Streaming Read online

  when that wind comes

  oldest queen

  don’t you know just where we’ll be

  down with Red Dirt, Deep Deuce way

  feel much better.

  Twistin’ twistin’ twistin’ the night away.

  III

  WHERE WE HAVE BEEN

  for my father

  TAXONOMY

  Mornings made delirious, scrambling into thread

  out from dreaming, wrangling ways past delusion

  into streets unpaved, unproven, unmet. It was hard-

  over, no sunnyside—easy—and the only yolk—seated sky—

  rose streaming over the lot of us quickened in some

  strain no corona could bear resting, lean. Then

  the mesa sat standing wayside, case some giants made

  their way back into meantime, met us here, met us.

  We were tabooed, shunned, mocked and on our mettle

  most any pierce of day. Principal struck blows to show we

  deserved no mercy. It was splintering. Holes bored blisters

  each smacking wave. We were deserving. Wave after wave

  first grade took the test out from me. Never did spill again,

  no matter the syndrome. We were anything but beggars,

  so we scraped by, held up. We flung ourselves into every

  angle, withheld our curve. Split loose from whatever held on.

  Motown made our mercy. Only soothe in western rooms

  rounded in radio waves gleaning out the insides of maternal

  mind. Unkind charge firing synapse beyond reasoning goals.

  She moved through it like lightning, charging each wave

  with serious challenge, but nothing made it bearable and

  hands down was just a game call brag. Only hands down we

  laid was on ball courts. Home front was daily challenge, there

  was nothing certain other than each day just like the last.

  Lest they moved you, sent you off to foster somewhere no

  one warned might reckon. Sent you streaming. Gave you up

  like paper. Tossed, crumpled, straightened up, and smoothed

  out flat. That was that. It was nothing you’d remember, but

  we do. Still taste that strangeness surrounding ones who go

  between, move through other worlds while in this one. No

  one lives like we do, least it seems so, always on the mind.

  Why? Never time to question and still don’t know. Only thing

  we know we are different and not like you and even though

  we try three times harder it never works out right. No,

  nothing takes the sting of it, or scent either. We look off,

  sound off, give off a presence everyone else knows stay away

  and they do, so far from us we walk sideways vanishing

  points return to horizons soaking us in, distinguishing us.

  Mettle in our mouths as well, steely, and steal we did, still

  do, no one’s got more lift than us, no one’s got more hunger.

  How about the time they made us breakfast, real one, over

  that pancake house off of 40, remember? Dad’s Christmas

  to us right before seeing her in The Pavilion, little dish of

  butter looks like ice cream to kids like us. Made the eggs

  slide over easy just like he did before the madness. Man this

  is rough country, get that straight. Mettle this!

  SUDDEN WHERE

  Talon-plucked speckled trout from bitterroot bed, splish

  dream through cloud swells, turbulence imagining comfort

  on the way to forever. It’s the shake of it, the sudden where, like

  tossing suitcases into corners lent for foster kids untangling

  claws still extended. Not the best of us, no, not near what we

  once were, still only children, we scraped by, skinning knees

  on borrowed bikes, traded at the B & D. Cousin tamed since

  no one else had time to tender. Was a working world, cast

  out toothbrush hanging wherever a hook held still enough.

  Nine lives by nine, cut, torn, blasted to bits all around us.

  Walls sometimes plastered with brain noodle. In some

  fascination-led Western, so & so. Was it our baseball coach

  showed us conceal? Marched us in Sears & Roebuck, night

  before her wedding, wanted something scanty little girls could

  ease outside without losing dimes, much less dollars. No, coins

  better spent at any skating drive-in joint. Teens hanging over

  Mustang glass, blinking easy, leaving all intendeds, puffs,

  smoke, bottled-down splash to sink secure, like fishing, like

  something some winged friend would come down this way for.

  She was good to us, even when we couldn’t be to one another.

  Save the lifting, her heft carried us through. Far more than Siebert

  pranks, stealing plums when uncle carefully turned his head a-shy.

  Only a baby then, that was way back. No, here we were nine, or so,

  just old enough to flee the ’napper in filthy white pickup, come to

  carry us home, his, maybe never come back, but we ran, yes, ran,

  right round corners, alleyways, fields crossed the way to coach

  who threw down, challenging the perv, ’til he fled from what he knew.

  Next year they had me up in Leoti, riding killer horses, crow on

  shoulders, toughened up like Clint might be, I was the High Plains

  Drifter at ten. Least that town thought so. A Woodlands girl here emboldened.

  Never right for roping. Just running all through time. Split sometimes,

  just to joke it. Before laughter was real. Back when hard was

  a given, a gist for gimmicking while winding backroads with

  the curved spine of kids who stayed hungry. What was food? Mac ’n’ cheese,

  plums when one could steal some, peanut butter stirred with a spoon, oily,

  tasty. Now & then someone took us fishing. Maybe bluegill, maybe crappie,

  maybe we’d find something magnificent, give it up to make somebody happy.

