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four poems
5:00
WHISTLE
The five ‘o’ clock whistle didn’t blow.
The whistle is broken, whaddaya know.
If somebody don’t find out what’s wrong,
oh my Pop’ll be workin’ all night long.
—from
the song Five ‘O’ Clock Whistle (Gannon/Myrow/Irwin)
Father’s
Voice:
They make us think that work is prayer.
They make us think our mouths are useless,
that our holy words come from sweat and
hands moving in the heavy air over machines
that will replace us in America, our gods
buried under the metal shavings and
floorboards of these factories.
Mother’s Voice:
I walk in the room above the street.
I walk the universe of the room
in five steps, thinking about
how I look through its windows
growing older, growing heavy,
my hair a collection of weeds.
I am growing transparent
in the steam from the teapot
my mother left me, in the dust
off the furniture my father built.
I am growing invisible in the room
above the street, surrounded
by the things we have inherited
from the dead.
Child’s Voice:
And there will be sundays like stray cats hunched in alleys.
There will be sundays with the men standing on the edge of the graveyard
gripping the fence so hard their fingers are pale.
There will be sundays when we want to slip our skin and so walk the
streets
until we realize there is no place that won’t digest
us, until our shoes
let in the stones and rain.
There will be sundays we stare at churches from our windows wide-eyed
and naked and doubtful.
There will be sundays we spend sitting on our beds with heat that burns
itself out,
anger that cannot move so we are worthless.
There will be sundays we stand at the closed gates of the factory trying
to make out the future.
Brother’s Voice:
I didn’t see her through the smoke
and then I saw her with my whole body
and I went to her room above the music
and held her because we are in love
with the past, the people we were
when everything was hope, even
dirty floors, even parents leaving
to work in the metal cold, even
the smoke from our cigarettes.
Father’s Voice:
Whole days we think about dust.
To pass time we think about dust.
All the men before us gone to dust.
Our fathers and grandfathers gone to dust.
All the muscle and bone and blood
becoming dirt and dust and we can’t
tell the difference between the dust
that is ghosts and the dust that falls
from our gloves, so sometimes
we walk on our ancestors, making
footprints in the dust, branding
the remains of cities that rose and fell
with the brand names of our
work boots, our history replaced.
SECURITY
I wonder what
it is that they are looking for.
I wonder if my hands are too tight on the handle
of my suitcase, if the drops of sweat I feel
on my forehead are growing visible, growing full
like tears before they run. I wonder if my mouth
will give me away, the straight line it must be
making, holding in words that would like to
rush out like children. I wonder if there is a
pattern in the way that I move, a timing and
shuffle to my steps that explode in the sweep
of trained eyes. I wonder if the clothes that
I tried to make haphazard-but-not-too-haphazard
are crying, shouting for security. For the
hundredth time I pray for glances to pass
over me. For the hundredth time my prayers
make me so angry, and my thoughts flash
like lightning in my head, that I should have
to do this, that I should have to break laws.
And I almost want them to pull me aside.
And I almost want them to tear through hands
and tear through bags and send pills spilling under
their feet, crushing my father’s life into the
scuffed floor of the airport. Of course, I want
to scream, of course I would carry his medication
from countries that charge us what we can afford,
of course I would pack and smuggle it illegally,
of course I would kill a man if I had to, of course
I would stop my heart for his to move, of course
I would do things that I wouldn’t do. For the
hundredth time I think about the word with its
soft slopes and sharp edges. I think about the word
with all its meanings: Security. If I saw it
on television, if I saw the woman being led
out of the airport with men on every side of her,
if I saw the story running underneath the picture
about a year’s worth of untested drugs, plots
to poison water supplies, to kill children.
If I saw it on television, I would thank God
for our country, for all the people I never see
keeping me safe. I would thank God for the way
that we live. I think about the word with its sides.
I just want to hear him breathing in slow sleep
on the couch. I just want to watch him read.
I just want the hard and soft of his body
inside my arms. I just want security.
JOHN
COLTRANE
There is
no instrument like a man
churches burning in his blood,
their smoke too heavy to rise up
and out of him, too heavy with
blackness. There is no instrument
like a man in the house his parents
left him, its empty rooms and
empty clothes and the sunlight
bouncing off a cracked teapot
no longer strong. There is no
instrument like a man walking
on the edge of the street with
one foot on the curb and one foot
in the gutter somewhere between
heaven and hell without weight
or wings. There is no instrument
like a man with his father’s hands
building things on air too light
to stay together, sculptures
on a mountain top made out of
dirt and dust, most beautiful in
the last seconds before they
change, before they break and
scatter and fly.
A POEM
ABOUT AL CAPONE'S WIFE
The men still
come, but I realize
they have given up on him. They sit
in the kitchen in their dark suits
and play cards, and I bring them
sandwiches, going in and out of the room
as fast as possible and then listening
to them talk about me through the walls,
all the things they would like to do to me,
because I am being wasted as a woman,
because he no longer knows who I am.
After they go, I wash their plates,
the glasses that never lose the smell of
whiskey. I scrub them as hard as I can
and explain to them about our love,
how it moves backwards now, backwards
from when he met and he made love to me
like I was not in the room, like he was
trying to take something from me while
I had my back turned. After coming back
from prison, his mind half-gone,
he only let me kiss his cheek, and then
just his forehead, and then not at all.
We are left with just touch, my knuckles
brushing against the sleeve of his robe,
and if he looks at me, it’s with
thankful eyes, thankful for the gentleness
of a stranger. And sometimes he asks me
for forgiveness, seeing someone else,
seeing the dead in my place. And he
apologizes to the walls, seeing the ghosts
of men he buried. And he apologizes
to the swimming pool, seeing the men
he drowned and choked the life out of.
I tell the silverware what I would tell
the men who still come. This is somehow
what I expected. This is what we want
when we are girls, love that we must
care for. I sleep in a different room
against the wall where I can listen to him
breathing and hear him walking on
the terrace, muttering to the chairs
and table, and I forgive him, and I forgive
the men in dark suits, and I forgive
the dead ones, the ones who colored his skin
with their blood, and I forgive the disease
for destroying him. And I am no longer
screaming. And I am not even whispering.
Just in my mind, I say over and over again:
I forgive you. I forgive you. I forgive you.
Josh Humphrey’s poetry has appeared in several magazines, including The
Journal of New Jersey Poets, Paterson Literary Review, Lullwater Review,
Sensations Magazine, and Mentil Soup. He won the Merlyn Girard Poetry
Prize in 1999 and the America at War Poetry Contest, sponsored by
Sensations Magazine, in 2004. He has also received honorable mention in
the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Prize for the last three years. He has spent
all his life in a small town in New Jersey, where he has been employed
as a librarian and archivist. His surroundings and involvement with
local history and legend have greatly inspired his writing. Josh is
currently spending as much time as he can with his lovely wife Jen, whom
he married on mischief night 2004. |