Teahouse of the Almighty (9 page)

and gut swirling, what stiff number

was the blanket, scissored felt

and eye buttons, glitter elmer glued

to gone outlines, names too simple

to be so hard pronounced. more

than that, even more than conjured

million, this cock/tail, this twitch

and drool, this vomit, this legislation.

RELATED TO THE BUTTERCUP, BLOOMS IN SPRING

I.

What do we do with these huge gifts of the throat and tongue?

How do we manage?

II.

I used to believe that nobody but me could see

the stars shimmering riot outside my window.

Mama, my stars are here,
I'd say,
my stars.

I welcomed them with a notebook, toothmarked Bic,

and teeny revolutions crammed into the stingy space

of a college-ruled line. I wrote until the precise script

wandered, until the stars blinked themselves dim

and said
good-night Patricia Ann, it's late even for us

and it hurts to watch how hard you dream.

One morning, I woke to find whole pages filled

with a single word—
anemone.
Over and over, ens

and ems straining to stern Palmer Method hilltops.

Anemone. Anemone.

Ms. Stein,

I can't explain the dizzy I felt the day you chalked

that word on the board and said,

Who can pronounce this?

I wish I could grant you breath here,

but all I recall is dark hair vaguely flipped, a slight sour

to you, and the wary smile of a young Jewish girl

teaching on Walnut Street, just down the block

from your million miles away.

Funny, how you twisted me

by introducing a word

you figured would stump us all,

funny how I bellowed the odd accents

and a light grew slow and unbeckoned behind your eyes.

That one word was sweet silver on my new tongue,

it kept coming back to my mouth,

it was the very first sound I wanted to own,

to name myself after,

I wanted no one else to ever utter this.

Even now, listen to how
anemone

circles, turns round, and surprises itself.

That day I gave that word a home just under my breath

and at least a hundred times

I drew on the drug of it, serving it up to the needing air.

All this before I knew what it meant.

(If you never remember feeling that way about a single word,

sensing a burn in the sheer power of its sound, lift up

your poetry—all those thick, important pages—and see that

it is resting on nothing. Then shred those sheets, toss them

to sky, and lie prone beneath the empty flutter. You must

own one word completely before you can claim another.)

Ms. Stein, go ahead,

make me nine again, take me back

to when I wasn't afraid of anything

except long division and the words
Go pull me off a switch
,

when Karen Ford and I pulled our panties down

and wriggled up against each other for new taboo,

Ms. Stein, I couldn't
stop
writing.

I wrote myself angled and tress-topped,

I wrote myself hero, I wrote myself white,

Cherokee, cheerleader, distressed damsel in Alan Ladd's arms,

I wrote myself winged, worshipped, I wrote long stories

where I was always the primary twinkle, the beacon,

inevitably envied. I wrote
anemone
over and over

in rigid hand, the loops and hilltops perfect.

Anemone. Anemone.

When I was nine, the barbershops left their doors open

and all manner of glorious bullshit spilled out,

charms and curses spritzed with that mango oil

that makes black heads shimmer. Balls of sliced nap

slip sliding the tile, my people razzing and razored,

the dozens in effect, sentence songs, spontaneous doo-wop

where any two lines came together to make a corner.

I was little woman, sweet little crumbsnatcher,

baby you a pretty one,

won't be long before those boys start sniffing around.

I'd squeeze my eyes shut, loving those hold-on lies.

I knew these men would have a place in my stories,

crowns wobbling on sculpted scalp, all their

ain't done beens
and
musta haves
and
done gone for goods

languaging the air of the world I had waiting.

I wrote their bodies arcing over mine,

their Lucky Struck smooches on the top of my head,

their lifting me and whirling me 'round

till nothing made sense but the spin. I wrote about

that damned heartbreak in their eyes, miles north

of the heart, how they stayed mad all morning

at that whiskey bottle. I heard them talk about women

with both craving and knives in their throats. Together,

we waited for the stars.

Come on in here baby,
they'd say,
always carrying that notebook.

Come on in here and sit in this chair and write me something pretty.

Ms. Stein, you unlatched this fever. Wherever you are,

may you be blessed by whatever God means to you.

Anemone.

A sweet beginning I can hide in my mouth.

I live on its taste when my pen won't move.

WHEN DEXTER KING MET JAMES EARL RAY

There was a tender in them both, a place picked raw.

As Southern men do, shirts buttoned hard across the throat,

the clasping of hands that know weather,

eye linked to eye, unflinching, the flat-toned, muttered
how-do.

How do you?

