Salvation Blues
Page 16
or guidance counselors. Nearly all the other faculty
spin languidly as the hand of a clock
from classroom to teachers' lounge to water fountain.
Follow directions, yes, but in poor schools, students
may call off classes or manufacture holidays.
As compensation, rich schools get swimming pools
and German classes. Leadership wins scholarships.
Take Latin if you can. In math and science,
deem chapters skipped essential. Some things
you can't forget. They are so right. Our principal's
name was Payne, a dapper man we remember
for his constant generosity, who retired suddenly,
moved to Birmingham, and opened a magic shop.
VISION OF THE END OF THE WORLD IN THE VALDOSTA HOLIDAY INN
About the netherworld, I would rather live in Manhattan,
Kansas, and belong to the garden club,
except for Fiona Hubbard and Mrs. John Widman III,
who are setting up for a PowerPoint presentation
on November's topic: the care and nourishment
of cacti in the Great Plains. In the paper today
215 dead in Lagos at a beauty pageant riot,
and last night on C-Span, Salman Rushdie held forth
eloquently before I switched to another channel,
and lo, there appeared Louis Farrakhan saying
governments might have power, but his God
would bring earthquakes, tornadoes, and hurricanes.
When he said it, a fuse lit in his eyes, his voice shook,
and those big bodyguards drew in tight around him.
About the netherworld, some believe it is here now,
but Fiona Hubbard, in a cashmere cardigan
and tweed riding britches, is double-clicking on an image
of the desert rose, and Mrs. John Widman III
is saying one might be surprised how easily
it can be cultivated, even here in Manhattan,
where everyone who thinks she is not dead wants to retire
to Albuquerque or Santa Fe. Some Cite
the days of sunshine, others miscellaneous allergies.
Salman Rushdie is a master. When it comes time
to answer, he has a way of turning
the spiteful questions around. Louis Farrakhan
reminds one of a wonderful little boy.
He can be hilarious with his understated apocalyptic
sexual innuendoes, and one can only admire
his capacity, in the length of one breath,
to segue from the laugh to righteous indignation.
As one watches first one, then the other,
one wishes that they could agree on a common text,
maybe the troops gathering in the desert
for the twenty-first century's first world war,
or perhaps it would be Fiona Hubbard's
and Mrs. John Widman Ill's PowerPoint presentation
on the care and nourishment of cacti in the Great Plains.
OLYMPIAD
Between time and place
came this vivid consciousness
of things unalterable
that some, the lucky or
talented, might make
out of the materials at hand
in such a way that
they would last and be seen.
Others thought to work
not with mortar and stone
but with unspeakable cruelty
and human lives: it seemed
so obvious to these fate
might be impressed or
abetted only by slaughter.
No one need mention them—
they compete in all the books.
With their names we greet
and pacify the children.
The same games for centuries—
but they are not gods, not yet-
War artists, revolutionaries,
deathmongers, great men—
The first to become a god wins.
RAIN ON TIN
If I ever get over the bodies of women, I am going to think of the rain,
of waiting under the eaves of an old house
at that moment
when it takes a form like fog.
It makes the mountain vanish.
Then the smell of rain, which is the smell of the earth a plow turns up,
only condensed and refined.
Almost fifty years since thunder rolled
and the nerves woke like secret agents under the skin.
Brazil is where I wanted to live.
The border is not far from here.
Lonely and grateful would be my way to end,
and something for the pain please,
a little purity to sand the rough edges,
a slow downpour from the Dark Ages,
a drizzle from the Pleistocene.
As I dream of the rain's long body,
I will eliminate from mind all the qualities that rain deletes
and then I will be primed to study rain's power,
the first drops lightly hallowing,
but now and again a great gallop of the horse of rain
or an explosion of orange-green light.
A simple radiance, it requires no discipline.
Before I knew women, I knew the lonely pleasures of rain.
The mist and then the clearing.
