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HEAT
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It's sand hill heat rising coming up the highway you can see water, but then it disappears. Five big quilts from winter are hanging over the line and drying, and when I park this old pickup I'm going to sit right under them and let the drips come into my blouse let the big yellow dog lick my face. Out back on the other half of this dream there is a whale of water an ocean almost. My dead Grandfather, my mother and I moved there in the middle of the night. Our neighborhood just like the ones we owned in town steps peeling paint, and flag poles snapping. In the next scene the land suddenly dries up and our houses are floating in air. We leave metal flowers behind under the rugs away from the quilts. I didn't see where the water was headed.
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CONSTRUCTION SIGHT
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“Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul —It was Friday when a colleague and I searched what was left of our staff parking lot. Eagle Services, the portable out house was no nesting place. No eagle wingspan of beauty only broken beak, talon and feather. Heaps of brick, old wood, broken fence— denim covered men in hard hats cigarettes on their lips and a graveyard of tree stumps. If you used your imagination jagged branches looked like fractured arms coming out of the earth— remains of prehistoric beasts. To our right were four still thriving trees multiple twigs dipping the earth and raising the sky. A mote of red tulips little beauties holding on.
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TO GO FROM PRIVACY
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Look at the seven Americans who have won the Nobel Prize for literature —I wrote I knew William Faulkner on a math test, and the eighth grade teacher held it like an ax, insinuating I had lied. Of course I lied. I would have liked to ask Mr Faulkner what it felt like to win The Nobel Prize, to go from privacy into the prying hands of strangers, their speculations, and intrusions, to be sweat and agony to a white leaf page, where heart is in battle with normalcy, compassion is thin ribbed, starving on the side. I would have known his hand, writing fast, penning hard marks, creativity pounding thick-skinned. I would have known his let up, the mad hooch swallow when he shut down and stretched, one shot to five too many. It works awhile, enhancing senses— the mansion, basement, the writing room won’t tell— sobering up on one ounce left, mixing fiction with life, rewriting the same story until it almost drowns. I was three when Faulkner died of a heart attack— call it kidney failure, liver disease, hardening of the arteries, stroke, high blood pressure, they’ll disguise it eighty ways from Sunday. William Faulkner won the Pulitzer for a fable. Our hallways related: escape quickly, disappear for a spell, roll a dusty tongue. His words belong to wide skies, recovery and a few modest poems are mine.
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THE TOILET IS STILL WARM
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Jan calls me on a Saturday evening I'm in my pajama's watching Paper Moon in black and white My cat on my warm lap Eyes red-strained from grading papers She's at a writer's residency 44 miles down Highway 2 And Ted Kooser, United States Poet Laureate is reading at 7:30 She offers And it's five after seven Bare feet sticking out of a blanket I tell her I can't make it on such short notice Then I'm brushing my teeth Putting on clothes like there's a fire alarm Wrapping a scarf around my neck Zipping up a White Sox coat Forgetting my gloves I take only eight dollars Pens and notebook Traffic is fast-full with semis and black sky Too broke for a speeding ticket I'm cruising 65 Miss the turn off into the Lied Lodge Circling Nebraska City He's finishing a new poem, one I know already Because I follow his books (Each autographed in skinny felt tip) Anywhere. There is an empty seat Jan is one of the unknown heads I'm staring at. When it's over she finds me and we make quick plans To do a little fireside writing Before I return to Lincoln. Ted is posing for pictures. I wait. Give him a hug. I tell him the pajama story and he says I ought to be wearing them. He's going home for the night Would I like his vacant room? His hotel key card Soft as a worry stone twirls in my hand And I hold jumping for joy until the door closes His wife and dogs will be happy to see him And we'll be strutting the carpet His famous bare feet have traveled Jan calls her husband to state her unyielding happiness To be in a Pulitzer Prize winner's chamber Of course he's not staying with us She exclaims ... but that's not the point She takes one of the beds I sprawl on the other kicking off my shoes Two middle age teenage groupies and I'm making Like I'm the luckiest aspiring poet in the Midwest — One night in these cool sheets I'll touch fame Just for being at the right place at the perfect time Just for sitting on his toilet seat For using Ted tissues and soap Brewing Ted coffee I am spoiled
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