Another Creature: Poems

Sweet Engine

Sweet Engine God for the furnace, god for the fire, god for the engine of love, where are you now? I’d have offered my willing throat to your soldier, crumpled beneath his cloak’s red hem. Instead I climbed the rickety ladder welded to the side of my apartment house, thirty feet up to a black tar roof to lay myself oiled and shining in June sun, a burning offering. Cigarettes, radio, sunscreen rolled in a fish-print towel around my neck, little red Igloo made for a six pack in my left hand. The ladder’s black enamel held bright heat. Sometimes a sandal would slip and I’d stop to toss it above my head, where it stuck in the sandy tar. Sometimes the towel cape unfurled and scattered its goods below in the weedy alley. Is it now I should say one has to be drunk to make a climb like this, and young enough? Thirty feet up to drink beer and smoke and burn down the afternoon waiting, while under their rooftop ceiling the ancient Johannsen sisters watched their game shows 3 and softly applauded, rocking in heirloom chairs and drinking weak lemonade; and under their rockers’ rungs, their braided rugs and slippered feet, my own kitchen sat with its huge white stove waiting, cold dishes waiting in the old chipped porcelain sink, greasy shades drawn down tight and a ticking clock and a telephone not ringing. But then around three your blue pickup sighted: two blocks north, chugging its way up Pine to my very street! Your blue truck downshifting one block to my building, downshifting again and making its turn, sweet engine, into my parking lot. And then its door slamming, steps up the porch and your feathery knock, my belly-down inching, girl soldier, out to the edge of roof, the top of your blessed head turning as you rang the bell. I might have rained my venom down upon you. I might have bounced a beer can off your head. But I couldn’t stop watching, you running a hand through to smooth thick hair, you stepping around to the window to rap on glass. Couldn’t stop watching my self-not-there, the woman you wanted after all, away for the afternoon. 4 ...