Contents
Praise for Juice
Juice
Copyright © 2019 Charles Springer. All rights reserved.
To my brothers
One
To Florida
Packin’
Breaking the News
Chicken Little
Atlas
Walks
New Jersey
Appalachia
Day the Moon Was Out All Day
Traveling Show
Accounting Major
Riding with Fred
Going Anywhere
Becoming Legend
Make Do
Tripping
Two
Deed
Debunkers
Just Looking
West Hollywood
Turning Tables
Out of Water
Gold
Tree Falls in Sherwood
Wrecking Ball
A Life on the Road
Pyrogyro
Battle Grounds
Local Report
Three
Moves
Juice
Dreamboat
Hookey
Flower Power
In Season
Last Call
Different Directions
Wonders
Postcard from Vermont
Less Is Milk
That You, Dawn?
Call It Kiss
Laughing
Hot Sake Breath
Win Win
Suburban Pastoral
Four
Practicing Medicine
The Resonance in Magnetic
Remedial
Birder
Bruised Patella
Dementia
Building a Better Mouse
Unsung
Says Words
On Bending Knee
Presence
Down Main
Meteorology of Me
Five
Flying Objects
For Ages
Behind Glass
Crib Note
Special Delivery
The Two Armstrongs
Peninsulaville
Whereabouts
Son Time
What, A Day
Night to Remember
Reward
Very Last Body of Water
New Ark
Last Wishes
Acknowledgments
Thank you to the editors of the publications in which the following poems have appeared, occasionally in slightly different versions or with different titles:
Praise for Juice
Reading Charles Springer’s collection of poems, Juice, is like getting on a roller coaster, flying down the hill at break-neck speed, then going airborne, flying off the tracks only to land in a field of sunflowers and lilacs, unscathed and delicious all at once. He’s a poet of the earth, of the sky, of the everyday and making their beauty stand up and be noticed. He writes about knees, about dementia; he writes about houses and milk and New Jersey! When you read Springer’s work you are reading a celebration of the minimal that, eventually, gets you to maximal—that big open place where the metaphorical heart dances and sings, and where the physical heart gets stronger and stronger. Juice is a collection of poems that should be on every bookshelf, sitting there strong, spine out, right between the cookbook and The Bible.
- Matthew Lippman, author of A Little Gut Magic
and Mesmerizingly Sadly Beautiful
Charley’s Juice takes you to a world that is so real it’s fake, so fake it’s real, and so fantastical you can’t figure out if you are coming or going. Deep sadness mingles with slapstick and everyone is getting up and going to work in the underbelly of Heaven. Juice is a magical joyride on a spaceship made of dust and stars, cobwebs and takeout boxes, fenders and a little hay that shoots us straight to a carnival of hyperrealism, where the side show is a mirror into our souls. Look in. You may think the mirror is warped, but let me tell you, it’s not. Read Juice and read America in all its rusty, neon, prairied, and salt-stained glory.
- Rebecca Kinzie-Bastian, author of Charms for Finding
Juice
Poems
Charles Springer
Regal House Publishing
Copyright © 2019 Charles Springer. All rights reserved.
Published by
Regal House Publishing, LLC
Raleigh, NC 27612
All rights reserved
ISBN -13 (paperback): 9781947548657
ISBN -13 (epub): 9781947548664
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019940529
All efforts were made to determine the copyright holders and obtain their permissions in any circumstance where copyrighted material was used. The publisher apologizes if any errors were made during this process, or if any omissions occurred. If noted, please contact the publisher and all efforts will be made to incorporate permissions in future editions.
Interior and cover design by Lafayette & Greene
lafayetteandgreene.com
Cover images © by Shutterstock/Walnut Bird
Regal House Publishing, LLC
https://regalhousepublishing.com
The following is a work of fiction created by the author. All names, individuals, characters, places, items, brands, events, etc. were either the product of the author or were used fictitiously. Any name, place, event, person, brand, or item, current or past, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Regal House Publishing.
Printed in the United States of America
To my brothers
whose names
have been given
to stars.
One
To Florida
Just this once
I’d like to drive
straight through.
Break
only for a fill up, quick piss.
Have someone wide
awake beside me,
an elbow in my ribs
when I’d drift
across the double yellows.
We’d take our time,
Eastern Standard Time,
no rush, no rage.
And every now and then,
my someone at the wheel,
I’d raise up through the moon roof,
feel what breeze feels
long before it’s gale.
Coast,
never come to complete stops,
no matter how octagonal
or red the signs.
Packin’
Again, the girl forgot the ketchup.
Who eats fries without the ketchup? Who?
What
are diners coming to?
Take church!
Who goes without a piece?
Prayers end in booms.
Empty cartridges clink in collection plates.
Ceilings of nearly every building leak.
No wonder roofers get shot up the most:
easy targets
up there on their slates.
Where’s the yellow mustard?
Who’s got the gall to swipe the salt?
Glad I wore my Kevlar.
Still I tip big walking out.
<
br /> Breaking the News
Chet’s on Ativan
for everyday he knows today
could be the one,
tonight right after Letterman,
beer number seven.
