In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • Peaches, and: Naked, Midnight, Sober, Facebooking, and: Communion, and: Christmas under the Baobab
  • Adrian C. Louis (bio)

Peaches

Three peaches, lovely & unripe.Four days pass & my fingertipswhisper to my mouth they mightbe ready, so I break the tart hymenof skin & I'm horrified—the fleshis woody & ersatz, as bland asthe small town surrounding me.

Somehow comes the memory ofa flatbed rolling through the dust& desert summer of my youth.It's stacked with wooden cratesof sex-sweet California peaches.I was so young & unripe.

Somehow comes the memoryof peach-flavored brandy &decades of pulpy forgiveness.I was so young & unripe.

I do not wish to be young againwith a lovely, unripe thirst.Sweet juice, in ghost form, is fine. [End Page 9]

Naked, Midnight, Sober, Facebooking

Naked, midnight, sober, Facebooking when angel wings beat near my ear, loud, louder. Maybe the new meds, my ears have been ringing. Then some fluttering. Spirits? Shadows move on the wall. Then more angel wings. It's a bat. In my house. I scream. I'm a scared old man. Sixty years old & I run to the bathroom, peer out the cracked door & watch the flying rodent circling. I pick up a toilet bowl brush & enter my office. I crack the bat head, make it dead, one swing, pretty good, pretty damn good. I pick up the evil corpse with a pair of pliers, drop him in the toilet & flush. I make the dying earth a better, bitter place.

Communion

The fallen leavesof university treessmother this town &I believe the creepykid from the campusCrusade for Christwho serves me Swiss& mushroom burgersat Hardee's puts boogersin for good measure simplybecause one semester I totallywiped out his cumulative GPA.He does not understand thatmy gods rose up from the dirtof this continent & his did not,so I've got inherent rights to eatburgers sans boogers, but I don't.I smile simply, sweetly, & swallow. [End Page 10]

Christmas under the Baobab

Leaves are the spirit skyof trees, as protective asthe giant on flash-frozenpacks of peas or corn.Tree bark is like a stomachthat growls in an absolutehunger for another stomach.The baobab's my favorite tree.

Trees are smarter than God.Their roots make hymns ofthe self-inflected sex gruntsof the lonely in midnight hourswhen love comes tumbling down.Some trees are lone wolves,but most roam in rabid packs.

A girl with dark cocoa skin& I sat beneath a baobab treelast night at my kitchen tablein the dead Minnesota December.Ravished from earlier lunging,we lounged & shared a delirious,cold can of pork 'n' beans. [End Page 11]

Adrian C. Louis

Adrian C. Louis is an enrolled member of the Lovelock Paiute Tribe. He is a professor of English in the Minnesota State University system. His new collection of poems is Savage Sunsets (West End P).

...

pdf

Share