Lee Kisling
Just One KissJust one kiss, in a world filled up
with darkness and disappointment, band aids and barricades, sunspots and insomniacs, virus and vanity in the belly of a world full of pressure and persuasion, angst and admonitions, foothills and phantoms at the edge of a world full of danger and discovery, full of worry and wondering, but just one kiss, lips to lips, eye to eye – just one stolen kiss, and sharing this, the taste of adoration and the breath of confession. Just the whisper of a kiss, in a world so filled up. Only one. Just one kiss. Maybe more. I Cannot See Your House from Herebecause I tore it down while
you were gone with a bulldozer and an end-loader and a dump truck. Took all morning and part of the afternoon—nobody was around except a little kid with a wagon. I gave him your front doorknob. Billy or Bobby something. Whether it is better to dwell in the house of mourning or in the house of mirth—a moot point in this case considering that you have no house at all. Sometimes the Spirit overtakes a person and he acts according to his (or her) preordained notions, lips a’tremble in the rolling backwash of dust and cracking timbers. From my east window I can now see the mountains far off, and closer in I can see the florid colors of the billboard- a little rectangle which portrays a serious young woman with wind-blown hair drinking gin. Well, maybe she’s onto something. Now I’m going to go search for her in the mountains where the wind always blows your hair and together we may find God above the tree line – her with the gin and me with my heavy unnatural grievances in Billy’s (or Bobby’s) wagon. DebrisSince I decided to give you some space -
some relief from my bright feathers and insistent call, I have arranged for you a place to lay low between Orion’s belt, Sirius the Dog Star, the Big Dipper and the blur of Andromeda faint in the east, which if connected by lines resembles Wisconsin, except for being 10 million billion trillion times larger, reaching back in time to the blink of creation. In the quiet of that great space you will not hear the creak of my bones in the morning or the sound of my drums after dark. From my position, it seems a lonely place. Still, in the space that I have set aside for you there are items of interest, and some things to avoid like the cloud of articles I’ve lost over the years: socks, books, pocket knives, bikes – all tumbling through the darkness like a thrift store without walls, or the cloud of crumpled balls of paper which were problem-child poems or high blood pressure love songs which missed the waste basket, or a gathering of the ghosts of my former self huddled by a frozen campfire singing old songs about so, so many missed opportunities. Behind the FenceRusted dinosaur innards
behind that seven foot high wooden fence parked in immobilized rows, the junk cars sleep. The big-finned Pontiac, the drop-top LeSabre, smacked up, motors seized, abandoned and forgotten, these proud one-owner beauties, tires bald with worry. They are ashamed and therefore hidden from view. The lapse in attention – the fender, the fluids, the column of steam, the roadless wheel turning in the air. Skid marks, glass fragments, injuries. The Rambler, the station wagon bones, we mustn’t see them. They lie behind the wooden fence. Maybe a shade tree man in a ball cap, no good, finally, at fixing the mechanically expired, or it might have been a lemon – this place is the end of the road. Dragged behind the fence to bleach in the sun and settle into the dirt for years and years of quiet rest - horns still, radios dumb, collector coins deep in the upholstery. In blistered mirrors, objects may appear more distant in memory than they are, more silent than the stories they tell each other. Behind the fence the private battered cars lay low – the humpback Dodge, the flatbed Ford. We mustn’t see them. The DarkSpeaking only when you have something important to say –
we call this silence. Repeating the errors of our ancestors – we call this normal. Attending the Methodist Church twice every year – we call that religion. That day you took the belt away from your mother – we call that an ending. What masqueraded as an affectionate graduation gift – we call that a suitcase. Asking me if Janet was pregnant when I announced our engagement – we call that conversation. A two-story wooden house with high weeds and leaky windows – we call that the home place. That day they blew taps at my father’s grave – we call that Wednesday. Waiting for something that probably won’t happen – we call this the future. That voice saying “I love you. You belong here” – we call that the wind. Being afraid of something, not sure what – we call that the dark. |
