Loading Mercury With a Pitchfork
Page 2
When she was fifteen if you’d told her
that when she was twenty she’d be going
to bed with bald-headed men and liking it,
she would have thought you very abstract.
IT TAKES A SECRET TO KNOW A “SECRET”
It takes a secret to know a “secret.”
Then you have two secrets that know
each other. Just
what you always wanted, they stand
there looking at each other with their
pajamas on.
VOLUNTARY QUICKSAND
I read the Chronicle this morning
as if I were stepping into voluntary
quicksand
and watched the news go over my shoes
with forty-four more days of spring.
Kent State
America
May 7, 1970
GROUP PORTRAIT WITHOUT
THE LIONS
available light
MAXINE
Part 1
No party is
complete
without you.
Everybody
knows that.
The party
starts when
you arrive.
ROBOT
Part 2
Robot likes to sleep
through long lazy summer afternoons.
So do his friends
with the sun reflecting
off them like tin cans.
FRED BOUGHT A PAIR OF ICE SKATES
Part 3
Fred bought a pair of ice skates.
That was twenty years ago.
He still has them but he doesn’t
skate any more.
CALVIN LISTENS TO STARFISH
Part 4
Calvin listens to starfish.
He listens to them very carefully,
lying in the tide pools,
soaking wet
with his clothes on,
but is he really listening to them?
LIZ LOOKS AT HERSELF IN THE MIRROR
Part 5
She’s very depressed.
Nothing went right today,
so she doesn’t believe that
she’s there.
DORIS
Part 6
This morning there
was a knock at the
door. You answered it.
The mailman was standing
there. He slapped your
face.
GINGER
Part 7
She’s glad
that Bill
likes her.
VICKY SLEEPS WITH DEAD PEOPLE
Part 8
Vicky sleeps out in the woods
with dead people but she always
combs her hair in the morning.
Her parents don’t understand her.
And she doesn’t understand them.
They try. She tries. The dead
people try. They will all work
it out someday.
BETTY MAKES WONDERFUL WAFFLES
Part 9
Everybody agrees to
that.
CLAUDIA / 1923–1970
Part 10
Her mother still living
is 65.
Her grandmother still living
is 86.
“People in my family
live for a long time!”
—Claudia always used to say,
laughing.
What a surprise
she had.
WALTER
Part 11
Every night: just before he falls asleep
Walter coughs. Having never slept
in a room with another person, he thinks
that everybody coughs just before they fall
asleep. That’s his world.
MORGAN
Part 12
Morgan finished second in his high school
presidential election in 1931.
He never recovered from it.
After that he wasn’t interested in people
any more. They couldn’t be counted on.
He has been working as a night watchman
at the same factory for over thirty years now.
At midnight he walks among the silent equipment.
He pretends they are his friends and they like
him very much. They would have voted
for him.
MOLLY
Part 13
Molly is afraid to go into the attic.
She’s afraid if she went up there
and saw the box of clothes that she
used to wear twenty years ago,
she would start crying.
“AH, GREAT EXPECTATIONS!”
Part 14
Sam likes to say, “Ah, great expectati0nsl”
at least three or four times in every
conversation. He is twelve years old.
Nobody knows what he is talking about when
he says it. Sometimes it makes people
feel uncomfortable.
GOOD LUCK, CAPTAIN MARTIN
GOOD LUCK, CAPTAIN MARTIN
Part 1
We all waved as his boat
sailed away. The old people
cried. The children were
restless.
PEOPLE ARE CONSTANTLY
MAKING ENTRANCES
Part 2
People are constantly making entrances
into entrances by entering themselves
through houses, bowling alleys and planetariums,
restaurants, movie theaters, offices, factories,
mountains and Laundromats, etc., entrances
into entrances, etc., accompanied by themselves.
Captain Martin watches
the waves go by.
That’s his entrance
into himself.
THE BOTTLE
Part 3
A child stands motionless.
He holds a bottle in his hands.
There’s a ship in the bottle.
He stares at it with eyes
that do not blink.
He wonders where a tiny ship
can sail to if it is held
prisoner in a bottle.
