bubble-eyed buddha rests
on the bottom of a pop bottle,
he smiles at a crowd
that applauds the arrival of enlightenment
sometime this afternoon, you can count on a flash
to break the room, make our innards spill to the floor
and there, soaked up in carpet fiber,
they form miasmas that lift buddha
into heaven from that bottle of pop
and show us the light shining
in our faces
where it’s always been
wind shoots dark swirls of leaves
into the gray and rain,
over traffic and down into the yard,
over the fire pit and into the garden
we’ll sleep there,
crow stamped and dog sniffed,
snow blossomed and frost caked
we’ll tease fleshy snake roots
and cold slothful bugs
with toothy smiles and bony wits
in dew spring morning, we humans—
sunray warm, covered with fungus,
ripe humus, fertile breathing—
rise
meteor streaks trap goldfish flutter
sadness frosts a fallen leaf—
ice-skinned cherub leans frozen
in a tumble and chases after sighs
hung in time never meant to pass
the man at the corner
stands with daughter in hand
ready to put her on the bus
flash of yellow and fists of smoke
and the man is alone,
he waits a moment
backfire, woodpecker trill,
chainsaw whine and hammer fall,
he looks at his shoes
when he walks away
he leaves a hole
that hangs there all day
it will be a hot one,
hotter than july.
but hell, the water’s turned
and it’s almost over.
a cigar, a lighter.
not too many of these left.
the old lady’ll put a stop to it
soon enough.
bluegill today, maybe crappie,
no musky here anymore.
these bass eat the hell
outta everything that moves.
yeah, soon enough
the rains’ll begin,
chill will get in the air,
and all the talk’ll be football.
Tamale lady knocks at the door,
waves, smiles. On the drive,
a paper bag steams in a two-wheeled cart,
the kind old people push to bus stops.
In winter, the sweet ones, with raisins,
hot and precious in foil,
do more than the hearth for the inside of a man.
In summer she makes them with peaches
from old man Rodriquez’s tree,
sunshine dripped with honey.
When her cart’s empty
before she goes home to work,
she reads a little book
at a bus stop on the Avenida.
Grass burns blond.
Tree leaves droop.
Old men with gardens
douse azaleas with spouted cans.
Corn in the garden
died a while back,
stands skeletal
yellow, hard cracked.
People rush home
through brown haze to huddle in.
Evening, a hush falls along sidestreets.
Tire swings sway empty.
underneath here, there must be a wheat penny,
a reassurance from the roosevelt administration
things will be all right and people, here and to come,
will have had children with truck-spring backs,
joints strong as steel,
and minds like wells filled with sweet, cool water
so far, rows of shark-tooth carpet strips
with foot molding jaws bite before they come up,
and again later in ratcheted, skeleton piles
thrown onto the refuse out back—
tarantulas in the sun like bad memories
decades of skin dust, carpet glue, dog hair,
fingernails, a light bulb, a capsule–
in a lipless hole, on a dusty bed of insulation
a hospital bracelet: “Ronnell James Harlan, 4/10/98,
newborn, mother, Katrisha Lorene”
strings of weave trail across the floor
to rolls at one end of the room—
old times, old faces lifted,
new times to form the room into a thing
useful and needful of people who make it
before the boss comes, I look into dog-stain corners,
under the roof incline, behind the knotty pine,
into the attic at either side, where a wheat penny
might have rolled after slipping from a pocket,
dropping from a dresser, falling from a child’s hand
new pad, new carpet, new ideas;
a room that smells of the modern age
and under this carpet or the next,
a wartime, red-painted zinc lincoln,
say 1943, when times were tough
and people bought things with coupons
Buzzing heat murdered
children’s squeals and shouts at noon.
Swings hang plumb to center,
chains and seats too hot to touch—
brittle grass, frying-pan asphalt.
At dusk, the kids peer out front doors,
turtle back where they came from.
Down the street, machine rattle and hum,
not a soul stirs, dogs pant under cottonwoods,
even cats cower under the shrubs.
Hammocks flutter in a hallway of front porches.
A funny little man with a bent back and one foot—
the other he lost in the “big freeze of ’83”
while drinking the last of his Sterno
and breaking rock with a can of tuna—
smells of wood smoke and burning tires.
He runs calluses through his John the Baptist wave,
and says the denim in his jeans
is greased with the handshakes he’s had
since he picked those pants up
at the Salvation Army.
He mutters as he listens
to the semis snap steel plates above,
in his hand, he holds cards with tattered edges,
and crayon pictures, memories, he says,
of Thanksgiving, Christmas, Father’s Day.