I will listen where the lightning thrills the rooster up a willow,
and my whole life flowing
until I have no choice, only the rain,
and I step into it.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Poems in this book first appeared or were reprinted in the following publications, sometimes in slightly different versions, The American Poetry Review: "Pastoral for Derrida," "At the Miracle Mall." The Atlantic Monthly: "For the Eating of Swine," "The Mosquito," "One of the Citizens," "Mule," "Beautiful Child," "On Pickiness," "TV" "Plea for Forgiveness," "Channel," "Sovereign Joy." Blackbird: "The Boomers Take the Field," "Common-Law Kundalini," "The State-Line Stripper." The Black Warrior Review: "Don't Worry," "The End of Communism," "Sentience," "A Ride with the Commander." Crazyhorse: "Dirty Blues." Five Points: "The Assault on the Fields," "Blessed Assurance," "Doing Laundry," "Sacrament for my Penis," "Ten Sighs from a Sabbatical," "Fears," "Rain on Tin." The Georgia Review: "Transparent Gestures" (originally published, as "Caught"), "Every Day There Are New Memos," "Nell," "Moses," "Avuncular," "Winton and Mildred," "My Father's Big Idea," "The Low- Down-Sorry Right-Wing Blues." Grand Street: "Shame the Monsters." Gulf Coast: "Pussy," "The Kitchen Gods." The Kenyon Review: "A Blasphemy," "Elegy for the Southern Drawl," "Not See Again," "My Monastery," "Olympiad," "The Attitude." The Michigan Quarterly Review: "Contempt" The Missouri Review: "Winter Retreat: Homage to Martin Luther King, Jr." New England Review: "The First Birth," "I Find Joy in the Cemetery Trees," "Apocalyptic Narrative," "Grand Projection," "Thirty-one Flavors of Houses." New Virginia Review: "On the Bearing of Waitresses." 100 American Poets Against the War: "My Monastery." Poetry: "For Those Who Miss the Important Parts," "Carpe Diem," "Life of Sundays," "Mortal Sorrows," "The Obsolescence of Thou," "The Poetry Reading," "Refusing to Baptize a Son." The Poetry Miscellany: "Sweep." Poetry Northwest: "Remembering Fire," "A History of Speech," "The Weepers," "First Fraudulent Muse." Quarterly West: "Sex." River Styx: "Elves," "High School," "Thanksgiving in the Late Fifties," "On Torture " Shenandoah: "Ground Sense," "A Whisper Fight in the Peck Funeral Home," "The United States," "Sitting with Others." Solo: "Postmodern Christians," "Salvation Blues." The Southern Review: "In the Spirit of Limuel Hardin," "The Sorrow Pageant" Swallow's tale: "Decadence," "The Laundromat at the Bay Station." Third Coast: "Lower- Middle-Class White Southern Male." The Virginia Quarterly Review: "Thoreau," "Courtship," "The Language of Love," "Vision of the End of the World in the Valdosta Holiday Inn."
Reprints: Alabama Poets: "T
he First Birth," "Remembering Fire." Are You Experienced? Baby Boom Poets at Midlife: "Refusing to Baptize a Son." The Best American Poetry (1989,1990,1993,1994,2000, 2003): "Every Day There Are New Memos," "On the Bearing of Waitresses," "Grand Projection," "Contempt," "Plea for Forgiveness," "Ten Sighs for a Sabbatical." Buck & Wing: Southern Poetry at 2000: "The First Birth," "Ground Sense," "Remembering Fire." First Ligfit: Mother to Son Poems: "Caught" Handspun of Red Earth: An Anthology of American Farm Poems: "The First Birth," "For the Eating of Swine." Illinois Voices: An Anthology of twentieth-Century Poetry: "TV" "Mortal Sorrows," "A Blasphemy," "The End of Communism," "Nell." Invited Guest: twentieth-Century Southern Poetry: "Remembering Fire," "One of the Citizens." The Made thing: "Sweep," "The Mosquito," "The First Birth." The Morrow Anthology of Younger Poets: "Remembering Fire," "Thoreau," "The Mosquito," "The First Birth." New American Poets of the '90s: "Mule," "Caught," "The Weepers." Poetry: A HarperCollins Pocket Anthology: "Winter Retreat: Homage to Martin Luther King, Jr." Poets of the New Century: "Sacrament for My Penis." The Pushcart Prize IX: "A History of Speech." Real things: An Anthology of Popular Culture in American Poetry: "TV," "On the Bearing of Waitresses." Sixty Years of American Poetry: "Nell." Stand Up Poetry: "Sweep." Walk on the Wild Side: Urban American Poetry Since 1975: "Romance of the Poor," "Progress Alley." Western Wind: "A Blasphemy." What Will Suffice: "The Bridge." Writing Poems: "Nihilist Time."