The Trouble with Charlotte
A rage in her center, she pulses,
beats outward, veins reach
the wilds of South Carolina
a city willfully bellows,
sucks air in
scratches our throats
in flat lines and hill sides
in four wheels and Escalades
On the bank side
North side oozes cholesterol, thick
ozone and particulate matter,
erect heads, not even pestering
carpool lanes to IBM, Wells Fargo,
Bank of America
spreading, sprawling,
like a galaxy of half walls and gray carpets
scented with blue shirt starch,
steam rises from chain restaurants
while lifting burnt forests with a ball point pen
so upper-middle class homeowners
can drive forty-five minutes to Brazilian
steakhouses that fly seafood in.
Sink a fork into eighty-three pounds per person
vehicular emissions
South side bides its time in country clubs
licking up tidbits of the sewage treatment plant
over by the mall
and carrying the 3,325 pounds of waste
per annum, per body,
per Pottery Barn home delivery.
East side dredges up the past, talks about roads
and mass transportation and needing
a way out,
a way in,
abandoned store fronts down
Independence Boulevard,
riddled with squatters and dealers and
the last lonely head shop in a strip of
former drug stores and mom and pop diners.
West side gentrifies, newly develops, props
better government housing,
puts a fresh coat of paint on re-use, mixed-use,
smart-use development, writes its spin,
a small town kid wanting to be “world class,”
desperate to fit in
the trouble with Charlotte is
all that breeding and importation
of the bodies and the breaths of
those born here or north or west and looking
for a better way of living.
The Pavilion
Resting on the rear rock wall
where old movies are shown in summer—
Cary Grant slaps women,
Marilyn skulks in throaty whispers,
slipping in and out of great plumes
of smoke and depression—
my legs numb at the knee.
I sit cross-legged, shielded from rain
Watching from inside this frame of arches
a place ordinarily viewed from picnic blankets
On the hill side, under night skies of chardonnay and pinot;
no movement on yellowed grass,
no swallows perched on stripped branches,
a quiet unease
envelopes cracked stage floors
I wrap my fists in my sweater and think of you—
a wink and in a moment
the filter was removed and I bent
with you into the queasiness of presence
under the clapboards of rain and echoes
into droplets on the squirrel’s back
and the pecan shells falling.
The Coats of the Imperials
-for TC Boyle
We used to make terrariums
up in the Blue Ridge
before my father’s weekends
stopped coming;
we’d look for mosses
and salamanders, how to arrange,
create pools, place the British Soldier
in the glass ecosystem,
my fingertips pressing earth,
careful not to smush their spears.
He is with me
on this blunted mountain,
this sweaty February day,
he is the absence of that British
soldier lichen, crimson-tipped,
the coats of the imperials
I have been looking
all these years now
but this
canno’t survive
the cities—
this Cladonia christatella,
is rare to perk is tilted head.
But I cannot find salvation in the trinity,
My hands shake to cradle the wild—
an injured dove, its snapped leg,
hunkered in holly branches, I break
down into the bleak skies,
shoulders hunched, feet tucked.
Yet TC Boyle sits on a metal chair
in red socks, looking like
an 80s rock star so there must
be some kind of hope
A thing, a mighty thing
Singing in the last of us
To know lions.
A Bridge
I can still taste
the tail end of winter,
feel its fur
swirl in my mouth,
wood smoke in my tonsils,
feel the engineer’s hands working
in stone’s rise and fall;
chills soak through my legs
a bluebird calls tur-a-lee,
a magpie preens
At the horizon, the gravel road curves
Footprints stain sand
but my feet grow mortar, dig in
thinking of the old man
in a sea hat,
whose ears sweat,
encased in Sherpa,
Arrested by his leafy, salt smell
his jowls, his thickened pink nose
I go guttural, stumble over vowels
of protest, tell him no,
I’m not coming to the wedding.
A Glimpse
Barely twenty,
skinny, with a hymn
of golden brown skin.
She says to me,
as she looks me over,
you don’t have children,
do you?
My hips are not swollen
neither are hers, she says
I could never feel her pain, I
see her fingernails
chewed down to the quick.
She tells me her breasts are engorged,
She hasn’t released since 7 o’clock—
It’s nearing 9pm.
I glance down,
looking for circles of wet
nothing shows
behind her uniform.
Jealous of her ease of talk,
I glimpse this club of mothers
for a moment
I am part of it, this femaleness
but then I remember
what could be a nursery
is a cat room.
Staving It Off
She’s had this colostomy
Since I was a girl
Folded at her leg
Pinned tight against the skin.
I can’t imagine what it is to
Carry that stuff with you
For all to see its bulge
Smell its smell
Hear the air bubble leak
And the need to plan
Trips to the grocery store
To McDonalds
How to buy underwear
When the racks are filled
With thongs and bikinis.
I watched her cleaning
The open wound when I was young
Before I knew the anxiety
And thought it was just something
Grandmother’s had.
I wondered if I’d get one, too
So I paid attention to the
Way she applied the glue
How she snapped the belt
When she finished.
Thirty-three years of this
But without it she’d
Die slow and painful
Gutshot by her own organs
Trying to escape.
To the Turkey
I held their difference like cotton,
Mesmerized by their simple lifestyle
Until your time came.
I wish I could tell you,
how I swore then to give up meat
when you hung
by your feet, tied
to a thick branch, a bare forest,
feathers flying from the struggle
on this Thanksgiving spent with
a family of artists and teachers,
Jewish and living above
the father’s glass-blowing studio,
compact and soda free
his beard, his hand, veiny and exact
the knife to your throat,
the jerking, the quieting, the stillness,
the syrupy red puddle, steaming
but I didn’t realize then the poverty,
the connection between your body
and their salvation.
There is life, still
In your belly licked clean of fur
In your rough patch of skin
Where the needles go
In your snow washed feet
And lioness blaze
In your hazy jade eyes
In your missing teeth
And pungent gums
In your doctored paws
In your puckered cheeks
And striped tail
In your glucose levels
In your black pads
And brownish pink nose
And keratin coated tongue
In the brown spot on your hind leg
In your scabby skin
And your half tongued meow.
The Smallest of the Tiny
Your brown eyes and wisped tail
Make me want to believe,
To recognize divinity,
Sanctity in your climbing,
Your presence on that branch, solidified
In the crinkled leaves and busy creek
In the smell of fresh water,
Metallic and mossy.
I want to speak to you
The milkweed, silken filaments
rounded, sticky, toxic,
And the creek’s spacious trellis
of sediment catchers
Along the banks
The rocks: human-placed,
Reticent against the currents
That I have lost my faith in greater things
And put it in the smallest of the tiny
In the pool that holds two mallards
Looking out for each other,
Taking turns tucking their beaks,
Pacing the rim, standing
On one webbed foot.
But you chickadees—
Your minute bodies
Your chirp, your black cap, your gray
Your fee-bee-fee-bay,
Your stillness, your rootedness,
Your charity, your dive and return
Test my failing faith like humans
At the fourth wall, flailing, climbing,
Begging to get in.