  Far from us, anyways, we thought we were. Thought we were unbreakable,

  tried so many times to snuff ourselves—each other—blunders were our closest

  friends. Kept us from soaring over cloud dreams, swimming in deep water,

  skimming surfaces in grasslands without a notion when we’d make it back

  to the piney mountains calling us home. That was fostering. Sudden where.

  Being left to airs, to talons lifting, sometimes tearing scales as they raised us.

  STRIKING CHORDS

  French braiding her hair for the first time,

  my place in Cundiyo, up on Rio Santa Cruz,

  so far into our thirties our favs were classic past,

  we glimpsed into sistering like four-year-olds

  wondering what else was lost to us, our world

  augmented with pianist’s blues.

  Mom hammering peddles, ivories, hard

  melodies punctuating some strange prelude.

  Coffee and cigarettes, her basic falter

  as she tickled peculiar parallels between

  ceilings, curiosities, tumbled upside

  down with illogical clues.

  Kept us held there, caught up in wonder

  for something unreal, unseen, she knew.

  When wanderlust set in, we left one another,

  striking wide world, each alone, unproven tunes,

  harbor melancholy underneath long

  hair left loose to pull us through.

  Now gathering chords,

  arpeggio, we two.

  MEASURING UP

  It wasn’t socks missing from his feet,

  not elbow cloth unraveled unilaterally,

  not equal
displacement of chin and brow,

  nor the eye that sat a bit lower on the right,

  it was his knuckle that made me weep,

  clove corners gone wayside, like miniscule meat

  hooks clawed away bits of him each shift he made,

  invisible a timeliness unfurled. It was his muscle

  torn through, festering, the prosthetic hand, finger-

  width dismay all across his attempted grin, left

  there just like that, for anyone to see—it was his mercy.

  In the end we’re rarely beautiful, mostly placed

  away from compromising situations into poses

  offsetting what has become of us in some gawker’s

  unnerving eyes. Yet, he was, is, still here in mine,

  and I’m human because of it. Maybe only. Maybe.

  THEN

  Black Blizzard—hundreds of thousands of years to create the topsoil. Red from Oklahoma, Texas gray, brown Nebraska. The animals sensed it coming before the people. Chickens went to the coop and stayed there. The animals ran unsensibly, unreasonably. Clouds of dust made human figures in the wind. Could be an hour, or minutes to arrive. People fastened wires to the house to follow back—you could be blown away. Visibility no more than a few feet. Massive dusters. Some for days—during school hours—ten years of this. Silt on everything. Families daily digging out. Every surface in the house coated. Dust in food before it could be eaten, still eaten, field dirt with the food. Covering windows and doors with cloth, sheets, paste—air thickened, dimmed. Cloth to face felt awful—suffocating—dust, pneumonia took children. Radiation dry heat transfer, Kansas mercury 121. Insects seeking moisture, shade, centipedes, had to shake out shoes, sheets. Swarms—grasshoppers, gophers, birds gone from the dust, nothing to eat them. Jackrabbits multiplying, badgers, coyotes gone. Ten thousand took part in a rabbit drive. Thirty-five thousand jacks caught in a pen. They clubbed them to kill them, men killing them, rabbits screaming, while static electricity, from friction, took lives, sparked everywhere. Plain sand charged metal, blue flames, ball lightning, same safety wires lined to find houses—cars charged up with static, knocked people out, livestock ran in circles, lungs filled with dust—dead—only water 100 feet below, Sears & Roebuck sold windmill kits to fix up. Dad, ten. People ate tumbleweeds, then.

  AGAINST THE BARREL

  It was here against the barn, against the barrel, Dad, as a boy, tipped forward

  leaning into something double-cocked to split-ease his pain.

  Sam upon him daily, riding ridicule, hanging wooden signs upon his shoulders:

  “Cheap Indian Labor For Sale.”

  He was not for sale. This, at nine, he knew.

  Here, he’d thought of his sister, Rose, Rose, Sam had tried to trade

  for a boot hook, in the days when boot hooks were cheap, common.

  Contemplating reason he might let go—

  Here

  he considered the changeling, Sam, all the siblings certain he was

  placed within their nest as though a brother. Here, against the barrel steel,

  he

  deliberated his fury, his grasp, leaned

  a little further into openness there, split shot

  sequencing—

  Luckily Lucy, his hero-sister, came around this corner,

  cried to him, “Don’t, ’cause I won’t stop you, so they’ll just blame me.”

  She knew his passion, knew his wrongings, knew decision—not.

  Knew without her he would soon go right out of this world.

