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DESIRE STREET
March, 1995
cyberspace chapbook of
The New Orleans Poetry Forum
established 1971
Desire, Cemeteries, Elysium
Mail: Andrea S. Gereighty, President
New Orleans Poetry Forum
257 Bonnabel Blvd.
Metairie, La 70005
Email: Robert Menuet, Publisher
robmenuet@aol.com
Copyright 1995, The New Orleans Poetry Forum
_________________________________________________________
CONTENTS:
}Twelve Poems
The Cool Third Week
Good Friday Blues
Her Full of Misery
Jim Martin
Made to Scale
One Crow, Sorrow, Two Crows, Joy
Petit Mal Incantations
Shall I say that I have come to tell you all?
Smell
Thanksgiving
Toledano Street Near the Projects
Two-dollar restroom
}The Poets
}About the New Orleans Poetry Forum
}Copyright Notice
_________________________________________________________
TWELVE POEMS
The Cool Third Week
by Andrea S. Gereighty
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Trees lift faces to slaps of sullen rain
Bonnabel, Brockenbraugh, the square block turns
Again; it holds ten trees.
In each yard the dry fruit different
In shape, size and texture.
In a hard drizzle, the fattest nuts drop
from the giant pecan in my father's yard.
He is dead: stopped. He who taught me to
differentiate among the ripe, the hollow
the rotten to the core.
His fence, in a sheen of red and white reflected sun
Outlives him.
The grilling rain lays down again
A patina on the hulls in disarray.
I nudge the days closer to mid-month, wait once more.
White maggots, narrow as needles, suck the nuts.
Squirrels on the take toss kernels to earth.
"The ones you pick in September will be small"
Hooded tight in husk; rotted with the wormy
musk of birth. Hold on; Stay your hand.
"Prepare for October, the cool third week."
October, the month of ripe pecans. I am in collusion
with your whims. I stalk trees, await the third week
of your span to harvest seeds of one person
the man who gave me life.
To do this thing, a memorial from me
More than the mums placed to mildew on a granite tomb.
Here, near the remnants of his life
I search out swollen, black-striated nuts
Dad gave instructions, clear as October rain
Patience, by month's end, they'll fall again.
Good Friday Blues
by Stan Bemis
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God
(as we all know)
is a Man
He stands erect
against the urinal
and pisses like a Regular
Fellow
He's white, Middle class & Protestant
He goes out w/
the spook
& spends His weekly check
After working six days
He rests on
the seventh.
The Mother of His now dead son
tries to catch Him
before He
goes
out the door
He beats her
(or, so I've been told)
annually
in the Spring
He's bottled up
w/ grief
over the pain
of the sustained mutual loss
of
the Son
who got killed
due to some agitation
against
one injustice or another
& when the anniversary pops up
The Father
just goes wild
Like most men
He can't express his emotions
very well
He leaves most of that to
Mary
She does enough for both of them
(so he'd like to think &
put it out
of his mind)
"I got the whole damn world to
attend to" He says & leaves her
holding the bag
He's into management
God's a powerful man &
at one time
could do most anything
His powerlessness to save His boy
has left him feeling fairly impotent
there just wasn't anything
he could do about it
He had had other things to do
Now, He weeps like David
over Absolem
& says he wished
he'd died in his son's stead
He doesnt attend church
since the incident
although, previously,
He'd been the pious sort
He & spook now go over to the Bethlehem Inn
& rack up a few
in a lonely solitude.
Her Full of Misery
by Athena O. Kildegaard
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Her hands
fall in great
lumps of sound
and her ears
close
against themselves.
Sing me out
of this loneliness,
sing me.
She makes herself
small and walks
into the day.
Squirrels chide.
From her eyes
sparks of trial.
No traffic stops
lights stay red
she turns back,
her great hands
rising into the air
of their own accord.
Jim Martin
by Cedelas Hall
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He was "Paw-paw"
and I was "Tooch"
in those walking summers
spent on the red roads
of Lincoln County.
He used a cane
because old men
are supposed to walk
with canes.
I'd shuffle down the middle
of the road,
hot feet scattering
cool gravel
piled up by cars.
He was a healer
and they came
from all over
the county
to have warts removed,
and babies
cured of thrush.
And he was a mystery,
a lover of people,
a teller of stories,
with a history
that whispered of
Whitfield and shock therapy.
But that was before
they paved the road
between the stores
where he fought out
his politics
every election year.
Before I put on shoes
and became thirteen.
Before his daughters
moved him out
for his own good.
Before "taking it easy"
broke him
the way
a lifetime of walking seasons
never could.
MADE TO SCALE
from "The Great Lionel Train Robbery"
by Mary Riley
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How seldom we get to climb towards what we really long for,
Those days of goofy ambition over mountains made exactly to scale,
But some days it happens, my longings fit me, are my bought
And paid for possessions and I am doing my own, no one else's
Small exacting thing, and oh so rightly.
On those days I think of you my son and your cousin-friend, Rahim,
Hooking train and track together over an always expanding
Landscape, a strong-friends-for-life thing between you
Even starting way back then,
Finally you had saved up enough to buy, not steal this time,
Thinking toughly, "Hell just too motherfuckin dangerous!"
