Forward to the Virginia Chronicles
This is my first foray into self-publishing. I wrote this cycle of poems in early 2013, when I finally began to revisit memories of my childhood I thought I’d outrun or outgrown. As it turns out they were all still there, in living color, waiting to be given their moment in the summer sun.
There’s so much I want to tell you, so much I want to say. And if you care to listen, though I can’t promise a literary masterpiece or a work of genius, I can relate a very imperfect adventure, some honesty and some truth.
Jason Anderson
New York City, 2014
I.
The Virginia Chronicles
Prologue
heat
pressures
diamonds
from black afternoons
and lightning!
lightning cuts
them
Jason of Alexandria
The Virginia Chronicles, Part I
Abused myths and tortured legends
construction paper-pasted
glittering without reason
except a five-year-old's questions
how did they forget the whole 13th floor?
I get hell if I forget to brush!
well maybe it’s fingers
between 12 and 14
like sliding utility
closet doors, or eyes
forced open, like “a epiphany”
(he beams proudly, silently knowing
he can spell it, too)
well it’s drama, why all the wailing
when Alexandria falls nightly
sick people leaning dangerously over balconies
to look in a kid's bedroom window
everyone with fingers stopping
their ears but not his
at night he wraps himself in covers
listens to the sirens going by
he doesn’t get 13 but sure as hell
after the refuse burns
and the laundry room
the boys’ bodies
in the January pool
the windshield brick
an 11th-floor bedroom
window face where
no face should be
the closet doors
the kitchen floor
chin up
mouth shut
to a mast
lashed
he
knows
one hundred sirens sing nightly
for him and him
alone
Diamond Eyes
The Virginia Chronicles, Part II
six
cobalt, hazel, gray pools
shaded by fair woods
hot springs in gentle snow
where frosted monkeys and
goosebumped humans huddle
a tattooed world of pink and yellow
countries flies off its giggling axis
just like it was meant
the quiet things are
noted by their absence
and ice finds release
Lords and Lady of the Summer Land
The Virginia Chronicles, Part III
Once long ago in a place known as Falls Church
The Diamond Realm was the notorious domain
Of a young queen and two young kings, a Narnian trio
Related by the hope that ran in their veins
Queen Jewel the Eldest stood tall and proud
A sword and fleur-de-lys her insignia
K. the Righteous wore a golden crown
And last, but not least, was Jason of Alexandria
Lords and Lady of a summer land twist-crossed
By wandering avenues and shaded after-
Noons cooled by soft sky-faced rains and
Gentle-eyed diamond laughter
Royalty with much in common
From distant lands brought to reign
Only children of only mothers
More than siblings – the same
They would slip away often, proving their land
No fence in the realm held them in or out
Wild cats, canines and kids fell in line
When the Lady and Lords went marching about
It’s said -- people whisper still today --
Not a single man, woman or child
During the entire Diamond Reign
Of or dear to the kingdom died
Stewards they were of the crabapple orchard
Masters of fortresses impenetrable
Exclusive formulators of the Secret Formula
And keepers, keepers
of the gross menagerie
The Maverick
The Virginia Chronicles, Part IV
“Another no-hitter for the Mavericks.”
At eight he thought all baseball games started
with the Star-Spangled Banner and ended
with that.
Really, they started with kids who could throw and catch
and ended with kids who could hit
so where did that
leave him?
Right field.
The other diamond king commanded first
the queen reigned from the mound
all matching in the Mavericks’ patriotic uniform –
blue ball cap and shirt
and bright
red
knees.
During one game their second baseman was grounded
by a line drive to center chest.
The Mavericks lost that game.
Once at bat he himself was cuffed by a suspiciously
stray pitch to the ear guard
(which doesn’t guard so much as
distribute
pain evenly).
He walked, but still the Mavericks lost.
And came the notorious day
practice wasn’t called off for weather --
the Mavericks needed practice more
than Falls Church needed rain
but lightning didn’t know that
and struck
the big pine
by the backstop
and the coach swore
and he swore
he would never, ever go back.
