The Tatters

The Midden

6 The Midden Blue stone quarries stone of touch stone marker or the stone left behind shell middens and clay pipes and passenger pigeons dressed in blues the stone that gazes heaven side up the day which is red and pink corners Burnish the blue stone & quarry the earth dynamite time Perfection is time’s work or what makes bluestone blue or what makes a quartz crystal Halo surrounds—core of labyrinth—glow departs from an ember Opposing fire & fetching cool petals quietly foxed or bat claw unhinged cut from mussel shell or bone buttons lie underground Walking through coals into a city within the fire entering the ember, encased in a protective suit to bring out handfuls of what that world inside burning wood is like 7 Flame in the air, gas fields full of devil’s spit yellow eye of methane When the flame is in the air and the night is eye & thigh high paper laid on an ember browns then flames Walking inside the flame, or an ember of heated talk opening doors poured from the long-necked bucket or dug from a shallow seam Standing in the doorway of an ember the door is a passage that my friend leaves ajar Walking through embers: a marriage with its pleasures of heat and light and the pain of heat and light stoking the fire inside Oil pumps in a corn field Satan’s fires burn off the methane Freestanding coal shack & packed trailer parks of burning coals overflow the double-wide with its cathedral ceilings, whirlpool tubs, and master suites The landfill handed me a ball of paper, a washed-out small boulder of print. I cracked it open and read “Danny Kaye performing live.” And I thought, How long has he been dead? 8 Like the midden of books and papers stacked by the bed, make of it what you will. I put my rage on top to cultivate later, the midden of paper and print, headlines and ink, mixed pulp from long ago industrial and urban waste will topple and release a flood of ivory and soft grays and blacks Dust tops the PC, dot matrix printer, and typewriter in a thrift shop The Apple in the barn is boxy and hard Cords long gone Plastic phones turn a palm into light The inside awash with take-out containers—driver’s seat cleared of—cigarette butts, newspapers, plastic forks, spoons, and knives ready to go The captain’s logbook was inked heavy with stamps. I ask the longdead captain, Is it like a wax cylinder or like tree rings or like grooves set in foil? Is it Thomas Edison’s talking machine or Bell’s telephone? Is it an echo chamber of the ocean or a talking drum? 9 There were the sounds that I couldn’t carve, the blood I couldn’t catch, dust fell, sprinkling itself over the glass cases of artifacts, over baleen piano keys, carved dice, combs, and mirrors. In his log book I silently entered how the whale’s eardrums are as large as a child’s head (how each is painted with a frisky portrait of a man and a woman.) 10 I carve an animal into the logbook, cutting through a hundred pages of sea notes, of sightings, of oil harvested and rendered. I cut through accounts of the sperm whale’s death throes, of harpooners who froze as they closed in on the chase. With my pen, I carve another animal into the book. A tooth out of a tusk. Baleen into corset stays. Press breasts and penises into bone, I make fine canes for gentlemen. 11 Underneath the childhood clothing, grade school valentines, and schoolbooks my mother stored in a trunk, what shows? An arm? Toe? I like to stick my feet out. What gives my presence away? A rumpled sheet under the blanket? A barely perceptible ripple. Sitting perched on letters and newspapers, under the mattress, tables, and on chairs and inside shoe boxes Bread box Of the other books Leaf press Prayer-card holder Toast tray I store neatly pressed handkerchiefs and hand fans embossed with bible verses and funeral home ads inside an encyclopedia Press a green spider into the book, cross-eyed and alive and already very flat [3.141.41.187] Project MUSE (2024-04-25 08...