destination.
SWEDISH IMMIGRANT CARL ERIC WICKMAN BEGAN TRANSPORTING MINERS FROM HIBBING TO ALICE, MN, IN 1914
Credit is a beautiful thing.
Uncle Visa paid our way
from State College
to New York. I was already
in debt, so who cared about
three hundred more?
I was feeling a bit giddy,
and after I threw our bags
onto the bus
I treated us to a gorgeous
dinner at Ponderosa —
steak, potato,
crazed bounty of the salad bar.
They even served us little
bowls of ice cream.
Jeremiah assumed that I
was trying to fortify
us for the trip,
and for whatever would come next.
He wasn’t far off, although
there was a bit
of the relief of the condemned
in my self-destructive splurge.
In any case
Jeremiah expressed his thanks
by telling me about Ben,
his son who died.
Since Pittsburgh I had been trying
to think of a way to ask
about his son —
I’d try to refer to the time
before he started preaching,
but he’d always
turn it back to something about
the way Mt. Orab was sure
to disappear
now that the people had traded
their goodly inheritance
for chocolate sauce.
He described the boy in a voice
I had never heard before —
almost toneless.
In truth he sounded like any
good Midwestern kid to me —
clean, plain, decent,
never without a baseball cap,
drank beer sometimes, loved his car.
A bit boring.
But the way J spoke about him —
well, I guess it’s how all men
talk about sons,
except that no men talk like him.
Still, for that meal he was just
a normal man
trying to understand a loss
that was simply beyond his
capacity.
He called him, “My olive orchard,”
and as I ushered him back
to the station
I promised myself I wouldn’t
abandon him, at least till
I could be sure
he had someone else to care for.
I didn’t keep that promise,
not remotely.
PONDEROSA CONFESSION
There were fields, and there were folds in the fields.
There were geometric adventures and theoretical flowers.
The boy was born broken from the womb
of our Chevrolet. Said, Don’t tell Dad,
then slipped. Into.
The folds of his coat, far off in the flax,
hid a flask half full of coffee. I nearly laughed
to taste it, still warm in the morning.
I have seen my fill of suffering — slash-backed terriers
and broken-cheeked wives, men watching their own deaths
approach up a creaky escalator. I have watched a cat-
ravaged field mouse convulsing in confusion: why can’t I run?
But why should I be born to labor and sorrow
in this land of rusted barnyards and collapsed school buses
if all my hopes would skid across the asphalt to bury themselves
in rows not yet in bloom? Yea, the jackals
cackle on my stoop. You have not seen the worst,
they tell me. If this is so,
then how can I be silent?
How can I not shout the only way I know how?
VILLANELLE FOR JEREMIAH’S SON
My only son had a scar on his cheek
in the shape of a Nike swoosh.
I am wretched. I will not be consoled.
He earned it on his Norco mountain bike
in a state which has no mountains.
It was Ohio slate that marked his cheek.
From the glowing porch I watched him flip
over the handlebars onto his face.
He was furious. He would not be consoled.
His death, too, was crammed with brands.
Logos on his T-shirt, hat, Camaro —
peeled bottles in the trunk lying cheek to cheek.
Even the hospital had its sympathetic logo
that gazed warmly in the lobby’s light.
I paced awry. I would not be consoled.
Their words were shorthand for failure.
It was the “nothing we could do.”
I identified him by the scar on his cheek.
I gave his eyes to Iowa, his kidney
to an angry diabetic from Duluth.
She didn’t want it. She would not be consoled.
At the home, I stayed until they all were gone.
The boys wore their father’s suits,
and I kissed them on their oily vibrant cheeks.
I have lost my olive harvest.
I have lost my magic touch.
My only son had a scar on his cheek.
I am empty. I will not be consoled.
JEREMIAH, PA
Hear me while I call out my affliction
up in the smelly belly of this Greyhound Express.
I am hunched over a lunch
of cold chicken fingers,
and the eight hours to the city are laid out before me
like a long day’s work cutting stone.
