Our mutual friend
had told you
how I used to be Queen of a very small tribe.
"It seems almost..." I said, hesitating.
"Like it really happened?" he asked, eyebrow raised.
"It did happen, but now
things are so different that it seems
ridiculous."
I sat there,
shot full of arrows like Saint Sebastian--
like him, not dying
but split and empty like a dead pew.
There are more gospels than they let on, you know.
This man loaned me two records--
Joni Mitchell
and It's a Beautiful Day.
Like poetry, it was love for life for me--
Hot Summer Day and Sweet Fire.
I left Illinois not long after
to Gypsy it in a small car with two teachers
off for the summer.
We read Richard Brautigan,
and wandered the bars in New Orleans, then Galveston
where I left both my crown and my grave in a coin laundry
on a Sunday morning.
______
I love it. The tone. The references. But I don't pretend to understand it. (Jo)
ReplyDeleteYou are still queen of OUR tribe, my friend, though we have scattered. "Split and empty like a dead pew" - the ability to imagine and write an image like that is why! Such amazing work.
ReplyDeleteI find the structure of this one fascinating(and of course, it's a gorgeous read without even thinking about stuff like that) in the way it begins as a conversation, proceeds as a bright and clear narrative of events and ends with pure poetry in such beautiful, sonorous images--each little section of words adding to a lyrical dance of the past that makes 'nostalgia' into a weak sister. You've done a fantastic job putting this one together, and though I know it's not, made it seem effortless as chunking a coin into a washer, not a word too many or too few. Just perfect writing.
ReplyDelete