It’s not so good to mix elixirs,
lager and lorazepam,
then both hands always full or
always empty’s not good either
as he slowly gets the feeling back
in his toes, jumps up
off the couch to join
the pigtailed Prozac taker
polkaing down the country lane of commercial breaks,
clover and Holsteins on both sides feeding each other,
Chet, clueless
why nothing out here smells like shit
or ever has to.
Chicken Little
Going nowhere in particular, I run
my best ahead of jets unzipping sky.
Something always happens
just as they’re over the equator
and I am yards outside of my perimeter.
Maybe it has rained or a spell of freak hail.
For sure the air above is borrowed
and my years old.
When jets are done and sky is yawning,
a smoky trail shows up. Then doesn’t.
One of these tomorrows the sky is going
to start to want things back.
I begin with little pieces by pieces
as recommended by my astronomer.
I pick up hitchhikers with litter in their pockets,
broken glass inside their backpacks.
I am good for months or miles. When over,
the sky will have my reach around it.
Atlas
Pull the curtains back and there it is,
the Northern Hemisphere.
Walk outside on the spiral lawn and there it is
going down the road.
A day begins.
Get on with it.
Supersonic pilot neighbor
flies around the world several times at top speed
and gets his week in early.
He leaves his heart in 37° 37’ N latitude,
122° 23’ W longitude, singing.
Foggy days neighbor on the cul-de-sac starts up
her SUV with GPS to tell her where she is.
Costly extras include a printout of just how far she’s
come.
Can’t remember who in New Hampshire has a combo
walking stick/dowsing rod but every evening
someone finds Roy, yup, that’s him, Roy, at the ocean.
Kids don’t get car sick now their dads aren’t going
in circles. Not going is like that in some places.
Take Nebraska.
Where’s that good old paper map that smells like fuel?
Best visit little towns before they wear away
inside its folded corners.
In days to come, ones we do not love or even know
will worry we’ll stop by before they’re dressed. By then
there’ll be no place to go we won’t know how to get to.
What good is going if we can’t get lost in
in Mississippi?
Walks
Hawk walks the sky on I-beams.
Looks down doesn’t throw up!
Just one of those things you either can
or can’t do. Lately it takes all I got
to walk to and from my hotdog
stand there on the corner. Hawk
triples mustard. Talks
over crickets in his ears. I see
faraway in his eyes, his home upstate,
on clear days clear to Pennsylvania.
I tell him many of my ancestors there
walked in and out of earth for coal.
He gets shaky just thinking of
walking in and out of earth.
I hand a relished footlong
to a sailor here for a little R & R
and can’t hold back. Nor Hawk. So, sailor,
how do you walk out there on water?
New Jersey
The Browns are found dumb
with the disappearance of their white cow
in the Pine Barrens.
How she went unnoticed
by everyone except the neighbor’s beagle
among the drying bed sheets
they don’t know.
How she mazed through fleets
of anonymous service vans,
brides at the 24-hour chapel/diner
they don’t know.
Neighbor’s beagle broke its chain,
chains of its beagle pals
and off they strode
down Black Horse Pike.
Browns believe they’ll find her
when they go fishing
off the Boardwalk.
How can we not, they ask, how
can we not just love
New Jersey?
Appalachia
Under us
still
millions of mammals
millions
of years old
in the rock.
Even before sun’s up,
chinking starts.
Old giants
come apart at their seams. Giants
with incisors and scales,
giants with molars and hair or fur, tails.
Cords of their long bones
are trucked down the highway
to museums.
Pieces
patch gaps
in timbers of shanties.
Above them, above rock,
clouds make themselves into mammoths
into moles into molecules
rain
older than
rock.
Day the Moon Was Out All Day
Sunday, and a beautiful day for a drive so I drive
to Montana and while there, I pick up a buffalo.
Always wanted one in my backyard, you know,
to keep the grass on the short side and stave off strays.
I help him into the backseat of my Impala.
He fits snuggly I might add and as we are cutting
through southern South Dakota, I hear sobbing. I ask
if he needs me to stop so he can get out and get air
but he says it’s too late. He no longer roams.
Not since the massacres. Besides, he goes on,
he never felt happier than right now, right here
in my backseat and his tears, his tears are joy tears.
And when we get home, can I live in your car
till I die, he asks, and then will you bury me in it
when I’m gone. I tell him, sure, why not, you bet,
it’s a deal, and just as he asks me to shake on it,
he grabs hold of the wheel and runs into a tree.
Not to worry. It was hardly the last on the planet.
Traveling Show
Penny’s repeatedly drawing her drapes.
Neighbor Alberta swears Penny is sending signals
and immediately phones the police. They’re
there in an instant, stick around for an hour,
say, next time, they’ll bring along the kids.
Backyard’s been Penny’s stage ever since she saw Cirque.
Her acts change so fast she can hardly keep up.
Birds flock and scatter, squirrels juggle nuts,
cats dangle from branches, dogs swallow themselves,
the occasional pachyderm spins upsid
e down on one foot.
Penny’s Burt finally cries out, enough!
He rings up the ringmasters in Las Vegas and Quebec.
Level it, they say, so Burt gets out the dozer.
Penny tries the drapes in the Winnebago. They work!
Gotta go on the road when it gets in your blood!
Accounting Major
Rose one morning and the spreadsheet sky
opted to be clear and so I let it.
Then just before my egg, a cloud somewhat substandard
eked out of the azure while I still had only one leg in some trousers.
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