Hear me,
you varsity girls kneeling on your seats:
your hiphop slang won’t save you from the army jackets
and oily slacks in back!
Listen you driver, strung out
from last night’s haul from Moab! And you, old woman,
with phantasmal hair beneath your shawl.
Hear the voice of an old caterer
who has buried his share of sons.
The hills are tired of wearing mud
the color of an old sock.
Yea, the wind
whistles warnings through the cracked windshield,
and we are pilgrims throug
h a ravaged land.
Our eyes will find no comfort here.
Buried are the bones
of those who broke the first trails
from the Alleghenies, and forgotten their sons
who built shelters of pine bark. Indeed we must be
the last of the righteous.
It is for our sake the world still spins.
Therefore must we rake
our fingers across the vinyl seats, my friends,
and readjust the rearview mirrors.
Let us align
the tires and cancel our plans for the afternoon.
For though our eyes burn
with grimy soot from the road,
we shall be renewed as in the days of old.
Listen to the diesel engine coughing a tune for our new song.
PAY WHEN BOARDING
The bus took us as far as Wilkes-Barre
before they tossed us off for being too
disruptive. As if riding a Greyhound
from State College to New York requires some
contemplation, quiet, and solitude,
despite the gaseous groan of the engine
and the sad loneliness of everyone
on board — grandmothers on a last visit
to their sisters’ homes, hungover students,
and rank vagabonds chasing one last ace.
Maybe it was the weather, but we all,
even Jeremiah, felt bleak and wet.
Somewhere around Lewisburg I climbed back
and took a tired piss, weaving with the road
and the sickly blue-green slosh in the bowl.
It occurred to me, as I stared down there,
that this man needs more help than I can give,
and that much more may be too much for me.
J seemed agitated, imagining
what would happen to him in the city.
His knee bobbed and he gnawed his cuticles.
When had he last been to New York City?
Had he ever? In a place filled throat-high
with prophets, seers, and half-baked crazy-men,
could anyone differentiate J
from the usual street quacks and wackos?
Could the people recognize his wisdom?
Now, when it wouldn’t be in some nameless
two-bit decimated Midwestern town
but in the center of the universe,
where the world happened, where
people you didn’t know could kill, arrest,
or anoint you.
And I wasn’t ready.
The truth is I goaded him into his
Greyhound harangue. First I asked him about
the mining towns here in Pennsylvania,
about the stripped woodlands and poisoned streams,
the cowed company towns and strike-breakers.
At first he answered me like a tired prof —
“Well, you see, my boy . . .” But as soon as I
pointed out a sign for an old dry goods
store that had been renovated into
a Chili’s, something clicked. I knew it would.
He stood in his seat, back to the window,
to survey the riders with their blank stares,
calloused and suspicious.
I just wanted
a few more days with the Jeremiah
I believed, before we made it to town
and I cut myself loose.
PSALM OF SCRANTON
And a woman there served me eggs.
Over hard. Oil
crackling on the decimated white. No
shoes no shirt and yet
she served me. Yea,
Grace still struggles on this earth,
in her gray apron.
Woman of vigor!
Woman of lonely hills! Cracked
cuticles and a slipped disk will not be the sum
of your inheritance! Even now,
lined along the noose of highways that surround this city,
mile markers are counting out our longings,
tallying our deeds and misdeeds,
and for the righteous there will be a long rest in Bermuda,
a new couch, another son. I declare it
who am the voice of justice.
I have scoured out my house with chalk.
Dear woman,
remove your hair net and your tarnished trinkets.
Slough off your loss and chewing gum.
Tomorrow I turn my feet to that great
city by the waters, but tonight I may yet bathe and sleep.