Fifty years from now you will
find out, Captain Martin,
for the sea (large as it is)
is only another bottle.
SMALL CRAFT WARNINGS
Part 4
Small craft warnings mean nothing to Captain Martin
. . . nothing . . .
like somebody deliberately choosing not to look
out the window, so the window remains empty.
FAMOUS PEOPLE AND THEIR FRIENDS
Part 5
Famous people and their friends
get to go to places where you
can only imagine what they are doing.
I was at a party two nights ago*
and a famous person was there.
When he left five or six people left
with him.
There was a great deal of excitement
at their departure as there always is.
The room was filled with the breathing
of searchlights and chocolate ice cream
cones and private jet airplanes.
Everybody wanted to go with them
to mysterious places like film studio
palaces in Atlantis and dance halls
on the dark side of undiscovered moons
where everything happens and you are
a very important part of it
and you are there.
*Where is Captain Martin?
CAROL THE WAITRESS
REMEMBERS STILL
Part 6
Yes, that’s the table where Captain Martin
sat. Yes, that one. By the window.
He would sit there alone for hours at
a time, staring out at the sea. He always
I don’t know what he was looking at.
PUT THE COFFEE ON, BUBBLES,
I’M COMING HOME
Part 7
Everybody’s coming home
except Captain Martin.
FIVE POEMS
1 / THE CURVE OF FORGOTTEN THINGS
Things slowly curve out of sight
until they are gone. Afterwards
only the curve
remains.
2 / FRESH PAINT
Why is it when I walk past funeral parlors
they remind me of the smell of fresh paint
and I can feel the smell in my stomach?
It does not feel like food.
3 / A TELESCOPE, A PLANETARIUM,
A FIRMAMENT OF CROWS
It is a very dark place
without stars,
and even when you arrive there
twenty minutes early,
. . . you are late.
4 / THE SHADOW OF
SEVEN YEARS’ BAD LUCK
A face concocted from leftovers of other faces
needs a mirror put together from pieces of
broken mirrors.
5 / COMET TELEGRAM
Two words:
Camelot
gone
MONTANA / 1973
NIGHT
Night again
again night
•
August 23
DIVE-BOMBING THE LOWER EMOTIONS
I was dive-bombing the lower
emotions on a typical yesterday
. . . after
I had sworn never to do it again.
I guess never’s too long a time to stay
out of the cockpit
with the wind screaming down the wings
and the target almost praying itself into your
sights.
August 30
NINE CROWS: TWO OUT OF SEQUENCE
1,2,3,4,5,7,6,8,9
September 1
SECONDS
With so short a time to live and think
about stuff, I’ve spent just about
the right amount of time on this
butterfly.
20
A warm afternoon
Pine Creek, Montana
September 3
SORRY ABOUT THAT
Oh, East is East, and West is West,
and never the twain shall meet . . .
—Rudyard Kipling
waiting . . .
fresh snow in the Absarokas
(pronounced Ab-SOAR-kause)
waiting . . .
snow! beautiful / mountains
answered by warm autumn sun
down here in the valley
waiting . . .
for a rented car from Bozeman
to bring an airplane-fresh japanese
woman to my cabin here
in Montana.
September 3
NOTHING IS BEING TAUGHT
IN THE PALACE TODAY
The desks are silent as tombstones.
The chalkboard is coated with spider webs.
The erasers are ticking like bombs.
The recess bell has turned to mud,
etc.
I think you get the picture:
Nothing is being taught in the palace today.
September 7
BIG DIPPER
This is the biggest Big Dipper
that I’ve ever seen.
Pine Creek
Montana Evening
October 4
EARLY SPRING MUD PUDDLE
AT AN OFF ANGLE
That’s how I
feel.
October 5
A PENNY SMOOTH AS A STAR
I keep forgetting the same thing:
over and over again.
I know it’s important but I keep
on forgetting it.
I’ve forgotten it so many times
that it’s like a coin in my mind
that’s never been minted.
