Every day
I ride the cross-town bus
from Independence Avenue
to Blue Ridge Boulevard
to Prairie Village
and back
I pass tall buildings that block the sun
hard earth where nothing grows
people with tight mouths walking to no home
and I know I must make a dream for myself
to keep my heart strong
I lay my head against the glass
and call forth a vision to shield me
Moon of frost on the tipi
Moon of white ermine
Moon when the deer strip bark
Moon of returning geese
Moon of young grass appearing
Moon when the sun opens daisies
Moon of black chokecherries
Moon when the bison graze
Moon of dragonflies floating
Moon when the plums are scarlet
Moon when pollen falls from the tassel
Moon of dropping leaves
We mark the year
winter count of our content
and as for me
I can flesh the hide
of an elk
I can split fine sinew
I can sew leggins from the smoked tops of lodges
I can bring fire in all weathers
call a trout into my hands
or a meadowlark
and stroke him until he sleeps
I know the secret of the seven arrows
and as for me
I would go away from
my people and this place
I would braid my hair and put aside cloth dresses
I would cut up my credit cards
these needful things I would do
and all the day long I would sing at my work
He honors me
He honors me
if only the Human Being they call
Red Armed Panther
the proud one who follows me with his eyes
would trade his nine fat ponies to my father
and bring me under his blanket
This is the dream I make for myself on the bus
to keep my heart strong
This is the vision I call forth
Cavort
By
Connie Dover
I have learned
this year
so far
that:
orange is the new pink
amazing is the new awesome
and bread is the new antichrist
a smile is actually a vestigial combat position;
and fellow politicos rarely disagree
They simply view enigmas from different perspectives
I don't meditate
I just lie in bed in the morning
and think about stuff
like:
unlimited nationwide long distance calling
niche film making for Mormons
and how unpalatable it would be to love without attachment
a vulture huddled over a corpse buzzing in the dirt
weekend winner giveaways at my local pontiac dealer
a child sleeping in the lap of a cadaver
one hundred days one million bodies
honey change the channel
We prefer our truth cut
with head-spanking images of pillow-lipped nymphs
who undulate through glossy SUVs and vault from high-res screens
into the viagra-spiked lap of a nation
that sits incubating in a sitcom induced haze
blink
and thus the world
failed Rwanda
Who cares if I have
mental cleavage
in a kingdom whose terrified rulers deploy smiles like weapons
as they play a fast and loose game of
pin the bomb on the Muslim
and dream of the day when the Fertile Crescent
is dotted with gated communities
called Fakewood and Arabian Heights
and who unload cargo planes full of Xanax
on a public that is now convinced that having a conscience
is actually Clinical Depression
and can be cured
And so,
as we are being outsourced, repurposed and pole-axed
in the name of a lantern-jawed myth stamped Security
As I lie in bed in the morning,
lounging in a sudsy bath of gratitude
to a certain omnipresent
intergalactic
fast food Unisource
for vowing to swipe my major credit card,
I grow weary of the shallow rhythm of my own mean invective
Cynicism tastes rancid
Every action I
contemplate feels like a mistake waiting to be made,
and I want more than anything
to be reunited with the strength of will
I seem to have dropped along the way,
a child too burdensome to carry
and left by the road. |
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Suler Monday
liked his peas with
water gravy on the side
chicken necks fried hard
turnips mashed and shiny
mixed with collards in the grease
from Olive's hog
Grandpa bit the heads off snakes alive
but that's another story
like the klan
Lily always served three meats
no matter what
singing Barbry Ellen
wiped her wet face with an apron
as she wandered o'er the fields
and heard the death bell knelling
set out venison and ham
bacon curling like a fetus in the pan
said that girlfriend from the North
So they gave that girl an old switch-broom
and said
Just clear the outhouse seat of spiders
fore you sit, and those baby copperheads
and so she did, without a peep
for he was purely handsome
On an island in a river
he grew up, best of ten
popping supper with a slingshot
fearing haints but not his father
snagging monstrous catfish in a mighty storm
he chopped cotton
swinging barefoot pails of lard and sugar biscuits to the field
He stuffed greens in Lily's poke
fixed her teeth
and praised her zinnias
fought his daddy
swapped his bee-bee gun to get Diane a doll
Thumbed a truck to Memphis in a borrowed suit
with pots and pans and books and tires
for the lady of the house
so he could buy a red piano
for his little girl, Pecan
and I thought he was too young
to be this poor
But I drank water
from that dipper in the bucket
scalded stinking pullets
broomed the outhouse
slept with cousins
stacked like Trappists in a woodcut
like the ones I saw in Europe,
which he paid for
I begged for Oxford, where he sent me
and I found his mother's ballads
of the red rose and the briar
He was careful
so he mentioned to the wall just behind me,
Life is short and all is well
Smell the wood smoke and the pines
Find your solace in the mountains,
and I do because he did
with his old friend Suler Monday
chucking squirrels and skinning rabbits
Uncle Fate and Uncle Reno
pitching bottles down the privy
rawhide string wrapped on a
button held the door
dogs cooling
on the cellar floor
and all he ever mourned
was that time he shot a heron
just to see it fall
He gave his shoes to pretty Lily,
then drowned while diving for fresh water pearls
and this is a true story, so it is
Pablo y maria
By Connie Dover
Don't take that tequila out while you are
hoeing corn
said Maria to her husband
I must, he said
This one day
because the girl I love
does not love me any more
As of today, I am too old for love
and I must drink
Maria said
I knew you were with that whore
She has fat legs
Even her father won't speak her name
Yes, said Pablo
and I am taking the tequila
She followed him to the field
She watched his thin back,
his six fingers wrapped around the hoe
She went inside
and came back with tortillas
filled with the meat of a goat, roasted
She sat in the shade and ate,
and watched him some more
Then she got up and took the hoe from his hands
and gave him the bottle
Go drink, she said
Pablo went to the shade,
and his wife began to work the rows
Roadside table
By Connie Dover
Handing off red bandanas,
I play capture the flag
with a grinning Arapaho road crew
in the Wind River Canyon
Rims and lips and arches
scarlet precambrian upthrusts
make me wild,
and my love's tongue
Maddened bees
work hard little buds
along the Bighorn
A full and transparent moon
is pulled up through the clouds
past Debussy
past the Black Lodge Singers
and tales from desert prisons
Coyote, loping through the cottonwoods
turns and crouches toward me, flinching
He whispers without words
"The only way to conjoin
with this awful beauty
is to wander waist-deep among the sage
into the eye of the sun
and fall upon your sword."
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