Outlaw Style: Poems

Brother Fain Carouthers, Summoned

Brother Fain Carouthers, Summoned FOR TOM BURTON As a boy under Razorback Ridge near Laurel Run where a wildfire licked the thicket in the fifties, I would find them in April on sunstones, dozing, a knot-cluster or a lone satin-back looped over, slack and harmless as a fire hose, and I would snatch him up by the rattle end and crack him in cool air like a muleskinner’s whip just to see the arrowed head explode, just to collect his little bells of bone. But that was before Brother Summers, who handled at Dolley Pond, Scrabble Creek, and Jolo, before word came how hard we needed hot gospel here. And lo, he wore the crown of snakes on his brow and the stole of braided living temptation tasting our heat, and he showed me in Hiram’s brush arbor beside the living water how to walk unafraid in a copperhead tangle, how to gather diamondbacks like so many kittens, nor was I frightened, nor struck while the brothers and sisters from over in Goshen danced to a scarred Martin guitar and the burning Word. Hallelujah. We are washed in the blood, hamona-chozosma. The wicked I have walked among and fought with and abandoned will call us daredevils and madmen, but I can read the cursive letters of a serpent’s spine and look him where the wet eye shines beneath its hood to seek my sweating face. 4 1SMITH_pages.qxd 8/13/07 10:44 AM Page 4 Even now something is coming to me by lying still in his mesh box with scripture scarlet on the lid: They shall speak with new tongues—they shall take up serpents. The words I utter are of no earthly tribe, though angels whisper them and the Holy Ghost listens and urges the sinner in me to sway that wonders shall perform, Oh, shanamaniala-roe, and he is stirring now, his heart-shaped head spitting black lightning. The anointing quickens my blood as the tambourine shivers and the house shakes like a weave room with its looms roaring. I have seen the weaver’s shuttle in flight when lint like snow filled the air, and I have heard the strings humming the hymn of weft and warp until patterns like fate formed on new tapestry. I have longed to touch the cotton in motion, but its spell is nothing to the canebrake’s eye, the coontail’s braided sull, the scent of dusty scuppernong leaves, and I no longer yearn to take up the pool cue, longneck bottle, nor necklace on a perfumed woman but want only this, a reason to kneel and gather to my bosom the devil tamed in the faith, ohfala-shanta-hava and the still waters at Jesus Name Chapel of Servants Learning, where I can see moonlight through the window falling on late wheat and the faces of glory angels as my neighbors shake and pray around me. I know false prophets will fall away and we will receive gifts of tender mercies, rachamin, and I am praising the Lord shining and ready to go mouth-to-mouth 5 1SMITH_pages.qxd 8/13/07 10:44 AM Page 5 with Zion’s fierce breath better than any textile king’s paycheck, better than motel sex or the other old curses, for God has lain on my heart and said I am in no danger from one whose head is bruised by my heel, and this room with no pews or pulpit is the grace garden. I am coming as he calls me, that stillness stirring his shape to a coil question. I am anointed, praising his holy fire and the ordeal of touching living evil, and if his fangs gleam and if he licks out, if he takes me in my frenzy, I could not suffer more happily, and if I die it will mean the Lord Jesus is ready to add my name to the living scroll, for the message is far deeper than mortal understanding. It is blaze-blinding tonight from far beyond with red words swirling like thread on a bobbin, all shining with use now and always far sweeter than tongue can tell. 6 1SMITH_pages.qxd 8/13/07 10:44 AM Page 6 ...