we are opened. Out just beyond the waves,
love says the same of itself. We can only witness
the implication, only feel for the shape.
Love is a pigeon nestled beside a dead pigeon
at night in the wet corner of a warehouse.
Blackness and the texture of feathers.
The thud of a body surrounded by hollow.
Love is a clamshell’s first touch against rock,
whatever tenderness can be found in that contact
before the crack. It’s been years since I was last
out on the water. The night sky tightens
like that familiar mouth. Clouds hide their bulk
on the backsides of islands. Each wave is real
the way his body is real. Made of something
not itself. Something bigger. Call it water.
Call it wind. Call it tendon-flexing of the moon.
Each wave lifts as he lifts, crashes as he crashes.
Love exists in the way seagulls hold still
in the wind. The way crabs carry pieces of clam
through the moonlight and vanish sideways into sand.
MS. RANGE WANTS TO SEE ME IN IT
Jackson, Tennessee
Less the Lord crossed my eyes in the night
your shoulders are the twins to my Kyle’s.
Let’s see how it buttons up. Always was clumsy
with a button, even before my arthritis.
Now twirl around. There they are: those shoulders,
Mississippi-wide. If I didn’t know better
I’d tap you on the back and wait for his grin
to turn toward me. Now the pants. I’ll look away
while you change. Never did see his body. Bomb
tore him up so good they had to get the name
off his tags. Beyond recognition, they said.
I told those captains I’d know my boy by a glance
at his wrist, just one whiff of one hair off his head.
But men can’t sense like that. Or they won’t.
Even a father don’t dare get that close.
Now the jacket. Kyle hated that decoration,
too showy. And the wool—he used to say
we’re southerners: we should know what do
and don’t breathe. Here they come again:
those shoulders, each time you turn away from me.
TAKEN IN
The fear of growing older less than the feeling
of failing to do so. Before first light you grope
down dark hallways in someone else’s home,
fingers raking walls for switches. You turn
a valve, strike a match, hover above a burner
and wait for ignition. Whoever owns this kitchen
showed you how to do this, but for a moment
you can’t remember where you are, who took
you in. You look around the rooms for clues.
Roughhew of rifles. Couches. Crisco containers.
The tolling black hole of a Peter Pan clock.
A watercolor of Jesus stumbling from his tomb.
You strike another match to eye the faces
on the fridge: not you, not you, not you, not you.
THE LOW PASSIONS
The Lord came down because God wasn’t enough.
He lies on sodden cardboard behind bushes
in the churchyard. Wrapped in faded red. A sleeping bag
he found or traded for. Dark stains like clouds
before a downpour. The stone wall beside him rising,
always rising, the edges of stone going blunt
where the choirboy climbs. He opens his mouth,
but nothing goes in and nothing comes out.
Like the sideshow man who long ago lost
his right testicle to the crossbar of a Huffy.
He peddles the leftover pain. The stitches clipped
a week later by his father, the fiberglass bathtub
running with color, the puffy new scar,
the crooked look of the pitted half-sack.
He tells me you only need one nut, and I want
to believe him. I want to believe he can still
get it up. I want to believe he has daughters, sons,
a grandchild on the way, a wife at home
in a blue apron baking. But why this day-old bread
from the dumpster, this stash of hollow bottles
in the buckthorn, this wrinkled can of Pabst?
The Lord came down because God wasn’t enough.
Because the childless man draws the bathwater
and cries. Because the choirboy never sings
as he climbs. Because the bread has all molded
and the mouths are all open. Open to the clotting air.
Homeless, anything helps. Anything. Anything you can
spare. God bless you, God bless you, God bless. God,
Lord God, God God, good God, good Lord very good God.
YEARS LATER, I GO BACK TO THANK YOU
I walk past the Kwik Trip where you found me
in the dumpster, tunneling for canned food.
Past the VFW where you bought us burgers,
newspaper now taped over the windows.
The bowling alley where you paid for my lane.
The diamond where you coached the Raiders,
now being mowed by a girl, about sixteen,
cap brim curved and lowered, swimsuit
dark beneath her shirt, a spotless Midco
scoreboard lifting above the outfield fence—
Home: nothing, Away: nothing. Your house
is totally different. No garden beds, no covered
porch where I slept. ATVs leak gasoline
in a corrugated shed. When I knock, a stranger
answers the door and holds it half open.
I try to explain. He lowers his eyes and I know
you’re dead. He’s nothing like you: no leather
hat, no walking cane, no bend in the nose
from the boxing days. But just like you,
he could choose to shake his head, wave goodbye.
He’s not my family, not my friend. Doesn’t owe me
shit. But just like you, he asks my name,
and where I’m from, and where I’m trying
to get to. And pretty soon, he’s inviting me in.
AFTER FIGHTING
Sometimes my brother and I let go
of rage and snuck in the garage to cut
fistfuls of beef from the chest freezer,
then lay side by side in the pines waiting
for animals to come. We didn’t speak.
Hardly even breathed as we played
dead on the rust-colored needles,
the clods of meat cupped loosely
in our upturned palms. And if we waited
long enough, if we let the clods thaw
and seep their blood-deep sweetness,
sometimes a chipmunk slunk up
and nuzzled into our isthmus, crossing
timidly from his hand to mine,
mine to his, chewing. Its hunger
like an invisible line strung between us.
