Booths, and: Forecasting The Dragon, and: Rounds, and: Squaring The Twins

BOOTHS / Gary Fincke In Ambridge, Pennsylvania, a host Of people claim they've seen the eyes Of Christ close on the crucifix In a church, unison enough to Drive me through this steel-slaughtered town Where June after June I've visited For a festival's main-street length Of kielbasa, pierogies, and Sweet potato pie sold from booths By women from churches. Tourist, White collar, I've lost the lust for sausage, For anchovies that send out for beer, But here where I park is someone, drunk, Who might have swallowed thirty years Of ARMCO Steel, enough soot and smoke To keep him thirsty for the rest Of his laid-off life. "You're too late," He offers. "Jesus is over," And of course I smüe and shrug Remember, suddenly, the cop Who, outside the Garden Theater, Said "Sorry, you're too late, you missed it," Meaning Deep Throat, which had been raided An hour before. My wife and I Retreated, foolish with thinking We'd missed one of those moments when The eyelids of statues reopened, Though there are booths now where anyone Can stare at the sequels, where the film Is looped so it's impossible The Missouri Review · 37 To be late. And some of those watchers Open their throats at the glory holes In those booths, do their Linda Lovelace In spite of how AIDs might lay them off. Christ, on Christmas Eve, driving in sleet For presents, I found a rest stop For my holiday season cramps And faced four cars whose drivers were Watching me like I was an oncoming Jack-knifed truck. I walked into WOMEN. I hooked the door of that dark stall As if I were some giant dyke Who wanted to be alone with herself. I had needs. I listened for footsteps And brainstormed the way the priest Of this forlorn parish must have done, Lost as Ambridge where the street lights Blink off early to save money; Where, if anyone believed in Secular hope, he'd claim he'd seen fire At night, the riverbank spreading To an open hearth to smelt all Of the pointlessness left behind When each of the steel mills closed. So there might be the shrine that lasts, A sort of lay Lourdes for employment. Though I heard nothing but the men Next door. Though the priest's traffic has Turned to single cars, to gossip, regret; And now Tm talking with someone Who explains the priest is on retreat, Resting and healing like steel, like The hung-over, like I thought I was Healing in the car as I pulled Back into the sleet imagining 38 · The Missouri Review Gary Fincke The blowtorched dreams of night sweats, The evening drowning of pneumonia, The end game splotches of sarcoma That wake some men to flame, to ashes, to The opening and closing of painted eyes. Gary Fincke The Missouri Review · 39 FORECASTING THE DRAGON / Gary Fincke When Huang Ti, the emperor, sent Hsi and Ho, The imperial astronomers, to explore; When they shipped out for every place east of China, The lands of Fu Sang, to see if the heavens changed; They saUed to America, west coast, arrived so Long ago their voyage seems historical hoax. When they tired of Guatemala, of Mexico, Four thousand years before Commander Columbus; When they made it back to China, they reported To their boss, who Ustened and nodded and returned Them to their science, to forecasting the dragon, The one who crossed behind the sky to eat the sun. When the solemn gongs still worked. When a multitude Of clamor could retract eternal night ... if throngs Gathered soon enough to drum fear in the serpent; If the sun's first missing mouthful were broadcast, what Hsi and Ho were hired to know, dating the dragon, Predicting its hunger for holy Huang Ti. And when Hsi and Ho failed, the oriental sun Bitten by surprise, the beaters not alerted; When, bored by the famUiar Chinese sky, they were Drunk and deUnquent, the siUy world saved, this time, By the deUcate appetite of the dragon, The two were executed by their lucky lord. Or so one history...