The music went out of my mother’s heart
when the car overheated.
We stood on the interstate, passed up by a herd
of travelers who seemed to hardly
notice a boy or his young mother’s broken heel,
her blue dress whipping like a flag. But in my heart
I knew a hero would appear. In my heart
I knew the heat,
would ease & someone among the herd
would stop to help. I didn’t think this was a hard
wish to fulfill. My mother would be swept from her heels
by a man with a ten-gallon hat on his head.
We’d be saved by one of those head
strong heroes who rode into her heart
every Saturday evening with heat
rising from the mouth of his pistol. A herd
of hard
nosed rustlers would ambush him from the hills
and he’d blast them back to Hell.
Sometimes dinner would overheat
on the stove. Sometimes her head
seemed clouded by the smoke rising from her heart.
Sometimes I heard
gunfire come all night from my mother’s room. Hard
nosed bandits knocked to the hard
wood floors of saloons. Bandits hustling back into the hills.
All day she lay in bed with a pillow below her head,
her hands resting above her heart,
her body warmed by the heat
of her little black-and-white TV. I heard
her laugh when a villain was killed. I heard
her cheer when the hero softened the town folk’s hard
ships and then rode away. She’d say I wonder if he’ll
come back someday? He’d vanish just as the other men had
done . . . When our car overheated
that August, the man who came to tow us was not a heart
throb. The sun refused to set in the distance; there was enough heat
to harden anyone’s heart. We’d been heading toward the hills,
my mother told him. She’d heard that was where my father lived.

MOTHER TOSON

MOTHER TOSON

He was whole evenings
sometimes & pet names,
he was whole breaths
changing into steam—
we’d never leave
the front seat. I’d straddle him
& the odor was black & new
& someone pushing inside.
The radio dial
was a strip of green light
& his fingers turned
my nipples until the music
eased out of me.
He was a palm full
of tiny deaths, desire
spilling cell by cell
& desire swimming up stream.
He was whole years, Son,
& even at this moment,
he walks through your face . . .
He’d drive me home
& at dawn I’d stand
behind my mother’s house
hosing between my thighs.
It was on one of those nights
that you were conceived,
& with me then,
as I fanned my dress
until the water dried.

BLUES PROCESSION

BLUES PROCESSION

for Uncle Bubba (1953-1985)

Come tomorrow, our car had to be bright
As the preacher’s capped teeth.

They’d found my uncle’s car bundled
In the arms of a tree;

The gin bottle & windshield cracked,
The flesh like moss clinging to his body . . .

My mother knelt with rag & bucket
To knuckle insects from the grill.

I did not know the detours of grief.
I did not know the detours from grief.