  Instead, she sat with him while they pretended not to cry.

  Stilled him.

  So we could pass here knowing, right here in this dust, she delivered him to us.

  So we could pass here thinking of our father, his boyhood shame.

  So we could pass here—

  pass—here—against every Sam Scratch—

  Pick up the long barrel, lean in, put it back down.

  DUST: DAD’S DAYS

  Dust storms darkened sky so, you couldn’t

  find your way around house, yard.

  Crack thick as a postage stamp gave way

  to dirt through walls, to black blizzard.

  Dirt in food—in everything.

  Damn it, the dust storms

  three days at a time.

  Couldn’t see.

  Dirt scratched, confused.

  Some people lost their minds, killed their families.

  Rabbits, grasshoppers everywhere, billions came.

  Billions of grasshoppers at everything.

  Rabbits, hares, really.

  Jackrabbits, had been in breaks by creeks.

  Bad weather came, they moved to flats. Stressed

  rabbits, hares, bearing six to eight young,

  instead of two, three in litters.

  Our fox terriers chased rabbits wildly.

  The Border collies trained them to herd

  them in, catch them.

  Us Cherokee, all surrounded by Missouri Mormons.

  Not as far out as Utah Mormons

  who believed lizard language, angels.

  We’d come out for the work there, freedom—

  Cherokee hunkered there in the dust, missing mountain green.

  Come winter, blizzard winds howled and

  howled and howled and howled and howled.

  Windmill was all you could make out in ground blizzards.

  Everything whited out so bright, you’d think everything was nothing.

  Windmill would freeze, have to heat it

  with pans of hot water, unseize it.

  Cattle horses drink on one side,

  Prince the Percheron stallion, on the other.

  Only my brother Willis could hitch Prince and Doll.

  She’d walk along, he’d pull.

  Dolly, an older cattle mare, would discipline Prince.

  He’d defer to her, even as an adult.

  No matter his size.

  She was his boss.

  Dust was our boss.

  Sweet corn, beans, pumpkin, squash, and tomatoes.

  Six rows beans, six corn, switch

  back and forth annually.

  People used a Go-Devil to cut back what they called weeds.

  Times were thrashing beans, snapping corn—

  We stripped ears of corn, threw into wagons,

  corn sheller gave cobs for winter fuel.

  Dry cow chips for summer fuel.

  Everything operated on one-boy-power:

  laundry, cob fuel, chips—wagons full.

  Made good crops till 1932. ’33, the wind came, the dirt storms.

  1934, gave it up, moved away,

  That land should have never taken plowing

  like the Whites around us gave it.

  The drought killed us. Killed us. Killed us.

  Shouldn’t have happened.

  They’d lifted the herd sod.

  Took the drumhead off the topsoil.

  Loosed it until it was crumble.

  Reckless. Recklessness. Recklessness.

  Dust.

  Dad said. Before WWII,

  before they found out it was more

  efficient to fly one direction over another,

  they didn’t understand jet streams.

  The Sonoran high

  moved north, took it all.

  Fall 1935-6-7-8 and on, threw a sack

  around a shoulder, dragged behind,

  picking left and right, we hit the cotton fields,

  picking people’s crops, any left.

  Tallyman recorded how much.

  Flies, sweat, back ached and ached

  for a penny a pound—dust.

  Teenager might pick a hundred

  pounds in a day, make a dollar.

  Older people more efficient,

  maybe make two, three dollars a day.

  We were always thankful for offers, come pick,

  money so hard to come by.


  Good owner’d say, “Why don’t you

  eat some watermelons?”

  Angle his finger toward some melons

  growing alongside the cotton,

  raised for pickers’ pleasure

  to keep us half-fit.

  Dust, insects, sweat, aching back, dust, dust…

  Everything dust. Everything dust.

  LEFTIES

  Grandpa Herb’s left elbow

  took a Mauser bullet, World War I, traced

  his brown forearm like a sleeve seam, red ridged track

  ’top skin showed when he pulled the fiddle down,

  since plucked right instead of left, played

  through egged mornings, Chinook dawns, pancaked right.

  Scrambled, boiled, poached,

  he’d crack any sort of egg you’d like.

  Stood them alongside hotcakes—kept them coming,

  kept them coming, so each morning break you’d rise

  awakened with the scent of story,

  every morning in his mapled house.

  E do di, Grandpa Vaughan, long before my time,

  leaded graze Dust Bowl Depression haze when

  something animal, once shown itself,

  miracle in time of not.

  Deer, rabbit, bear—we’ve all forgotten.

  His handgun thrown quickly over his right forearm,

  for balance, braced, targeting down take

  to feed the family, feed their hunger, feed them.

  In an instant he moved, rote, familiar—

  Iver Johnson 5 shot snub nose .38—