Is an effrontery,
A hateful mnemonic
Of irretrievable youth.
Like a cup,
I poured the wine of my vitality
Into you
Under the auspices of love
And generation.
Now,
All the thanks I get
Is your smile
And your laugh
And your smooth skin
And your youth,
Which I can barely see.
*****
The Secret Ingredient
Sweat
they say
is the secret ingredient.
See they line the hot dogs up both arms
and swipe on the mustard and
ladle on the sauce
The old woman always watching
And hygiene be damned
The dogs are up to their pits
So that must be where the flavor comes from,
Sweat and grime and pit hair
Her hair painted shoepolish black her face as crumpled as a wino’s dollar
That must be it the sweat the dirt the hair
But everyone loves it
They try to reverse engineer it but no one can
and they say not even the son
the one who opened his own place
Hands like claws like grasping claws her body a winter leaf eye shadow cobalt blue as her dress
In fact according to rumors
the old woman was so against the son for breaking rank
she never gave him the recipe
Her own son
And that’s why his hot dogs were never so good
Her own flesh and blood
And he went out of business.
Never a smile a voice like a crow accent thick as tzatziki the filmy eyes always on the money
And she’s dead now so it must be true
if everyone knows it must be true
but in her place upon the orange bench seat he watches,
the son
Heart racing at the sight of the statue she stepped off the boat kissed her husband wine on their lips the day they opened
He straightens the framed dollar bill behind the register
He adds the secret ingredient alone in a windowless room.
*****
The Wolf King
Lightning flared as James Callus Hoglatch raised the axe, preparing to bring it down on the hogtied victim at his feet. Hoglatch laughed, muscles rippling under his dragon tattoos, his heart pounding with pure joy…and then the lightning reached down and stroked the metal blade, jolting him with
Green leaves folding around
The midday sun,
Bleached white linens
Fluttering,
And the racing of violins
Of harpstrings
Bring the light of awareness
To the eyes of the
Under this small burden,
Every child gave way
Like spokes in a rickety cartwheel
While the Florida sunshine created
New forms of life in the
Backyard,
Oozing,
Curdling,
Melting together
And dreaming of
Chief Hoglatch roars and shakes a drumstick at the pagan feast. Women cling to him, and tribesmen beat drums and sing the song they’ve written about his heroism. Hoglatch throws another prisoner on the fire and howls at the moon like a wolf king who has just eaten a man king.
*****
Bedside Manner
This high blue light
And smoky golden
Cider
Rising for the last
Katydid song
Cinders
A soft melting red
To purple
Aching
Purple like bruises,
And we all wonder
How much worse it can get
Under steel gray shivering.
“I wouldn’t want to know,” said Rick Royal, shaking his head hard. “I’d just want to keep rolling till the end.”
Dr. Philander smiled patronizingly and waved an arm to encompass the swath of autumn colors in the park. “You mean to tell me you wouldn’t want me to tell you if the odds were against you seeing another fall like this?”
“Right,” said Rick. “That’s why I’m not your patient.”
Philander jammed his hands down into the pockets of his peacoat, feeling the pack of cigarettes inside.
Breath curling
Misting
Puffing from life from
Heat unto
Air like ice like
Forever
Like needles forever.
“Listen,” said Philander. “I’ve already examined you. I have…a kind of gift. I know things just from looking at you.”
Rick spun and glared at his friend. “You’re kidding, right?”
“No.” Philander reached out, fingertips twitching. “I know your condition.”
“Shut up!” Rick clapped his hands over his ears. He whirled around and stomped off over the crackling leaves.
Philander hurried to keep up. He grabbed hold of Rick’s shoulder and
Tremors a world away
Crackle through
This silver skin
This shard
This speck of cool white
Light
New
Unprecedented
Paradise right under their
Noses
But no one inside it knows how
Good
Or cares is more like it
How good they have it
And how long it took
And what the chances are
They only know
The rainbow
He grabbed hold of Rick’s shoulder and tried to stop him, but Rick shrugged him off and charged away into the autumn afternoon. Dr. Philander dropped onto a park bench and lit a cigarette, saying a silent prayer that his childhood friend would forgive him for lying.
It was the only way, Philander believed, to get Rick off the terrible road he was traveling. Tell a lie. Plant a seed. Do no harm.
Stop Rick before he killed again.
