WORDWRIGHTS #2 • Spring 1995 Edition • $3.95 US • $4.95 Canada
POETRY by Hugh Biggar • Rob Content • David Franks • Michael Fulop • Loraine Hutchins • Bruce A. Jacobs • Lisa Kosow • Sara Levy • Cynthia Matsakis • Sibbie O’Sullivan • Jose Padua • Patrick Phillips • Meredith Pond • Rose Solari
PROSE by William O’Sullivan • Jose Padua • Barbara P. Rosing • Noah G. Teates • Jim Williamson • Glenn Moomau
GUEST EDITOR: Rose Solari
FRONT COVER: Rose Solari
HOME
A poem by David Franks
REALLY • REALLY
Morning • lay me out • in lines
& • snort • my • dust
Morning • I turn my back • on
Regret • only • to get hit • from
Behind • it’s • O.K. • it’s that
Way • ‘‘a new world’’ • is • only
A • new mind • let it chatter
On • I’m • gone • the
Past • is • the past • &
I’ve run • out of
Puke • my tears • are
Dry • throat • choked • everyone • who’s
Fucked with • my • life • I • forgive
Can’t • hold • on • to • the
Anger • let it go • we’re
Common • place • & • we do • really
Break • each • other’s • hearts • this
Tragedy • it’s • down • & • dirty
& • it’s • really
Tearing • us • a
Part
A poem by Jose Padua
The Angel of 11th Street
At the end of another drunken week
of beer and whiskey and wine
I walked home
and on the street I met a woman
who bummed a cigarette from me
and offered a piece of candy in return.
She told me she was heading
to 11th Street by St. Mark’s Church
to make money by giving guys blow jobs.
She was young and beautiful and spoke
in tones of the brightest white light,
and I wished her luck, said goodbye
and walked away.
And I’ve seen people hit by cars
and people OD’ing on the street
as crowds gathered to watch,
and I’ve seen people staring
into space at nothing
because there was nothing left to see
that didn’t make them sad or mad or weary,
and I’ve seen men and women
step from the doorways of buildings
where their friends or lovers live,
each parting a necessary loss
when the only thing left to be
is alone.
And as the days go by
what you remember most
is the distance between things,
the endings of great moments and pleasures,
and as you walk
in the sharp eye of the midday sun
or beneath the cum-colored shining
of a crescent moon
the weather is always
the same.
And tonight
The Angel of 11th Street
is standing on a corner
selling blow jobs and buying candy
to keep the devil at arms’ length
and heaven close to the steady beating
of her holy heart.
A poem by Bruce Jacobs
Road Service
Newborn infants know how to swim,
but forget within days.
Laughter is fear mixed with safety.
An anthropologist says these things
on the radio. Then comes the next talk show.
Tonight’s guest: an ex-reporter who was reborn
handling snakes in Southern Appalachia.
Something, he explains, about the way
a preacher extends his arm toward his wife
in front of a small congregation
with a four-foot rattlesnake in his hand
can make a journalist want to know poison.
He says this slowly so no one gets hurt.
Poison. Poison. A preacher swallowing.
Adam’s apple asking, ‘‘Who do you love more? Me
or this woman? Give me her hand.’’
I like driving to conversation.
The ex-reporter is a born-again Christian.
He sighs when the interviewer asks him
how he’s so sure of instructions.
Are his hands calibrated? Can fangs make mistakes?
He doesn’t like this line of questioning.
His hands are not machines, he says,
and snakes do not follow orders.
It is hard, he tells the host, to speak of Jesus
into a microphone, try to inject faith into the air
of half a million commuters
straining to hear him over engines.
I turn up the volume,
but the vibration keeps getting louder.
My oil light flickers with bumps in the road
while the ex-reporter talks
about the black rattler rolling
in the preacher’s hand
as if turning its cheek from the holy man’s wife,
rolling, like a child waking in surf,
or a man laughing at dreams of drowning.
I have very early memories
of sinking. I can’t imagine joy
in submersion. Nor do I think that Ellen
would let me hand her a rattlesnake.
But then, the ex-reporter believed
he was covering a story.
Now he writes books about grasping serpents,
and speaks in a low voice, as if he knows
I drive a nine-year-old car in the dark.
Soon there is no shaking the clatter.
Even at full volume,
I can’t hear the ex-reporter.
The oil light flares.
I think he’s worked up to cobras.
I imagine an oil pump spurting venom,
crippled pistons pulsing in place.
At an all-night Mobil, two quarts of 10W30
free up the radio. I tell the clerk
if I can’t make it where I’m going,
I’ll bed down at the pay phone.
He laughs. Says he’ll cross his fingers for me.
I get through on the seventh try.
‘‘Hello, caller from the Mobil in Maryland,’’ he says,
‘‘You’re on the air.’’
I tell him that I want to be an ex-reporter,
that tonight Ellen asked me
if I’ve been afraid of my body
since my father’s stroke.
‘‘I’m not a sex therapist,’’ says the ex-reporter.
‘‘I know,’’ I say, ‘‘but my father told me
I could trust a Honda. Now I’m somewhere
off I-95, with a bad rattle under my hood.’’
He tells me to drive south, leave the radio on.
By the time I make Virginia,
he’s saying that children of divorce
should never be mechanics or snake handlers:
the loss of belief weakens motor centers in the brain.
He’s just getting to the oil lines of Hondas
when I lose him.
I scan the dial, bring up
Appalachian bluegrass music,
a comedian killing a nightclub crowd,
and then a whoosh, the sound of oceans.
