What the Poem Wants, and: Small Boy, and: Django

What the Poem Wants

I want everything from the poem right now.I'm wanting years I wasn't born,our father a young man on a street he's memorizedin the hottest part of the day.Going to a diner he knows. Or a movie.The poem covers that over,pulls the sheet over its head without my asking.It happens all the time. It all does.The poem is stealing from Plenty-coups, the great warrior,his secret recipe for jerked beef. And from the air,the idea that language puts the coin between our teeth.Let me wander inside that, I ask the poem,and come back saved.But not now. I'm three floors up;the footsteps and engine exhaust rise and fill my room,and I'm becoming a beggar, or beggar lice, or moths;I'm spilled everywhere. The thief in mewould sleep off these hours, their graveland jackals and graves, none of them real,but the poem is not partial to waste.The child in me donates my fingers to the poem,would cut them off and use them in soupif that would bring the poem happinessor even rest. But the poem is ashamed I feel that way,sorry for my teeth, and fingers,and the eyes in my head.Never mind, the poem says. It was nothing.

Small Boy

How does he keep his hand to his heart,the other to the olive sprig,600 years with his back to Memling's cracked gold,and if this is a wall, what wall,where? If a wall, then a square nearby,worn blue stones, and an old man telling fortunesno one pays him for.            Memling's given the boy real wingsoutlined in pigeon gray, and a boy's tunic,a boy's pursed mouth, eyes that reflectthe same light the olives catch. Maybe the light'sthe church door opened to noon, the square asleepas if poached in oil. Or it's the square of a windowin a monk's cell, quick daylight where no monk has slept in years,but somehow, one last question of faithhangs in still air and grows            until it is no longer a small matter.Where someone thought to cross the river,a medieval bridge is standing,its millstone long since rolled into the riverbedand become native. Just inside the church,someone whitewashed a wall, painted it with gilt,the blue of a boy's tunic not so blueas his shadow, if he can still cast one. Not so blueas the vein he means you to see. It's still yoursunder his skin.

Django

Something in the verb to awake,            his fingers inside the musette,the prodigy in the caravan          alighting withinthe wagon fire,          the one hand a claw after thatand how it sounds on the stem            not to tease it.Or to want this day,          its edges tinged with silt,train sounds          and bell sounds,so much the street—            Django between the warsand later a favorite          of the occupation—"every man once in Paris,"            the saying at the front.Or just our own smoke rising            from the leaf pile,the fretwork of a slim decade;            little wing glissing for Django with his Selmer and his bum leg,            his points remade acousticand jolly and sad.            The Hot Club Quintetand that decade marking him,            most of his kinand friends gone.            Paris forcing oneleastwise to live.            A chicken's wrung neckand the tinny heart            of a plucked string. When is irresolutionheroic? When it's the lyric            low metal belly. In the endyou are alone            with your work.