*****
Miles in the Morning
Miles Davis walked up to me this morning on my way out the door. He shook my hand, smiled, and promised that he would get me through the day. I knew that this was a bold claim, as I had a tough day ahead, but Miles’ firm grip and confident wink gave me the lift I needed to get rolling. As I slid down into my car and backed out of the driveway, I kept my window down to hear as much of the tune he was playing on his trumpet as I could. It was beautiful…light notes rippling from the bell of his horn like a stream of water, like the call of the first bird of the morning starting up the dawn chorus. I stopped on the street and listened, and I swear I got a chill straight up my back, cool and slow like one of Miles’ long high notes. He waved a hand at me, “Shoo, get going,” and then he closed his eyes and played the kind of drifting, dreamy ballad that he does so well, so perfectly every single time. Doo doo…dee doo dee da...da dee…da doo…deeee. Standing in the dewy grass as red gold purple leaves fluttered down around him, sky a shimmering bright blue, his back straight, his face unscarred, unworried. Dee dee da…doo dee deeee. I wiped a tear from my cheek, wishing I could listen all day and night, and then I checked the clock on the dash of the car. Running late again. Miles’ eyes were shut tight, but I had a feeling he saw me wave goodbye as the car rolled forward. One last long note, which I never di
d hear the end of, and then I’d gone too far and couldn’t hear him and couldn’t see him in my rear view mirror either.
*****
When Tomato Was King
Near the end, Frank sees the entire 1941 Tomato Festival played out in all its glory on Main Street. The vision distracts him from his throbbing headache and his last chance to beg forgiveness from Karen, who
Over easy is what I had
This morning
And now my heart pounds
As I walk past beaming
Wink wave flash
And the man in black with the big white book
Something’s wrong with his look
Why do I picture a spatula
And a second level wavers above
It all them all
On my very special
Smiling waving translucent
Uninvited
My very special day
You may now
I look up and they’re still watching
May now kiss
I remember them from
Long ago
Blue sky and flickering jelly as the doctors cut
Now kiss the bride.
It’s his last chance with Karen, not to stay together or stay friends but just to stay alive. She doesn’t see the parade on Main Street, and she wouldn’t care if she did. She has finally had enough.
She found him in the park after their latest fight, drinking from a bottle in a brown paper bag and soaking his feet in the hot springs after kicking her ass. She has a gun at his head, which is pretty ironic...but Frank can’t appreciate the irony just yet.
All he cares about is the 1941 Tomato Festival. It was the biggest and best and last of its kind in town, a real local legend...and now it’s back.
It’s the middle of the night, but Main Street Berkeley Springs West Virginia looks like sunny high noon. Smiling people line the street, sipping tomato juice from silver cans and dabbing sweat from their foreheads with handkerchiefs. Little kids with cardboard tomato masks rubber-banded to their heads scurry along the curb, denim coveralls splotched tomato red. A teenage marching band wearing tomato costumes from shoulders to knees high-steps in unison, raising their instruments and playing something Frank can’t hear. Not yet.
“Are you even listening to me?” says Karen. She sounds like she’s weaving back and forth between rage and hysteria. Her breath is all whiskey. She pushes the gun against Frank’s head and says, “What did I just say to you?”
“Something about hitting you for the last time?” Frank would rather talk about the mystery show on Main Street and whether he can do more than stand there and watch it go by.
Smiling, he takes a step forward in his bare feet, trying to get closer to the sunny parade on Main Street. A shriveled old farmer and a little blonde boy hand tomatoes out to the crowd on both sides of the street from the back of a pickup while
Gathering handfuls of night
We join hands smiling
And with reassuring squeezes drag each other
Down
And the wooly bear seen up close
The wooly bear’s coat bears a thick red band
As red as tomorrow
But the smell on the air sweet as roses
And the day after that
Down by the riverside the bluebirds
Sing as we go
Under.
Karen doesn’t pull the trigger when Frank takes the first step away, and she doesn’t shoot on the next step or the one after that. “Stop!” she says, and then louder: “I said stop!”
But Frank, he’s laughing like a kid at the circus. See, a float’s gliding down Main Street, and it’s topped with a tomato that’s what, seven feet tall? The floatmato’s a rich, deep red, ripe as the last day of August, and it’s got eyes the size of stop signs and a cap of flowing green crepe paper leaves shaped like a woman’s summer straw hat. “Juicy”--it must be her name--is written in white script across her middle, just under her big green lips. As she passes, he sees “Lucy” around the back of her.
