Riley - Romeys order

acknowledgments

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the journals in which earlier (and in some cases quite different) versions of this work first appeared:

Poetry: Campground, Chord, Clary, Diorama, Drift-Raft, Drill, Filmstrip, Flint-Chant, Hutch, Map, Nullaby, O, Picture, Rage-Lodge, Roses (as The Roses), Scroll, Skillet, Story, Strand, Tablet, Turn

The Threepenny Review: Box, Object, Skin

McSweeneys and The McSweeneys Book of Poets Picking Poets: Bell (as The Bell)

Picture was reprinted in The Pushcart Prize XXX: Best of the Small Presses 2006, McSweeneys, The McSweeneys Book of Poets Picking Poets, and Poetry Daily.

Drift-Raft and Chord were reprinted in Poetry Daily.

The author wishes to offer his thanks to:

Poetry and the Poetry Foundation, the Unterberg Poetry Center of the 92nd Street Y, the Peninsula Artists Fund of Silicon Valley Community Foundation, the Greg Warren Fund

CA,BC,CK,ET

And especially Ben Davidson, Chris Kennelly, Kay Ryan, Christian Wiman, Frank Bidart for careful attention given to this work.

flint-chant

Once upon a time a ditchpipe got left behind behind Azalea Industrial, back in the woods backing on to the Ashley, where old pitch-pines and loblollies grow wild. A mild pesticide-mist was falling and mingling with paper-mill smell and creosote oil the morning he found it. The boy shook and sheltered in its mouth awhile hoo-hoo! hey-O! and bent and went on in. It was like a cave but clean. He C-curved his spine against one wall to fit, and humming something, sucked his shirttail. He tuned his eyes to what low light there was and knuckle-drummed a line along his legs.

What the boy called inside-oku called him back. He was hooked right quick on the well-bottom peace of the pumicey concrete and how sounds sounded in there, and re-sounded. Tight-curled as he had to get like a cling-shrimp one day, a pill-bug, a bass-clef, a bisons eye; an abalone (ocean-ear!), antler-arc, Ark-ant, apostrophe another sure as clocks a cool clear under-creek would rise, and rinse him through, and runnel free. Hanging in a green-pine O outside were sun-heat and smaze and BB-fire and Mosquito Abatement. Inside there were water-limber words (and a picture-noisy nave), shades of shade.

picture

This is the house (and jungle-strangled yard) I come from and carry.

The air out here is supper-singed (and bruise-tingeing) and close. From where Im hid (a perfect Y-crotch perch of medicine-smelling sweet-gum), I can belly-worry this (welted) branch and watch for swells (and coming squalls) along our elbow-curve of river, or I can hunker-turn and brace my trunk and limbs and face my home.

Our roof is crimp-ribbed (and buckling) tin, and tar.

Our (in-warped) wooden porch-door is kick-scarred and splintering. The hinges of it rust-cry and -rasp in time with every Tailspin-wind, and jamb-slap (and after-slap), and shudder.

Our steps are slabs of cinder-crush and -temper, tamped and cooled.

See that funnel-blur of color in the red-gold glass? Mama, mainly: boiling jelly. Shes the apron-yellow (rickracked) plaid in there, and stove-coil coral; the quick silver blade-flash, plus the (magma-brimming) ladle-splash; thats her behind the bramble-berry purple, sieved and stored.

Out here, crickets are cricking their legs. Turtlets are cringing in their bunker-shells and burrows. Once-bedded nightcrawling worms are nerving up through beanvine-roots (and moonvines), and dew-shining now, and cursive:

turn

A bright-hot morning; me and Daddy; a fever-cloud of glassy-eyed iridescent flies. Up ahead, invisible heat-devils waver over our (brownbottle) boomerang of river; our rank-pink curves of bait-bucket chicken-neck marinate, and jellify, and stew.

We are walking the oyster-shell zig-path from my blood-home to the water, three hundred and eleven crunch-steps from back door to dock. This is Daddys day off, our day for blue-crabbing. That neon hum youre hearing? The colored jinks of flies.

Theyre all here today, every local-grown species, every flying insect with a taste for something spoiled: heavy-hipped houseflies and hairy-chested horseflies, bloated bluebottles, glossy greenbottles, dirtspeck-tiny screen-huggers too high-strung to swat. One minute back, they were hovering hairnet- (and halo-) style above my bald-headed daddy; now they are down-diving, and landing, in dark clots and clusters, on his eyebrows, neck-bones, knees.

Ninety-nine.

Along in here, our switchback crumbles down to shell-shards and powder. One hundred.

His breath comes out vinegary when he turns.

strand

Alphabet, sluice the porch.

Bind (and try to braid) our river-wrack and leavings.

Used to, it was cackle-berries and cat-heads with him when he dry-docked home.

Daddy: Mama, dont cook all the running out them yellows! Me: And raise them biscuits big, for sopping!

Other egg-names of ours Ive kept are hen-drops, and coop-mines (and -moons), and chicken-lights, and dumpties.

Here is the fillingstation-shirt he got from when he pump-monkeyed for money. The name-eggs (red-stitched and patched to where his chest would go) say Eugene on one side and Esso on the other. Happy Motoring! is tiger-tailed in script across its back.

Gas-smells the main meat. Grass-sweat. Gnat lotion, neckwise. Ghost-whiffs of goop for gunky hands.