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Callaloo 24.3 (2001) 821-823



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from No. 20 (Winter 1984)

Difficulty with Perspective

Clarence Major


I am in the coach, waiting
for the other passengers.
They're coming now.
I watch.
My mother
as a black-and-white
photograph.
The girls
in long dresses
from the brothel,
Mme. Ginoux,
two old ladies
from Etten.
Cabbage pickers.
Lovers of dahlias
and cypress-sway.
My doctor
with his leather
bag. A stock-holder
with interest
in the Oskar Reinhart.
I wait self-consciously:
with blue gloves,
a basket of lemons, very
chic, a cypress branch
on my lap.
Here comes a young girl
against a red background,
chinless high-stepper
with brooding face
borrowed from somebody [End Page 821]
else. My mother
as a child? My child?
The doctor helps
my mother up. Then
the girls from the whore-
house. Enchanted.
The horses
are restless: shifting
and kicking. I wait.
Others still come
out the station:
its doors folding out
and falling back,
with these walkers
coming through
like the careful
arrangement
of music.
Approaching
is the rock-star,
a girl with ruffled hair
from Burlington. My mother
says Minneapolis. She saw
it on TV. Vince called
her a mudlark! Monticelli?
Florentine angel
with dirty hair,
savior rebel spirit!
Now: all the dancers
from last night's dance
with lights still
suspended above them
and the darkness too.
Here, sailors and lover-
silhouettes returning
from the drawbridge [End Page 822]
with the sun big
as Texas behind them.
I'm patient.
Potentially, I am
a good passenger, too.
I slide over.

I keep sliding over.



Clarence Major is the author of several award-winning novels, including Such Was The Season, Painted Turtle: Woman With Guitar, Dirty Bird Blues and Reflex and Bone Structure, My Amputations, as well as stories collected in Fun & Games (1990), a new edition of poetry, Configurations: New and Selected Poems 1958-1998 (a finalist for the National Book Award in 1999), and nonfiction, Afterthoughts: Essays and Criticism (1998) and Necessary Distance (2001). He has also edited a number of anthologies, including Calling The Wind: Twentieth Century African-American Short Stories (1993) and The Garden Thrives: Twentieth Century African-American Poetry (1996). He has received numerous awards, among them a National Council on the Arts Award (1970), a Fulbright (1981-1983) and two Pushcart prizes (1976/1990). He teaches at the University of California, Davis.

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