TO MY COUSIN JOSH WITH NOTHING
I didn’t look under the hood the way you would have.
An old Ford hardtop wedged between two trees
in a cornfield as if it was parked there before
the trees took root. The backdoor jimmied open.
The steering wheel in place, but the pedals gone.
I was walking a shortcut to the hospital
because you were dying again. You’d been dying
for so long it was hard to say from what.
Ten years ago it was liquor, which led to diabetes.
Now add cancer. Now pneumonia. The first drops
of rain nickel-and-dimed the windshield but lacked
bivouacked at night on a bald granite face.
I stretched out on what was left of the backseat,
the springs squealing at the pressure points
as if to complain of the various weights of me.
Meanwhile you were adding up to less and less.
Forget about muscle—your skin waxed down
to a windowpane, your limbs thickest at the joints.
And as I lay in that totaled car waiting out the storm,
all I could think about was how you waterskied
at the family cabin years ago, how you slalomed
with a natural’s ease, held the towrope one-handed,
carved walls outside the wake, threw eight-foot sprays.
And after a few days in the emergency wing
getting half your liver removed, followed by
that short stint in rehab, I remember the last time
you tried—the same old life vest so oversized
you had to switch it for a kid’s one. The easy
bruises on your shins. The towrope assuming
from your hands like a loon before you could lift
above the wake. What happened to that athlete?
That engineer? What slipped from your hands
and skidded across the lake and sank? I couldn’t sleep.
The wind picked up. Raindrops veined into each other
and pooled, sluicing down in chutes to the hood.
And honestly Josh, I wish I could say the surgery
failed, or the cancer spread, or the pneumonia found
a foothold. I wish I could tell you I never made it
to the hospital to see you. That in the end it rained all night
and bad luck struck one or the other of the trees
I was under. I wish I could believe the reasons
the preacher gave at the funeral, or the mumbles
of our mothers under the motor-drone on the drive home.
But the truth is, you lived on for years. Thinned
your six-foot-four frame to ninety-five pounds
fully dressed and wet. You didn’t lose a fight.
Nothing was after you. You moved up to the family cabin
to avoid paying rent, smoked Camels
with the curtains drawn and the television on,
though you didn’t watch it, and one day you were gone.
LISTENING TO A RAIL IN MANDAN
I’ve heard it said that you can feel it coming
in the tremor of the tracks, that you can cock
your head and cup an ear to the smooth steel
and sense it coming in vibrations, in rattles,
that you can gather the blaze of friction
as it builds, the heart murmur climbing the pass
through the mountains inside your head.
I stand at the edge of the brake and listen
for far-off signs: whistles, footfalls, gravel
ground under truck tires. I crawl up the grade
to the raised beds and the rails, the bull-run
on the far side of the yard lit by overheads,
each pool of light like a crude betrayal
of the darknesses between. The rails
take parallel trails of light past the sidings,
past the curve at the end of the yard,
past the bottleneck at the Heart River bridge—
two aisles of light like childhood brothers adrift,
like a father’s eyes carving the dark land
beside the dark river. The shape of a tree.
The shape of an owl grinding the sky.
I’ve heard it said that you can feel it coming
from as far off as a mile, the distance erased
in the pump of a vein, in the flicker of overhead lights,
the bull-run laying in its own dust wasted,
the tire tracks zigzagged and stacked
where the rail cop makes fate his listless routine.
I shoulder against a fishplate and lower
my head to the rail. I wait for a chime, a shiver,
I’ve heard it said that the kingdom of heaven
surrounds us, though we fail to see.
No stars tonight. No fire. No brother by the junkers
awaiting my call. No father walking toward me
on the tar-blackened ties. No dog’s eye
catching the searchlights. Not a single sound
fleshing this tank town as the rail begins to shake,
as the train begins to whisper my name.