And the scripted respect, the pudge-cheeked preacher

inquiring idly after the dying man's days.

Whole wars in them, but just a single rupture.

Their halos florid, overglowing, some news reporter

hissing expectantly into a dead silver mic:
Say it, say it.

James Earl liver-toned, wobbling on old bone,

one lazy eye perked for it.

It.

The King rolls his R's, throats elegant, sweats bullets

into his collar. Having shaved too keenly, his beard

is peppered red, whispering blood. And still the pleasantries.

Exactly how does one go from commenting on the weather

It's hot. Awful humid. Smells like more rain
to asking
did

you frame my father's head in your gun sight,

did you empty his dinner chair,

lonely my nights,

pull back on that trigger?

Go on, get it out, boy. I'm dying heah.

Cameras whir.

The men are like fools, silent, damned respectful,

exactly a yardstick between them. And it's the windup, the pitch:

Sir, I have to ask you, sir, my kind sir, excuse me,

I hate to bother you sir, but I have to ask for the record,

Did you kill my father?

And if the answer is yes, will there be a throttling, an errant

sob, a small silver pistol slipped from an inside pocket?

And if the answer is no, will there be a throttling, an errant

sob, a small silver pistol slipped from an inside pocket?

Time has a way of growing things all huge,

lifting up our lives to shove in the splinter.

But, surprisingly, James Earl resists double take, and the wide-eye.

No, I didn't. No, sir. No.

That settles it then, that settles it.

And we're locked on this limp drama long after the credits roll

and
Hollywood Squares
has taken over,

long after the network has anthemed and dimmed to snow.

Time for some corn chips and a brew.

Time to fall asleep with a clear head.

Time to celebrate the slow sweet of Southern men.

It's time to rejoice in the fact that nobody killed nobody,

and high time to forget that somebody died anyway.

ALL HIS DISTRESSING DISGUISES

“Every day, I see Jesus Christ in all His distressing disguises.”

      
—
Mother Teresa

Which explains why I am tempted to kiss the hand

of the flushed minion shoving me aside for a perch

on the # 4. There is much immediate in him,

so much otherwise and elsewhere, I presume

he is famous in some spectacular way, who can say?

I believe that holy rests in the simple.

So I scan the skin of the
Post
vendor looking

for flecks of gold, I plot to touch the singed fingers

of the fry cook as he passes me eggs done wrong.

I listen for wisdom in the flailing screech of the B-boy

whose earbuds transport him to a place where

swagger is sanctified. Noting my brash appraisal,

he thrusts his little sex forward, which could indeed

be a blessing of sorts. The idea I pray toward could

be the drama critic with a pinky toe fetish

or the bottle of whiskey left burning at his bedside.

Or maybe my God is the man who heat-seeks

my areolas, forgets my birth, leaves clumps of Kung Pao

in the sink to tempt Westchester's reticent roaches.

He is so simply holy, spent, and slightly crazed

after climax. Damn, he
does
glow. How ironic

if my savior were a mere Bruce, his New England

stammer blessing my quest, kinking the gifted halo.

TEAHOUSE OF THE ALMIGHTY

July 17, 2002, Brockton, MA

Peppermint bites at the back of the teeth,

heat prickles points on an unready tongue.

The solemn eyes of Jesus contemplate from

black light:
My child, you will conquer the spice
.

You will swallow.
Every blend, from rose hip

to green, is sharp saccharine and colored

like blood. The menu, scrawled in Sharpie

on gray shirt cardboard, is blotched with

smoke, and, anyway, nothing has a price.

Splintered wood seats, carved across with

curses and desperate two-syllabled prayers,

strain to hold the quivering weight of

the devoted and the hard questions poised

by their thirst. Wherever it is not stained

or peeled back or missing, the tile floor

is scarred with sloping Scripture written

from the position of the knees—
As far as

the east is from the west, so Jar hath he

removed our transgressions from us.

Men with rheumy gazes arc over teacups,

sip cleansing and penance. Their suit coats,

once special at Sears, are ironed hard,

growing too airy, are inevitably brown.

The waitress, Glorie, a spit-curled kingdom,

is spritzed, flip-tongued, ripped too suddenly

from a Southern soil. She say:
'Fore you ask

what we got here is Domino sugar, thick cream.

From a seat near the reeking John, a crinkled

alto quavers, a choir by its ownself:
I love

the Lord, he heard my cry.
Miss Glorie stops,

shows the palm of her hand to heaven.

All faith, it is believed, lies in testimony.

The voice is old church, teetering, dim-visioned,