He didn’t.
And the Mavericks
began
to
win!
And they won.
And they won and won and won.
His diamond-eyed friends begged him back
their line-up lonely of freckles
but as a solid team player, he had to refuse:
he single-handedly started a winning streak
and didn't
want
to lose.
The Gross Menagerie
The Virginia Chronicles, Part V
In bright gusts a perpetual chorus
Carries my young refrain
I’d burst afire on May’s crushing beat
But for the cicada's antipyretic thrill
I studied the brown shell crouched low
Looked it dead in the eye as it prayed
Til squinty-eyed, sidewalk-kneed and satisfied
There was nobody inside
Around it delicate fingers I wrapped
And ran cicada-palmed, wind on bright skin
To the secret shed where we Diamond Monarchs
Cloistered against heavy old glances
Two watched with two frowns as I cleared a shelf
Clutching to my chest the careful shell
“This is what cicadas are,” I exclaimed
“It’s how they win!”
Three knew because I knew
Because sister and brother will know
Things just because you do<
br />
“My new coat of arms – I want them, every one!”
And the hunt was on from trunks to lawns
Three grabbing skins fast as they could be shrugged
We gathered up every past life we could hold
And set them in ranks on the royal shed shelf
“They’re the Gross Menagerie!” delighted K. the Righteous
As spring clouds tossed tin diamonds on the roof
We stared down eighty monstrous shells
And they prayed vaguely back
“They’re monstrous,” decreed Julie the Eldest
“And should be banished for seventeen years”
But she saw what I saw because I saw it
And felt what I felt
We consulted Encyclopedia Britannica Volume C
Puzzling out with help from the Legends of Old
A cicadan mythology
Cursed at birth to live dark earthen decades
One season they rise and burst from their skins
Which they leave in plain sight of bullies
For beaks and jaws to find nothing inside
A new winged creature takes alight
The male with a simple song in his belly
And though he calls out alone at the start
He chorus is joined by the millions
For a season the canopy resounds
With an opus of rushes and rests
Borrowing cricket’s rhythm, lightning’s roar
And the lullaby of the sated creek
The point of all of this cacophony
Is simply to lure women to their arboreal beds
(Cue blushes on six royal cheeks)
From eggs tucked into branchy marrow
Newly-hatched nymphs tumble
To ground, burrowing deep
For seventeen years to sleep
Like old beasts whirl their last on a sidewalk
To the delight of dogs and six-year-olds
And a sultry buzz evaporates in degrees
From a breeze without notice
Childish interest declines from branches
And bugs, and two command a shelf
Cleared of a Gross Menagerie
I kept a single crumbling souvenir
To the teachings of a little cicada
His skin but a parchment scrap
Wrapping something inside that sings
A song but a breath on leaves
Sung to fill darkness with diamonds
That seventeen years on, or thirty-four
They too will find release
And sing to rain diamonds in darkness
Lift a crushing season with a chorus
And soothe brash rhythm for a measure
With an antipyretic thrill
Lightning
The Virginia Chronicles, Part VI
A summer house
once open
was never closed.
Tall grasses
bend and nod
to secrets on
young breath.
The grass
never tells:
how summer
sun rashes
brash skin
reddens cheeks
how bugs seek
strange places
and burrow in
how sweat
stings sunburn
-- how breath
somewhere
above the
shoulder blades
in damp heat
is cool like
lightning.
A body like that
can perform miracles
with a skateboard
and a Huffy
and girlfriends in
faraway cities
met on long-ago
vacations
a body like that
moves like slow
summer lightning
a body with
sunny hair
and fair-weather
eyes
shadow-danced
by puffy cumulus
in which secrets
like life
and I
must reside
and in the grass
as the grass yields
knowingly.
The smell of
cigarettes
on breath and fingers
mixed with
bike grease
dirt
and something
richer
broken rules
camaraderie
brotherhood
a lightening
the bare whiff
of a promise
made in absence
of arms that
will unfold
soon
from this chrysalis
and set its contents
flying free.