JEREMIAH DEFACES A ROADSIDE SHRINE
J buttonholes a bored local at a truckstop trading post where air-freshening cardboard cutouts hang from hooks next to other ineffective icons, and crabby clerks distribute telephone change to wind-fried drivers in oil-stained overalls. Calls himself Alter. He’s chewing a jerk. What ho! calls J. Before I met you I knew your uncle. Alter says he’s built a shrine of apple cores beside the creek, and J may worship there if he wears trousers. So. J hefts his sack and follows past the guard rail and sound barriers, over a swarm of revolutionary gravestones, and past flax fields drained of ambition. Alter hikes with a hitch in one hip, and at a stone wall he’s so winded he can only point with his stick to a splotch of trees between the knees of two opposing hills. J leaves him wheezing. Down the slope a blackbird launches invectives. There, under a sprawling pine, along with a broken cup and assorted needles, is the Sanctuary, a pyramid of browned, flea-frittered Golden Delicious, piled high as a hip. O You and Your fancy handiwork, Old Decorator. J cracks a can and pours soup around the space as libation. Chipmunks chatter in the branches, and J declares a day for decay and concentration. Alter, your shrine is the holiest construction site in Pennsylvania. May your children grow large in the contemplation of its mystery and promise.
JEREMIAH AT BEIS T’FILLAH OF TEANECK
Here is the house where the men and women
divide themselves
so that the women may be more brave, and the men
more generous.
Hello, good my people! Have you seen the bridge
to desolation?
Have you clutched your skull with its inner noise
and broken
your registers, reaching for the light? Or have you
slandered in suits,
and studied Mishnah while your sons coughed and worried?
Woe unto thee, o my auditors! Woe upon your contracts
and calculators!
Learn your texts and sing them! Do and then hear,
o my menschen!
Arise now, arise and march with me
to the island of iniquity.
We’ll each take a corner and shout out to the streetlights.
We’ll split the pavement with our eloquence and tribulations.
Who can resist us? Who can deflect our fear and fire?
Behold we will bury the venial in verbiage. They will must
be moved.
And when all the corners are covered and converted,
then may we disperse
back to our happy hamlets and developments —
we’ll dismantle our gates
and dismember our security systems. We’ll smash
our modems with vigor and exaltation.
We will be fresh from our convention. We will
preach and prove.
Yea, march with me, my ancient brothers! Show me
you know what I mean!
Be not doctors and brokers and salesmen. Be priests.
Be Nazarenes.
JEREMIAH’S BLUES ON THE GW BRIDGE
This end of the Sound is a river, this end of my mind one hair,
This end of the Sound is a river, this end of my mind one hair,
My torn tongue’s tired of teaching, and I’m only halfway there.
O decrepit borough, splayed out like a skinned skunk,
O decrepit borough, splay
ed and rank like a skinned skunk,
This leg of your great city is lined with grime and junk.
My people breathe exhaustion, they don’t fight it anymore,
Lord, my people breathe exhaustion, they don’t fight it anymore,
Clouds ripe from their desires, smoke from forgotten doors.
I’ve got no email EZPass to speed me safe to Queens,
I’ve got no email EZPass to speed me safe to Queens,
I’ve just got words and rhythm, and the prophecies I’ve seen.
I’ve seen the passing tankers, with their loads of oil and grease,
I’ve seen the passing tankers, with their loads of oil and grease,
They push upriver pendulous, then descend into dis-ease.
Hey you toll booth operators, stranded like broken-soled shoes,
Hey you toll booth operators, stranded at your posts like shoes,
Go home to your plaid couches, let the diesel trucks blast through.
Let them carry their convictions upstate where they belong,
Let them carry their convictions upstate where they belong,
All they’ve left behind are napkins, and invoices they tallied wrong.
Here come some good policemen to pull me off the ledge,
Here come some well-trained, hard-worked, chapped lip,
honest poor policemen, here to pull me off the ledge,
What they’ll get for their good intentions is an earful of my rage.
MANHATTANVILLE EXPANSION RAISES QUESTIONS ABOUT AESTHETICS
I’d forgotten Manhattan has hills,
and willfully ignorant oak trees.