Dave Smith - Hawks on wires poems, 2005-2010

Hawks on Wires ALSO BY DAVE SMITH Poetry Little Boats, Unsalvaged: Poems, 19922004 (2005) The Wick of Memory: New and Selected Poems, 19702000 (2000) Floating on Solitude: Three Books of Poems (1997) Fates Kite: Poems, 19911995 ((1996) Tremble (limited edition, 1996) Night Pleasures: New and Selected Poems (1992) Cuba Night (1990) The Roundhouse Voices: Selected and New Poems (1985) Gray Soldiers (1984) In the House of the Judge (1983, 2004) Homage to Edgar Allan Poe (1981) Dream Flights (1981) Blue Spruce (limited edition, 1981) Goshawk, Antelope (1979) Cumberland Station (1977) In Dark, Sudden with Light (limited edition, 1977) Drunks (limited edition, 1975) The Fishermans Whore (1974, 1993) Mean Rufus Throw Down (1973) Bull Island (limited edition, 1970) Fiction Southern Delights (1984) Onliness (1981) Criticism Hunting Men: Reflections on a Life in American Poetry (2006) Local Assays: On Contemporary American Poetry (1985) Edited Afield: Writers on Bird Dogs (2010) The Essential Poe (1991) New Virginia Review 8 (1991) New Virginia Review 4 (1986) The Morrow Anthology of Younger American Poets (1985) The Pure Clear Word: Essays on the Poetry of James Wright (1982)

Poems, 20052010Dave Smith stg under lg
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Beowulf, II, 22132214 gold eyes, unforgiving, for they, like God, see all...
ROBERT PENN WARREN Published by Louisiana State University Press
Copyright 2011 by Dave Smith
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
FIRST PRINTING DESIGNER : Mandy McDonald Scallan TYPEFACE : Minion Pro PRINTER : McNaughton & Gunn, Inc. BINDER : Acme Bookbinding Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Smith, Dave, 1942 Hawks on wires: poems, 20052010 / Dave Smith. p. cm. ISBN 978-0-8071-4230-1 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-8071-4232-5 (pdf)ISBN 978-0-8071-4233-2 (epub)ISBN 978-0-8071-4234-9 (mobi) I. Title. Title.

PS3569.M5173H39 2011 81154dc22 2011016044 The author offers thanks to the editors of the following periodicals, in which the poems listed first appeared, sometimes in different form: Athelon: A Dream of a Bat; Birmingham Poetry Review: Photograph of a Waterman, Bull Island, Virginia, Circa 1970; Blackbird: Allen Wheelers Love Tale, Bourbon in a Cup, Early Bird Dog Training, Ruffed Grouse Feeding on Moonseed Berries, Skating Waitress at the Circle Drive-In, Woman, Snake, Percy Sledge; Cortland Review: A Gift Boat; Fifth Wednesday Journal: Cumberland Reunion; Five Points: Blue Heron, Bow Cleat, The Holy Mother of Connecticut Avenue, Hooks, Ode to Waffle House, and Weekend Getaway; Georgia Review: Acetylene; Hopkins Review: Department E-7, My Fathers Tools, Rons Cat; New Letters: Christmas Concert, with Violin; New Yorker: Fireflies; Nightsun: Zydeco; Northwest Review: Fig Tree and Dissection; Poetry: Dry Cleaners; Potomac Review: Two Funerals in the House; Sewanee Review: Rubber Men; Shenandoah: Tongue and Groove and Seventeen Parts of a Duck; Southern Indiana Review: Colored Store, Come-Along, Goose Blind, and Moment of Here; Southern Quarterly: Frans Barn; Southwest Review: Hawks on Wires and Sawmill; Valparaiso Review: Glasses. June Bug was first published in Something Understood: Essays and Poetry for Helen Vendler, ed. Stephen Burt and Nick Halpern (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press), 2009. The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.To Deeand to my grandsons,
Baird Eley, Bowden Eley, Boyd Myrick, and Jed Smith

I.m. Larry Levis Long ago we stole the white sheets from rope-lines in the South. Five from the University, in need of a Halloweens prowl, seeking in the fall, full of seed, what even we didnt know, and came to the avenue of our country, its light golden.

October heated us, as if from graves wed come. Strutting, I was nun-for-a-day, chest, cheeks magic markered, beer waxed by dusk, and broke. So begged each face dragging the street, palmed coins, danced, and cried The Holy Motherof Connecticut Avenue loves you, and Thanks, man. Chanting folk songs, in chinos and Weejuns, we mugged Make our people free! Oh selves, do you remember a black mothers You! one pints greasy bucks she gave? Giggles, Christs Bless you, dearie, her withering 100 proof kiss sears me still, boils in dreams, in doorway winks if I hear her say What about those Selma girls? for I dont know a damn one and no snarl of Birminghams dogs was anything Id faced, not even my own sizzling of years I cant keep, so kneel now and try to know a tale of what good may be. * If I had a hammer, we ghosts hollered, raised better but each joking, flipping up and back all any countryman gave, and laughed as they did, Big Lyndons house dead ahead, white as hope, and no bodies bagged yet, no Vietnam, no homeboys, just us scooping each D.C. sweetie in high heels, silky bottom, or breasts we made do wahs to, Gods gifts, and wed have to pay no matter what, so He said, who said Love thy neighbor. We walked. We walked.

Came on cockroach and hulls of butts, cold pasta in bowls, lay down then on mattress, and I saw how our Monuments thick white rose shining, and rats eyes flickered past unmoved by songs we kept humming, candles stubbed, Bud cans fetched from a room wholly hung with fearful faces a childs hand had drawn. Brother? You! She said come, times money. What child on small feet so faintly came? Did I even hear, or lift her head to say Whose? I was mostly drunk, the rustling hump just what money was for, the sweet thing I was sliding inside a voice that kept saying Do me, do it harder nothing more American. * So many gone now, still the rancid joy lingers, what was in my head, were singing as if tall Mary Travers shimmers right there, no dragon we cant love, this is your land, my land, JFKs, Bobbys land, white boy blues, the jukebox news poets were rhyming, pillows rank, sockets sputtering, deaths lick-out spooling from wires we dont see. Where someone snaps a light black bubbles like a lingo I cant speak, now the walls so hot if I pissed Id melt what hand held, then she screams, and I see the kid, flames flash up, eyes are popping like corn, and I dont do a thing, no words will work, just air my mouth gargles. Next falls that cold feathery rain, and Miltons angel with me in flame-proof suit, that glassed, huffing savior you cant believe.

Hes fire haloed, his black cheeks blow in, out, make a ball-squeezing bark like a bullhorns MOTHER OF GOD , YOURE ON FIRE ! Mostly in lifes roll-back of nights I cant sleep a fire-drake face comes down to me, lips making Jesus, Jesusme held, hair-hank and skin, shrieking, You Son of Bitch dont you know who I am? Im the Holy Mother of Connecticut Avenue! * He whacked me, dumped me to wake in the streets dead dark. In culverts I darted, in shade and filth, whatever worked, changing color, choking on words, ghost in my terror. Going. As if hes my soul I hear that man one day scrape chair, haze of barbecue thick, eyeing his guest, say Pal, I got a good story for you. Nobodys asked whats elbowed his mouth or why he whimpers or what her name was or how it crisped his flameproof boots the color of her eyes, for (his voice here crackles), that cracker, buck naked, pale as Lulus moonbeam run off in DCs heart where I dumped him and cant one soul find him, say all I done said. Oh, hes years gone, and I call him up in a dream, hes talking like salvations bell tick-tocking, one fired-up mother.

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