It echoes thunder
an ancient whisper
on southerlies
wearing the
sacred scent
of an innocent fire
involving brush
and redemption.
Old Dominion
The Virginia Chronicles, Part VI
Charred broken grass on a shoulder
Blackened headlight cowl, melted mud guard
Racy mirrored ornament
unbroken
Smokey Sunday smiles cross the road
Bright tents, hot sauce and burnt offerings
Shining and black under summer's pressure
together
Slate armies surmount the hills
Grasses surrender, kid laughs scatter
With dandelion seeds, flocking in
unison
Three friends knotted together, gathered
From elsewhere and destined to return
But in the short span joined as
one
Amid the acquiescent grass
A boy of a promised age and build
Arms strong enough to hold a diamond
intact,
and a heart strong enough to break it
along its proper faults
Fall, and the advent of a blacktop sprint
a fifty year dash
Watch from offsides, how they all go
But at fourteen, at forty I’ll still be the
same
I remember black skies and sirens
Tortured myths and legendary friends
A summer realm of baseball
Magic cicadas and left-behind skins
In secretive lightning-struck grass
and the inevitable fall
and frozen aftermath
When I recall my old dominion
The remainder not lost but cast away
whole
Like barbeque bones, grassy secrets and kid tears
That only someone else’s cousin hears
The Crabapple Wars
The Virginia Chronicles, Part VII
BBs scattered in the grass
like the droppings of steel rabbits
who ran at first proof of their strength.
Squeezes under the tall wood fence
daily resurrections into our Terabithia
public poolside, in visible earshot of squealing kids
who summer lightning sends slithering out like evolution
on black afternoons
and which lightning razor-cuts existence to
marrow:
two small boys and a small girl
– us
before our brief union crumbled
calendared departures left us premature leavings
and the Crabapple Wars --
hybrids of remembered laughter
and misdirected revenge
black storms of gooey red and green hail
rattled windows and hectic mothers
battles leveled against horizoning unknowns
from strong limbs of womb-heavy trees
– where, three maddening cicadas,
we sing
a lilting, taunting refrain.
As bittersweet ammo depletes
bark paints higher-climbing thighs
an angry
red
welt
above
the eye
and we run at proof of our strength
– or cast again with steeled resolve
a judgment on all we will vanish from
like lightning forgetting a certain sky
leaving diamonds
faceted, our common structure
remembering a summer song
scattered along
the grassy earth.
Prelude to a City of Ice
As this shaded moon makes its closest approach
and dusk gathers her curtain I pause
to whisper something direct to you
the only truth I claim to know:
lightning cuts diamonds, my friend, and
where black-skied rains fall, things grow.
*
The Virginia Chronicles, Part IX
*
I am five years old. I sleep in a bedroom in the sky, beneath a big window that invites the sirens of Alexandria’s nightly fall. The window is next to our balcony and has a face in it. It is always a goofy face, laughing. Everything’s fun, it's all a game and I’m just a poor sport. I don’t understand the rules and suspect I'm not meant to win, and I hate games like that.
*
I am not here. I exist in a place you can’t touch. I think it’s sorry you want to touch a body with nobody inside. Sting away, cicada wasp, I’m not in my skin. You’re stupid and will die hungry, and I will sing from the treetops. I am six.
*
I am sure of everything, one thing after the other. It’s a maddening buzz. It all turns to dandelion seeds dancing out of reach. My arms are still short, and my eye-hand coordination sucks (says my Little League coach). I leave the field.
*
We squeal out of the pool when the lightning comes and shiver under a roof next to the lifeguard. My fear knows an overhang isn’t safety. Once I opened my mouth, and I got made fun of and told I was disrespecting authority. So I shut up and accept a stupid death, because adults know everything but protect me from nothing. I am eight.
*
Confusion. Each chromosome unsure of its place and doubting its allegiance, every cell a mercenary. I'm a black hole, absorbing everything. Light has no hope of escape.
The Virginia Chronicles Page 1
