Album — A Runthru | The Poetry Foundation

I look in that one kind of dwindled. And in this,

look up, a truncheon in my fist, tin pot

on my head, the war. My father, I’m looking at, is my

age then and thin, his pants streak to the ground,

shadows of rosevines . . . His father sits beneath

a cat. Here the shadow has more flavor than my

trains, elbows on livingroom floor, bangs that

curl, opera broadcast, The Surreptitious Adventures of

Nightstick. I lie in the wind of the sun and hear

toots and smell aluminium smoke. The tiny oval

of my mother’s youth in back and the rest is dark.

Sundays, the floor was black. At the beach, here

I’m a nest of seaweed, an earlier portrait of

surrealists I saw later, a stem of grey what

rises from my scalp. My hair is peaked in brine.

And this here hat, dark green fedora over same green

corduroy suit for a trip to the nation’s capitol,

how far askance I’ve been since and never another

hat. Cromium rods, the hand in the guide’s pocket

seems far removed. Blurry shoes on sandstone steps,

double and over exposed. Then in this one the SECRET

points to my head, shaved, and emblem, OPEN, striped

in “pirate” T-shirt and HERE IT IS. My elbow bent,

upright this time, behind a pole. I had yet to

enter at this snap the cavern beneath my sneakers.

To the right my soles protrude from beneath a boulder,

for I had trapped my mother and she asked Why.

Taken. Given. Flashlight brighter than my face,

another grotto, where the ball of twine, indirection,

gave out but we never got very far in, Connecticut.

I swim out of another cave in a further frame, cramped

gaze of sunlit days, apparel forgot. Later I reel

in a yell as my cousin takes a bite from my shank

beneath ranchhouse breezy curtains of Marion. On a trudge up

from the gasoline rockpit in the gaze of Judy Lamb,

she carries my pack, my jeans rolled as I step on

a pipe. Estwing in hand and svelte as only youthful can.

Most of those rocks remain and she married a so-so

clarinetist. My greygreen zipper jacket leans against

a concrete teepee, my father looking bullchested stands

before. Perhaps we had just argued. Central Park cement

steps of pigeons, the snow removed. Overexposed

whiteshirt at the drums, stick fingers ride cymbal

at the camera raised, livingroom Brenton with orange

& black “sea” wallpaper and orange&black tubs. I wore

a wristwatch then and never again, drumtime hitching

me past it. I graduate from highschool in white dinner

jacket and diploma and frown, too many hot shadows

back of the garage. Must roll up the bedroll with

skinny arms and lam for the caves. Dave & A. Bell by

the Ford Company Squire first time allowed alone to tool

Bleak grass scapes of Knox farm. Rope down a crack,

mosquitoes and Koolade, sun dapple leaf moss sandwiches, ache.

Then in this group more drums on the roof, the gravel

and the flat, a cover attempt for no album even thought.

I tap and step in the dim known street. Lean on a

chimney to inhabit the sky, deep with drops. Here

I’m pressed on a wall of Tennessee limes, stones-throw

from mouth of the underground we camped in. Too many

thoughts, elide. Then lie on a beach in a doughnut

pattern shirt with a stick, a pipe?, in my mouth as my

cousin grins shiny beyond. Truro, also waiting for the

caves. With the poets then I’m fat and the driveway is

dark, the clapboards all white in a day of all talk.

This then all ends in color, my red bandana and shirt out

on Devil’s Pulpit, open hand addressed to the grey

where Hawthorne and Melville now view of a highschool.

While the water still spills, and the cat squints at leaves

blown, my father wears Brahms, families lean in on one

for a group shot, and the rock remains shattered in a star.

Source: Own Face (Green Integer, 2000)