NOTES
“Finding Josh” is for Morris Wee
“Great Plains Food Bank” is for Stan Tag
“Leaving Fargo” is for Edgar Kunz
“The Raft” is for Kai Carlson-Wee
“Cousin Josh on Family” is for Mark Jarman
“Lyle Clears My Throat” is for B. H. Fairchild
“Shoalwater” is for Mary Cornish
“Ms. Range Wants to See Me in It” is for Anessa Ibrahim
“The Low Passions” is for Bruce Beasley
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I wish to thank the National Endowment for the Arts, the McKnight Foundation, the Ucross Foundation, the Camargo Foundation, the Frost Place, the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fund, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference, and Vanderbilt University, with whose support these poems were written.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following publications where these poems first appeared, some in earlier versions:
32 Poems: “News,” “Taken In”
The Adroit Journal: “Leaving Fargo”
AGNI: “Soft Hunting”
The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2015: “Dynamite”
Best New Poets 2018: “The Mark”
Best New Poets 2016: “Living with the Accident”
Best New Poets 2014: “Icefisher”
Best New Poets 2012: “Northern Corn”
Best of the Net 2017: “McDonald’s”
Blackbird: “Birdcalls,” “Flood of ’97,” “The Raft”
Blue Mesa Review: “McDonald’s”
Bluestem Magazine: “Between Boulders”
The Collagist: “Jim Tucker Lets Me Sleep in His Treehouse”
Forklift, Ohio: “Lillian,” “Living”
Gulf Coast: “Affording the Funeral,” “Cousin Josh on His Liver”
The Iowa Review: “The Mark”
The Journal: “Gathering Firewood on Tinpan”
Linebreak: “Clausen’s Dog”
The Los Angeles Review: “After Fighting,” “Old Church”
Midwestern Gothic: “Leaving Fargo”
The Missouri Review: “Butte,” “County 19,” “Great Plains Food Bank,” “Listening to a Rail in Mandan,” “Moorcroft”
Narrative Magazine: “Checking for Ticks,” “Finding Josh,” “Fire,” “Lodestar,” “Ms. Range Wants to See Me in It”
New Delta Review: “Riding the Owl’s Eye”
New England Review: “Shoalwater”
New Ohio Review: “Cousin Josh Goes Off on Food Stamps,” “Cousin Josh on Doomsday,” “Cousin Josh on Family”
Ninth Letter: “Dynamite,” “The Low Passions”
The Paris-American: “Polaroid”
The Pinch: “Icefisher”
Ploughshares: “Asking for Work at Flathead Bible”
Poetry: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology: “Dynamite”
Poetry Daily (poems.com): “Dynamite,” “Lyle Clears My Throat”
Poetry International: “Cutting for Sign”
Poetry Northwest: “Primer”
The Sewanee Review: “Lyle Clears My Throat”
The Southern Review: “Earshot,” “Short Bed,” “St. Mary’s Memorial,” “The Muscles in Their Throats,” “To My Cousin Josh with Nothing,” “To the Rail Cop at Rathdrum”
T
he Sun: “Years Later, I Go Back to Thank You”
Vinyl Poetry: “Cousin Josh on Lighthouse Mission”
Virginia Quarterly Review: “Pride”
West Branch: “Living with the Accident”
“McDonald’s” was selected by Ocean Vuong as winner of the 2016 Blue Mesa Review Poetry Prize. “Cutting for Sign” was selected by Sherwin Bitsui as winner of the 2017 Poetry International Prize. “The Low Passions” and “Dynamite” were selected by Traci Brimhall as winners of the 2014 Ninth Letter Poetry Award. “Riding the Owl’s Eye” received the 2014 New Delta Review Editors’ Choice Prize. “Dynamite,” “To the Rail Cop at Rathdrum,” and “The Raft” were reprinted in They Said (Black Lawrence Press, 2018). “Lillian” was reprinted in Bad Hombres & Nasty Women (The Raving Press, 2017). “Birdcalls,” “Gathering Firewood on Tinpan,” and “Listening to a Rail in Mandan” appeared online in Poem of the Week; “Shoalwater” appeared online in r.kv.r.y. Quarterly; “Dynamite” appeared online in Every Day Poems, The Lake (UK), and the National Endowment for the Arts Writers’ Corner (arts.gov).
“Riding the Owl’s Eye” appeared in the poetry film Riding the Highline, codirected by Anders Carlson-Wee and Kai Carlson-Wee. www.ridingthehighline.com
Some of these poems were translated into Chinese and appeared in Enclave (China).
Some of these poems appeared in the chapbook Two-Headed Boy (Organic Weapon Arts), coauthored with Kai Carlson-Wee.
Some of these poems appeared in the chapbook Mercy Songs (Diode Editions), coauthored with Kai Carlson-Wee.
Some of these poems appeared in the chapbook Dynamite (Bull City Press).
Thanks to Dorianne Laux, B. H. Fairchild, Claudia Emerson, Ada Limón, Mark Jarman, Kate Daniels, Beth Bachmann, Rick Hilles, Lorrie Moore, Tony Earley, Maurice Manning, Andrew Hudgins, Joan Larkin, A. Van Jordan, Bruce Beasley, Oliver de la Paz, Stan Tag, Mary Cornish, and Dalen Towne—for your teaching and mentoring, which have profoundly blessed me.
Thanks to Jennifer Grotz, Ross White, Laura Kasischke, Patrick Rosal, Traci Brimhall, Adam Latham, Rick Barot, Emily Nemens, Bao Phi, Jessica Faust, Eduardo C. Corral, Tarfia Faizullah, Jamaal May, Gregory Pardlo, sam sax, Patty Paine, George David Clark, Phillip B. Williams, Francine Conley, Matthew Nienow, Paul Tran, Nomi Stone, Emilie Rose, Taneum Bambrick, Tyree Daye, Chloe Honum, Kevin Morgan Watson, Michael Kleber-Diggs, Maudelle Driskell, Patrick Donnelly, Eric Lorberer, Maggie Blake Bailey, Joy Priest, Sandee Gertz, Beth Haverkamp Powers, Christopher P. Locke, Michael Lee, Matt Miller, Joseph Shea, Jim Bodeen, Nathan Barnard, North Campbell, Bretta Ballou, and Steve Ringo—for your friendship and generous support.