Doc Burkard
AncestryI want to walk on the bottom of the ocean,
that is where I am from, all of my ancestors living in one house in the middle of the black sea, at the mouth of a trench that leads to the center of the earth. Every night after work their calls could deafen every city on the map; their screams forming into matter that clogs my arteries and hardens my liver each day trying to drag me back home. The Songwriteron his deathbed,
documentary crew turning each breath to celluloid. They hand him a harmonica, play us one of the hits, just one last time, the producer speaks, his voice full of gravel and greed. It's barely recognizable and one of the boom mics isn't working. It don't matter anyways; you couldn't pay me to watch, Even though, I know we all stop at car crashes in these United States of America and this is what we have become. Is it a poet's job to recite the news? Tonight at Nine, This is a history of us. This Land is My LandI will show you
where I'm from or where they buried the beasts that made me; that row of pines, skinny, on the blacktop's edge. Old highway thirty-five running up north, to Saint Paul, a clot the size of God's fist as it throbs. The Midwest, my iron heart beating. Granddad's old Buick idles on the gravel drive, leaking black; exhaust blowing over the knee high grass color of my skin. Mommasings for all of the pennies
in the fountain; those dreams of mine that didn't bother to come true. Momma don't know how to play the guitar but I like the way she holds it with her fragile hands. Water is wide, I can't get over in a key only broken banjos with worn-through heads know. I lie in bed, look at the deep cracks in the palm of my hand and dream they are interstate ninety-four and I'm walking its shoulder on a cool August night back to momma rocking in her chair. ❊ |
On Earth,a kid in Detroit learns the easiest things to remove from a car.
These new ones are really just computers and imported plastic, his cousin tells him as they lift a CD deck from a Pontiac downriver, in the shadow of an abandoned factory, sharing a forty of Bud Light. A Milwaukee woman fills up her brother's van, with one window missing, moving to Des Moines, in the winter, her fragile hands exposed, cracking from the dry cold and and edges from the boxes filled with faded clothes. In this rust belt, we're dead, and the color of dirt, all we can do is shake our fists, beat the sidewalk, until we fall asleep on the street when our bottles are done, and the rats check our pockets for five dollar bills. It's one of the mildest winters of memory. This wind a rusted knife, wet and the temperature of lies. In Saint Paul, at the liquor store on Christmas Eve, I buy as much as I can hold and get ready for another year. ClosedI had a dream last night,
it was so cold and I was just standing. Not moving. I couldn't move, my hand was on the worn brick, at least ten stories high. Empty. The feeling of walking over a grave. I may have been crying, maybe I was sober. It smelled like grandpa or an empty house; dreams smell like rain sometimes sometimes they smell like Milwaukee. It was the factory, some of the windows broken but even in dreams, nothing is being made. Smokestack Lighting I got so many friends in Chicago,
place can't do me no harm. ~Howlin' Wolf Our world; a big old factory, no longer connected to anything except for the electrical grid and a changing concrete maze. Only this is true: your dreams and the cold hard ground. Take my hand, we'll break into the plant manager's office, on the weekend, while he is home asleep. I'll hold the door open, bring your tapes, we'll play them over the loudspeakers, and let this town hear you cry. Gray, Wisconsin
Time is matter here
The freight train ~Jean Valentine Places are colors, two-hundred-thousand primary shades and hues. I grew up in Gray, a place only the freight train knows for a moment then rumbles on to the cities: Midnight, Scarlet, Mahogany, Royal Blue. |