Last ImpressionOn the day he died, she was mad at him. Not just annoyed, not quite furious, but mad enough to not talk to him, to keep her distance. And then the distance overtook her. It was a bad bookend for a long life together. Ghosts go wandering with whatever they packed at the end, and so he would be sorry forever for some little thing that didn’t amount to much. She tries to suppose that the dead forget their troubles, especially if they were forgetful in their lives. Over time she found evidence to question this. The gate to the barnyard was left open. Tools found lying beside the car. And now there are muddy bootprints just outside the back door. These infractions made her stamp her foot and then she cried. At the grave, now, the earth has settled. The wind has taken away the yellow gold maple leaves. The first hard frost has finished off the flowers. His name on the stone seems crooked but maybe because of the hillside. Far off a church bell starts to ring in the town. I don’t know if saying sorry to the dead really works. Or if the dead can say they’re sorry. It would help me to know this. He watches her from some distance. She shakes her head, then smiles. He wanders away. There’s an end to it. Let Me Have a Look at YouExistential clothing, always worn where you
never go. Never worn where you always go. Jean Paul Sartre’s girlfriend’s sister’s dress—buoyant yet concrete, colorful yet transparent, ingenious but stupid, drab but poofy. A complicated outfit—hooks, snaps, and buckles, a quantum harness, comes with instructions written in every language except your own, made by unhappy rumplestiltskins at sewing machines in abandoned shoe stores. In a certain light, my dear, you are completely invisible. A gift, celebrating who you may or may not be, a statement of the shimmering uncertainty between us. I could help you put it on. I could bring my tools-- my wedges and flashlights, my torque wrench and shoehorns. I could zip it up, tighten the straps, turn on the electric lights. I could follow along behind, picking up any parts which fall to the sidewalk. And later, if you insist, I’ll help you take it off, but I can’t stay because, as you may suspect, at midnight I turn into a blackbird. The VoiceThe cemetery road.
I was called upon to take Cousin Audrey to the graveside service. She had little to say. Her dark dress seemed to swallow her thoughts. We were midway in a line of cars, each with a funeral flag. Then unexpected roadwork, orange cones and blinking lights. Diverted into a parking lot, inching forward, the flagged caravan moved worm-like past shops and stores as the rain began. The windows fogged. We stopped beside the loudspeaker of hamburger world. A garbled voice called to us from the other side, a bark of consolation. Yea, it said, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, or something like. I stared ahead. Audrey lowered and covered her face. The Lord giveth and something something. Of course He does. It seems fair. The rain fell harder. The wipers beat. But why are we here? What is a life, I thought, then remembered my sorrows, never far off. Hell from beneath is moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming. Yes, I suppose it is. My father’s house has many mansions. Right After She Said "I Love You"there was a loud screeching noise.
We both leaned to the east and the dishes slid off the shelves, the cups rocked on their hooks. The pipes groaned. The windows shook. Under the swinging chandelier, I knew that everything had changed beyond recognition. Words of love had stopped the earth. Outside, the wind died. Clouds hung in the blue sky like pictures, unmoving. How wrong can it be, getting that thing you want? Ride Lonesome ☊Lonesome is the name of the horse – hence
Ride Lonesome. I’m not sure how I feel about projecting human emotions onto animals. Or onto inanimate objects – most people riding a streetcar named Desire are only going to the bank or post office. The farm people going to Mount Zion in Iowa are neither Zionists nor anywhere close to a mountain. Not sure how I feel about riding this horse Lonesome. He does seem to know the way, at least. Probably, he’s going someplace lonely. But maybe, wherever he’s taking me, there will be another horse and they will nicker and rub their long noses, go for a meal together in the new green grass of springtime, and I’ll just wait by a fencepost, and think him up a new name. Cookie MoldHere are the Christmas cookies I said I would send.
I cannot come to visit again until the car is fixed. It’s miserable cold here but we got new glass in the big window which sometimes I look out of and just hope you are being treated alright. Little trees and bells and angels with colored frosting. Some of them look like your father, of course. You remember that Lois, your grandma, bought him that cookie mold she said looks like him what with the hat, and the baton that looks like a rifle and the boots. I know these are maybe a little disturbing, in a funny kind of way, but he helped decorate them as a way of being nice (to you) so I hope you will just eat them peacefully and think of it as a family thing—you know, a tradition like jingle bells or good king whatshisname, or arrest ye merry gentlemen-- like chestnuts, you know, roasting over an open fire. In the RainA man in a poem
is writing a long poem about a man who is writing a poem and a second man who is standing alongside, screaming at him for some good reason in the rain. |