Karen rushes up behind him and jams the gun in his side. He keeps walking and grinning as if he just won her a giant stuffed teddy bear at the county fair.
“I swear to God,” says Karen, her voice shaking. “I swear I will kill you right now if you don’t stop and listen to me.” Tears smear her mascara and drip from her jaw.
Frank keeps walking, and on his third step, the bulging artery in his head pops and all that tomato juice pumps into his head so
A footprint in the mud.
A growling dog.
A rolling penny.
A skipping record.
The smell of a moldy basement.
The sound of a new mown lawn.
The way the limbs of a tree at twilight make your
All that tomato juice pumps out into his head so he’s dead from that moment on, even though he doesn’t know it yet. All Frank feels
The way knuckles ache after
Making love.
All Frank feels at that point is the slightest tingling heat in his head. He’s too busy gaping at the next float to pay attention, the one with the girl of his dreams waving and smiling.
Karen hurries around in front of him then and cuts him off. “No more, Frank,” she says, pointing the gun square in his face. “See how you like it.”
To Frank, though, it sounds like she says, “Rore modo, quaffi. Squeeboo loud brigglebrack.”
He gets a taste in his mouth like the smell when you light the wrong end of a cigarette. He feels like he has a charley horse in his head. Like someone’s stepping on his head.
The girl on the float can’t be more than twenty-five years old. She has skin as pale as vanilla frosting and shoulder-length hair as black as tar as black as oil as black as coal butter. She wears a beautiful white gown, elbow-length white satin gloves, and a red satin sash that reads, “Queen Morgan 1941,” as in the queen of Morgan County, West Virginia. A tomato tips her scepter and she blows kisses to the
Storms charging like bulls
And the bursting of light bulbs
The bending and breaking
Of legs
And burning
Of forests
While bright-eyed children holding hands
Lead each other laughing on tiptoe
Over your smashed-up bones,
Reciting nursery rhymes,
Breathing in the kitchen table nights
The coffeecup mornings
And the ashes of all you ever
Desired.
She blows kisses to the crowd, and Frank could swear she blows one right at him, too. Dodging Karen, he runs for the street.
Loping barefoot through the grass like a golden retriever, Frank hears a voice. At first, he thinks it’s Queen Morgan’s voice, but it’s not. It’s not Karen’s voice, either.
It’s his third grade teacher, Mrs. Caster. “I won’t lay a finger on you,” she says. “I’ll just tell you a story,” she says, only now she’s Sergeant Williams from his army days. “A story about an old woman who never wanted to be a burden,” says Sergeant Williams, only now he’s Frank’s boss from the plant, Mr. Dutton.
“Once upon a time, she made up her mind,” and now the voice is just Frank’s, “made up her mind not to be a burden anymore.”
That was
After a while,
The ringing phone plays games with itself
To pass the time,
Counting the words spoken
On the blaring TV
Between rings,
Patching them together into sentences
Describing the way the snowflakes flutter
In the bedroom,
The way the sun glints off the photographs
Drifting outside your window,
And the number of prayers it takes
For God to make
Sense.
That was how Frank had gotten rid of his invalid mother-in-law, just telling her stories, j
ust talking. Spending quality time. The funny thing is, Karen doesn’t even know he did it. She’s ready to kill him, and she doesn’t even know the worst thing he ever did to her.
But it really doesn’t matter anymore. Frank has finally found the one thing he never knew he needed all along to make him happy. Turns out hurting people doesn’t have anything to do with it after all.
He stumbles into the street, and now he’s in the middle of the 1941 Tomato Festival. Radiant Queen Morgan slides toward him on her float, surrounded by her court of smiling young beauties in red gowns. The whole float looks like it’s covered with tomatoes, but they’re really just
City lights foaming
On the harbor.
Clouds swimming
Across the moon.
The sound of Chinese,
The crackling of paper,
And the same cold wind
That’s been polishing
The world forever,
Never reaching no
Gold
Something lets go in Frank’s head, and he barely catches himself. When he looks up, Queen Morgan’s float is lurching straight for him.
He jumps...but not to worry, the float passes right through like it’s a ghost or vice versa.
What a disappointment, but it wouldn’t be so bad if he could just turn up the volume. This is 1941 after all, the last Tomato Festival ever in Berkeley Springs, West Virginia, and wouldn’t it be so much better if