Alexis Ivy
Boston MarathonNow it’s pressure cookers taking lights
out, blowing limbs loose, tearing bricks down like in the blizzard of ’78. My city’s always in revision. Even I edit myself, try not to exaggerate, no all, no always just once I had thought explosions near the finish line meant Victory. I didn’t grow up mannered in the Commonwealth, no linen napkins on my lap, but on paper plates in Jamaica Plain. I know how dirty half-melted snow can get in certain corners of Mattapan, fights start out, windows stay broken, hate crimes stay caked on the storefronts Crack Territory. How much to buy an endangered turtle in Chinatown? And now it’s murder on Boylston Street, one of Childhood’s main drags. Even I was dangerous once, late summer overheating the cars too long. I Have My Reasons
I hate boys, hate how
if I give one a flower he’ll take it and pick a flower for another girl when he could’ve held mine longer. I used to eat cereal I didn’t like, boxes of it, and watched soap operas, one after the other. I also want to talk about the worst thing anyone ever said about me, worse than anything my brother said because it wasn’t said by my brother. Emma Rawels didn’t say it to my face, someone told me. She said it and I wouldn’t look in the window to see how I was looking. She said that I looked like I was hit in the face with a baseball. I thought she meant I had black eyes that wouldn’t go away, a fat lip. Thought she meant I slouched myself, face down to the ground like my body was a pile instead of a person. Isn’t everybody fruit on the way to rotten? I started showering twice a day. I like the smell of soap and sleeping with the storm windows open and my hair damp. I wear armpit hair instead of make up. I have my reasons. Bowling with the Regulars
The better-offs-in jail, the double-crossers,
the almost-but-not-quite Steinbeck characters. The ones with the scars, half an ear bit off out of love, ripped skin on the knee due to reckless rolling from lane to gutter. I’m one spare and playing by the book. Five frames of I like your hat, five frames of I like it, too. Forgot my name again? And flirting with the concept that the jukebox is my one true friend. I’m a vending machine, all King Size and no Mr. Goodbars and soon I’ll run out of laughs. So long heyday-riffraff. So long unsure and dangerous. So long ransom, risk, and risk’s guarantee. So long asking little. So long less. Cool Hand Luke
For Paul Newman
A world shaker, a dead shot, Luke, the first man ever to get my attention. I am hot tar and dry corn shucks and he’s running through in shackles. I like a man who’s hard to break. Luke digging the same hole twice until he drops. Christ-- now even the movie screen’s gone black. With me it’s always Cool Hand Luke, the love story. |
Come CleanI used to ask
people to kick my ass. I don’t do that anymore. Used to go over- board every day, refused to wear underwear, walked- the-plank plenty. No longer my hat is an ace’s fit that made me drawl, made me laugh, made me tremble. Sure. Let me be from somewhere : Montana, Alabama, anywhere but snow and all things seasonal that never last. I’m up from where I’ve been. No rain, no hiding, no hard hide brim to keep me from the heat-click stars. Dirty Faces
Tied a whale’s tooth to a piece
of sinew for a lanyard, they called me Mountain Girl. When I wore an agate it was Old Soul, One of a Kind, the Last of My Kind, Calamity Jane. Gypsy. Lefty. Isis because I study myths, Hey, Doll Face, and gave me sound- tracks, West Side Story, My Fair Lady. Musical, Hip-to-the-Bone, Too-Hot-to-Trot, Addictive, a Hard Card, and when I collected wood, men called me Keeper. Been called Hater because it wasn’t hard. Lover, Broad, Cracker, Score. Been called Moral. Been called Random. Been called Sunshine. Been called Whore. Greyhound East
Two blind guys get on talking
to the driver, grinning at the daybreak, feeling out the sun. By Dallas, the man in the aisle, jingles a canister of pills, three for five to sleep. I sleep through miles of homemade road signs, strawberries next exit. At Burger King, I watch a townie eating chicken. The ketchup met the mustard on the dance floor of his plate. I smoke a smoke, pirate hot-sauce packets. A dreadlock in Little Rock gives me the window and a southern slow drawl that works on me for a while. Share my whiskey flask with its hundred mouths stained on the rim. I get off to stretch on Bourbon Street. A woman hands me Creole food, a drive-by van throws fresh socks stuffed with a new bar of hotel soap and a Jesus pamphlet. Let the penny decide: heads, I take two mangoes; tails, a blanket for the bus. I sleep through Alabama. The flower peddler in the row over tells me I’m an orchid, tells me I’m the greatest secret. I tote myself like a sleeveless guitar. The sun rises higher than I’ve ever been. The driver points out the window to the Atlantic in case we are still thirsty. Everyone going somewhere, I follow myself to keep up. The poems on this page were previously published in Romance with Small-Time Crooks, BlazeVOX Books (2013)
|
