Trog
1.
I was poisoned in 2009
I cannot be poisoned again
Poison comes in many forms
Some of it is white powder
Some of it blows in the wind
Some is traceable, some not
I was poisoned in 2009
I cannot be poisoned again
2.
On the face of a mountain in Provence
is a defunct troglodyte village
My aunt was the last inhabitant
She died in 1948
Meth heads now shit
in the caves that were their homes
I stand on top of the troglodyte mountain
look out at a nuclear plant
fall to my knees and worship the cooling towers
I have returned to my roots
to my rightful inheritance
I descend the steep path
to the trog village
I sweep out my aunt’s
cave with a straw broom
3.
As a child I sat inside
my aunt’s troglodyte home
eating rock candy she made with a string
and sugar solution
Candlelight flickered on her face
I was in love with a girl
who lived three caves away
Her father closely guarded the pig
he kept in a shelter just outside
The girl was quite a bit older than me
already a teenager
She showed me her breasts
They were white and cool
Everywhere else her skin was rough and dirty
Shack
When I was nine I wrote a three-page treatise:
Why I Am an Atheist
At fourteen I decided my fate:
to be a hermit in the desert
I built a shack
and learned to squeeze water from rocks
My friends were horned toads, lizards and scorpions
We sat on the floor of my shack
and talked about the FBI’s definition of dangerousness
and how it is best predicted
The scorpion seemed especially knowledgeable about this
and claimed to be an informant for spies
from three countries
though he wouldn’t divulge which ones
A blue rock-lizard said:
You’re full of shit, Scorpion,
ego and bravado
all the stuff our friend Mitchell moved here to avoid
I don’t care, I told my friends
It might have bothered me at one time
but it doesn’t anymore
Mother Abandoned
After my father abandoned her
Mother moved back to the country
to live with her sister
in the house in which they’d grown up
My aunt was feeble
as she’d been in childhood
but my mother was strong
from all the farm labor she’d done
and still resentful of her sister
whom she considered a malingerer
Mother did some labor for local farmers
who felt sorry for her
She put on overalls and pulled on high boots
Behind her back they called her “Martha the Hired Man”
She worked harder than any of the men
though she could be mean to the animals
if they gave her trouble
The plaster in the farmhouse was cracked
and getting worse
as the house, after a century
continued to settle
Mother bought adjustable metal poles
from Ace Hardware
went into the leaky cellar
did some wrenching
propped up the first floor
All around her were cans
with dribs and drabs of paint
tools rusted on shelves
old baskets decayed
Mother looked over the baskets
and remembered the
Indians who had lived in rough houses
at the border of the property
Spiders made homes in canning jars
The rusty cream separator looked arthritic and thirsty
like Old Man Creighton down the road
The cellar clutter depressed her
She carried the cream separator upstairs
and flung it into the yard
She put her arms around the gasoline-powered
washing machine
–it must have weighed two hundred pounds–
carried it up the rickety stairs
fired up her dad’s ’55 Chevy pickup
and backed it through the yard
She ran over some day lilies her mother had planted
to the consternation of her weak sister
who stood behind the screen door
a handkerchief held to her mouth
Mother hefted the metal
into the truck bed
threw in some pipe
and a well pump
and drove to Padnos’s recycling yard
where she sent it all crashing to the ground
Smoke drifted around her
and a front loader shoved around mountains of junk
Rain was starting to come down
She took the grubby bills the attendant gave her
and drove back to the farmhouse
the truck rattling over every rut
Elvis
The female Elvis impersonator gets on the plane
her body a crate that
barely fits in the aisle
By the time she finds her seat
she’s fuming so hard
she sympathizes with the
most recent maniac
with an automatic weapon
who opened fire on strangers
She calms herself with vodka tonics
Her wife gently strokes her arm
After the third vodka
Elvis is muttering:
What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas
What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas…
Other Elvis impersonators await her on Vegas stages
She clutches the latest issue of Elvis Impersonator
There are a half-dozen acts she wants to see on this trip
She will sit in her seat
anonymous to them
They won’t know she is one of them
unless she walks up after the show
and introduces herself
but she won’t do it
She knows what their response will be:
a bored look
They don’t have her dedication, her devotion
To them, it’s become just a job
They don’t have Elvis in them
the way she does
in her blocky, powerful body
She always feels let down by their shows
like a compulsive porn viewer
who never gets off
She’s been impersonating Elvis since she was a little girl
long before she understood her lesbianism
Her wife is tired of seeing Elvis impersonators
but understands that it is her partner’s passion
and passion must be respected
VFW Hall
We pushed our cheeks together
in the darkness of the Hall for the Veterans of Foreign Wars
Your cheek was always flushed hot
Earlier that day I’d bought you a turquoise ring
from the antique trader next door
We were thirteen
with absent parents
After sex in your house
I smoked one of your father’s old cigars
Every day you made up a different story
about what had happened to your father
your mother
what had happened to you
to me
That about covered it
Family Services were lax in those days
in that place
They accepted our stories
and never bothered us again
I was a thief
I stole enough for both of us
I knew kid stuff would not stick to my record
I could make a new start later
That’s what we both told ourselves
and later, it sort of worked out