El Barril
Rent from DeepDyve- El Barril
In the one-time mecca of the hard-up honeymoon,we were both born.
Yours, a life above the waterfall. Mine, below.
And Annie Taylor? We were all schooled in her story. How MissMichigan schoolteacher took on the cataract at sixty-three. In herpetticoats and lace-up boots, clutching her good-luck-heart-shapedsatinpillow, she stepped into the barrel where, two days earlier, she hadplaced her cat to test pilot the way. Air pressured in by a bicycle pump,bung in the hole, mattress wrapped. And the fall, fall, fall, emergingtwenty minutes later. Only head gashed and rib bruised to proclaim:I would sooner walk up to the mouth of a cannon, knowing it was goingto blow me to pieces than make another trip over the Fall.
And in our two year, two year, two year fall. What was bruised if not broken?
Your C-3 vertebra, out of whack.Slack, from practice. Your tendons overwrought,too taut from the bow, taught by the bow.
And my base pain, in the neck.Now I know the days you play,curse Bach and his concertofor a doubled violin. [End Page 104]
James Thomas Stevens, Aronhió:ta’s, (Akwesasne Mohawk) attended the Institute of American Indian Arts, Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodies Poetics, and Brown University’s graduate creative writing program. Stevens is the author of eight books of poetry, including, Combing the Snakes from His Hair, Mohawk/Samoa: Transmigrations, A Bridge Dead in the Water, The Mutual Life, Bulle/Chimere, and DisOrient, and has recently finished a new manuscript, Ohwistanó:ron Niwahsohkò:ten (The Golden Book). He is a 2000 Whiting Award recipient and teaches in the Creative Writing Department at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