So you zipped your parkas to go upstreet
To buy the roundhouse, then you did just that
That turnaround we must get to in our teens to inch our
Maddeningly small gleanings into place,
Then you stood up, loins aching and left this place you made behind,
Two tall, gangly looking youth, parting right on schedule.
One Crow, Sorrow, Two Crows, Joy
by Bonnie Crumly-Fastring
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O.K. Gretel--
this is my question,
after you shoved her into the oven
and slammed the door shut,
the heat rising up to consume
the screams, moving from quieter
to quiet, did you become part
of the dark smoke pouring
out of the chimney,
later finding joy
because you knew you could kill,
your eyes like two black crows?
Or did you lose, forever,
your nerve, a lump
of black cindered stone
like one black crow
walking the edge of a shadow
between the woods and the open field
forever balancing in your mind,
a nine-year-old girl
on the wooden two-by-four fence,
carefully learning not to fall
to the right or to the left.
Tell me, Gretel
what happened after the oven?
Petit Mal Incantations
by Andrea S. Gereighty
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I was in my 45th year
quarante-cinq, the wild card five
aces wild, wild-assed when we met.
A hot, tall, Mississippi man country
Skinny-boned, big-muscled, big-
shouldered daddy worked with weights
avoided ex-wife of 16 to hear him tell it
had incest with her step-daddy the whole while
Mr. Muscles and she were wed.
Whose baby was the boy, anyway?
He looks like me the Ms. man mused.
Old Mississippi spoke the worst grammar
In that soft, slightly nasal southern twang
Yet brought roses every week--two dozen
So many roses, every color I swore that
he fucked the florist/he said no and
we rocked the waterbed 6-8 times every weekend
Fri. pm to Sun. noon, about 39 hours
that's at least once every 6 hrs.
And damn--did it 3 hrs. each time.
Too sore for any more we slept, read poetry
watched videos, tv movies, I wrote
We ate out, marched in the Krewe de Vieux
danced at the Mardi Gras ball/head-banger
stuff I'd never get into but with him
and the Mystic Krewe of Nutria band
Stoned on homegrown/Tess's Northshore sativa
We could dance for hours/it was like foreplay
It was foreplay.
I knew what I wanted/just what I had to cure the blues
this trash-hauling sanitation engineer from a
Ms. trailer community.
My screams startled the dogs, set them to humpin' each other
seagulls screamed/I outdid them and lights went on
At camps 1000 yards away
We did not care, WE couldn't say whose lights
But we continued to burn till dawn
Then followed the La. grey herons
in Little Woods out to the island
Nothin' really, but a spit of uncovered lake bottom
at low-tide we played in the sand that sparkled more
after each hit of acid sparked those many-faceted prisms
in our minds/we were diggin/with kiddie shovels and
buckets/rerouted the path the Pontchartrain took in one afternoon.
Camp Gris-Gris is like that.
In the evening, seagulls flew a feeding frenzy
a hot, pink afterglow sucked at the horizon.
This place history of abuse/suicide/murder/mystery
violence we pacify with sighs, kisses
I still hear wails in the water
Voices under the windows at night the mirrors
break. We continue our exorcism.
SHALL I SAY THAT I HAVE COME TO TELL YOU ALL?
by Robert Menuet
email: robmenuet@aol.com
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They made Him a supper; and Martha served: but
Lazarus was one of them that sat at table with Him.
--John 12:2
Martha, I do not want this company. Our sister prayed that he
heal me, but he did not come. In darkness I dreamt four days of the
fathers of Israel. They'd gathered me up to the bosom of Abraham; there
I was in comfort. I have no appetite for this food, and the sunlight of
Bethany hurts my eyes. Once I loved it here.
Joshua, you told them roll the stone away, and bid me come.
Something began to stink. Without willing I walked out in graveclothes,
my face bound about with a napkin. I can not eat this spring lamb;
I think of rot, and Mary weeping. Who is the guest of honor at this
supper? The Son of man has been glorified by these events.
Please pour the wine, Martha. I cannot live with this knowledge.
They will not hear me, they starve me with ears of stone. Already the
priests talk of putting me to death again. I cannot drink from this
chalice. I have no heart for table talk. I regret your supper disgusts
me. So do you, my sister, and all mankind.
Joshua, what am I, now that you have called me back? How will men
remember me? What of my works and days, my poems? I look down at my
napkin. You want me to be grateful, but it's You that are the
resurrection and the life.
Smell
by Athena O. Kildegaard
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She sits, naked from the bath,
her soles resting drily
against one another, knees
flopped out, her smooth buttocks
curved away from the floor,
and one finger pressing her clit.
Her eyes avoid me, her mother.
She pretends to be alone.
And is. Then she sniffs
her finger, a deep
taking in of that earth
between her legs,
the smell she knows is her,
but that seems like something
passed down, like pants worn
smooth by many washes,
still too big, but ample.
Thanksgiving
by Bonnie Crumly-Fastring
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Guilt is the lady in the
yellow flowered hat
waiting outside the iron gates
of the French Quarter apartment.
Silently she holds out her hand
for my penance, singing a few words
of some old hymn. Her voice scrapes
like a streetcar changing directions.
Drunk, she follows me
down the neutral ground*
of Esplanade. We are looking
for my car. "Any good mother,"
she whispers, "gets home before her son."
She slips her arm around my shoulders,
kisses me softly on my cheek.
"And your cat is out of food,"
she screams, winking at me gaily.