for good
in my schoolyard
sidewalk, blacktop
afterlife
My friends waiting at the end of the street
to beat the shit out of me
one last
time
That’s what I want, that
or I want to
fuck them
One or
the other
They’re throwing rocks at the streetlights
sitting against
the curb
shooting heroin
getting blind and
calling
my name
I can hear my name
hanging
in the air
Not like an echo
like a moth
Furious in the
light
We won’t be long
they keep
saying
We won’t
keep you waiting
I want to tell you a story with my body
Look at my arms
What do they look like
from here?
Peonies
Can they look like peonies?
In this light, at this time
of day, dusk
nailing itself down
inside
the maple
My arms
blooming like peonies
slowly unfolding
into their tiny
colorful deaths
Heaven
is what you think it’s going to be
What do you think
it’s going to be?
White people in robes or
unending night
Whatever you want
It’s yours
At the end of the street
a choir of trees
lines up
in perfect silence
They don’t say my name
but my name
is out there
When the springtime comes again
there won’t be anything left
but ash
beneath our fingernails
collecting
on the tops of our eyelids
in the pools of our
eyes
My tongue
asleep in ash, my teeth
beginning to sparkle
That’s before
we start turning into shit
before You
I want to say that there’s something
missing
from heaven
and I think
it’s the whisper
of bodies
Trees
Water
Light
We won’t do this
again
Listen to those stitches
splitting open
in the air
above me
leaving stars
in a dark
I can hardly plot my way through
Float like a butterfly
Sting like a bee
My muscles latch and unlatch
with little clicks
opening
like a door
into Your house
You had this shit coming, they whisper
from the corner
You’re going to be sorry
About the Author
Michael Dickman was born and raised in Portland, Oregon.
Books by Michael Dickman
50 American Plays (with Matthew Dickman)
Flies
Link
blueflowerarts.com/michael-dickman
Acknowledgments
Thanks to the editors of the following journals, where some of these poems first appeared, sometimes in earlier versions: The American Poetry Review, Field, Narrative Magazine, The New Yorker, and Tin House.
*
Thanks to the Michener Center for Writers, in Austin, Texas, the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, Vermont, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts.
*
I wish to thank, for their loving-kindness and support of this work, my family: Wendy Dickman, Elizabeth Dickman, Matthew Dickman, Francis Cobb, the Castelluccis, Dana Huddleston, Darin Hull, and Ernie Casciato. And my friends: Carl Adam-shick, Mike McGriff, Dorianne Laux, Joseph Millar, Meredith Martin, Major Jackson, Marie Howe, Tom Sleigh, Denis and Cindy Johnson, Lee Schore, Jerry Atkin, Charles Seluzicki, and the Christensen-Roberts household. Thanks to Franz Wright for his unfailing support and friendship.
Thank you Phoebe Nobles.
I love you Duke
Copyright 2009 by Michael Dickman
All rights reserved
Cover art: Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Untitled, 1960. Gelatin-silver print, 7.5 x 7.25 inches. © The Estate of Ralph Eugene Meatyard, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco.
ISBN: 978-1-55659-289-8
eISBN: 978-1-61932-085-7
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