Tom’s House
Montana
October 13
THE KITTENS OF AUGUST
The kittens of August are ¾s cats now
and all the leaves have fallen from the two trees
by the creek that were so short a time ago shade,
and now the hunters are sighting in their rifles for:
antelope,
deer,
bear,
elk
and
moose.
I can hear them methodically banging away at
imaginary targets that will soon be made real.
October 14
P. S.
NOBODY KNOWS
WHAT THE EXPERIENCE IS WORTH
Nobody knows what the experience is worth
but it’s better than sitting on your hands,
I keep telling myself.
* * *
Table of Contents
CROWS AND MERCURY
Postcard
Loading Mercury With a Pitchfork
It's Time to Train Yourself
The Act of: Death Defying Affection
Two Guys Get Out of a Car
Punitive Ghosts Like Steam-Driven Tennis Courts
Crow Maiden
Information
Are You the Lamb of Your Own Forgiving?
Autobiography (Polish it Like a Piece of Silver
Autobiography (When the Moon Shines Like a Dead Garage
Autobiography (Good-Bye, Ultra Violet
January 4 XXX 3
Tey Are Really Having Fun
We Meet. We Try. Nothing Happens, But
Home Again Home Again Like a Turtle to His Balcony
You Will Have Unreal Recollections of Me
Finding is Losing Something Else
Impasse
Homage to Charles Atlas
On Pure Sudden Days Like Innocence
Curiously Young Like a Freshly-Dug Grave
Right Beside the Morning Coffee
Montana Inventory
Oak
Ben
The Necessity of Appearing in Your Own Face
For Fear You Will Be Alone
Ware Horse
Albert Einstein (or Upon First Reading That Light is Projecting Itself at 372,000 Miles per Second from Crab Nebula 5,000 Old-Fashioned Light-Years Away
“Good Work,” He Said, And
LOVE
September 3 (The Dr. William Carlos Williams Mistake
Lighthouse
Everything Includes Us
What Happened?
I’ll Affect You Slowly
Umbrellaing Herself Like a Poorly-Designed Angel
Here is Something Beautiful (etc.
As Mechanical as a Flight of Stairs
We Were the Eleven O’Clock News
At the Guess of a Simple Hello
Sexual Accident
Business
Fuck Me Like Fried Potatoes
Flowers For a Crow
SECTION 3
Have You Ever Been There?
Atilla at the Gates of the Telephone Company
The Amelia Earheart Pancake
I Don’t Want to Know About It
March 18, Resting in the Maytag Homage
We Are in a Kitchen
The Last Surprise
Toward the Pleasures of a Reconstituted Crow
A Moth in Tucson, Arizona
Death Like a Needle
Heroine of the Time Machine
It Takes a Secret to Know a “Secret”
Voluntary Quicksand
GROUP PORTRAIT WITHOUT THE LIONS
1. Maxine
2. Robot
3. Fred Bought a Pair of Ice Skates
4. Calvin Listens to Starfish
5. Liz Looks at Herself in the Mirror
6. Doris
7. Ginger
8. Vicky Sleeps With De
ad People
9. Betty Makes Wonderful Waffles
10. Claudia / 1923–1970
11. Walter
12. Morgan
13. Molly
14. “Ah, Great Expectations!”
GOOD LUCK, CAPTAIN MARTIN
1. Good Luck, Captain Martin
2. People are Constantly Making Entrances
3. The Bottle
4. Small Craft Warnings
5. Famous Peple And Their Friends
6. Carol The Waitress Remembers Still
7. Put the Coffee On, Bubbles I'm Coming Home
FIVE POEMS
1 / The Curve of Forgotten Things
2 / Fresh Paint
3 / A Telescope, A Planetarium, A Firmament of Crows
4 / The Shadow of Seven Years’ Bad Luck
5 / Comet Telegram
MONTANA / 1973
Night
Dive-Bombing the Lower Emotions
Nine Crows: Two Out of Sequence
Seconds
Sorry About That
Nothing is Being Taught in the Palace Today
Big Dipper
Early Spring Mud Puddle at an Off Angle
A Penny Smooth as a Star
The Kittens of August
P. S.