One With Others. C.D. Wright

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СКАЧАТЬ half shut down.

      Cotton gin still going, not strong, but going.

      Tracks working, neglected, but working.

      The infamous overpass brought down.

      September 15,2004, Hell’s Kitchen, her life surrendered to her body. September 15 the day Padre Hidalgo uttered the famous Grito that kicked off the Mexican Revolution. She would have liked that, going off the air on a day marking a great struggle for independence.

      The river rises from a mountain of granite.

      The river receives the water of the little river.

      The house where my friend once lived, indefinitely empty.

      Walnuts turning dark in the grass. Papers collected on the porch.

      If I put my face to the glass, I can make out the ghost

      of her ironing board, bottle of bourbon on the end.

      + + +

      HER FORMER HUSBAND: I’d come home from work and she would be in a rage and I just couldn’t understand it.

      They were a poor match. He says so to this day. She said so then. They barely tolerated one another. But they were Catholic [another “error bred in the bone”]. If he looked at her, and she looked at him, in nine months she was back at the lying-in.

      [My best guess: She woke up in a rage, eight days a week.]

      Her friends—the musician, the poet, the actor:

      GERT: She taught me how to live. Now she has taught me how to die.

      And I: She was my goombah. My rafiki. It was the honor of my life to know her. Honor of my life.

      ELLIS:

      A crowd/ Will gather, and not know it walks the very street

      Whereon a thing once walked that seemed a burning cloud.

      [Yeats she knew inside out. Inside out.]

      A MAN KNOWN AS SKEETER [his whole life]: Oh yeah, I remember her, she celebrated all her kids’ birthdays on the same day.

      I talked to a number of people. In person. On the phone. Mostly, the phone. When I could get anyone to talk to me. I made so many calls:

      Can we talk later because I’m trying to cook for my family

      He’s not here now

      He’s fishing

      I’ve got to go to the hospital to see my brother

      He’s about to pass

      I’ve got to go to Memphis

      I’ve got to work the night shift

      Out at the big pen

      I work there since the plant shut

      Can we talk later

      I’m on Neighborhood Watch

      And the kids are walking out

      There’s no food here

      I’m left holding the baby

      You’ll have to speak to the hand

      This was my rest day

      He’s fishing

      I’m working at the polls I’m on poll watch

      I’ve got to go to Little Rock for my checkup

      My pressure’s gone up

      Since he got laid off

      He’s always fishing

      When he can’t go he’s home watching

      The fishing channel

      So, how is the fishing

      Oh well, you know

      It’s lots worse elsewhere

      The woman who lived next door to the old house came outside to pick up her paper. I asked if she had known my friend V who lived there in the 1960s, and she allowed that she did.

      Flat out she says, She didn’t trust me and I didn’t trust her.

      Then she surprised me, saying, She was right. We were wrong.

      [I heard just a fraction of the terrible things that happened back then. A fraction.]

      Then she shocked me, saying, They have souls just like us.

      I see my friend, midthirties, waking up in stifling heat. Her seven towheaded children balled up in their dreams. Socks and shorts dropped across scuffed-up floors. The funk of high-tops bonding with the wallpaper.

      She wakes up seething but eases the screen door to. I see my friend breaking a stem off the bush at the side of the house and breathe in, sweet-betsy. She nudges a slug with her toe.

      MR. EASTER: I’m about like you though about a snake. All these years on the river I only saw a poison one about three times.

       The chaplain for the state police brings up the rear in his own car with refreshments for the men.

      The only sure thing were the prices [and the temperatures]:

      2 pounds of Oleo costs 25¢.

      And 5 cans of Cherokee freestone peaches are $1.

      The Cosmos Club president held a tea at her lovely lakeside home.

      Two more Big Tree boys make fine soldiers.

      A Rolling Stone was found in the bottom of his swimming pool.

      Rufus Thomas and his Bear Cats will headline at the Negro Fair.

      And Miss Teenage Arkansas [a comely young miss] is saluted once again for her charm and pulchritude.

      Sunshine fresh Hydrox cookies, 1 lb for 59¢.

      The assistant warden, at 300 pounds, is the one identified for administering the strap at the Arkansas pen [a self-sustaining institution]. Several say they were beaten for failing [to meet cotton quotas]. Others more often than not did not know why [they were beaten]. One testified to more than 70 [beatings]. The strap is not in question. In question is when it is to be administered.

      THE VERY REVEREND PILLOW [at Bedside Baptist]: The injury СКАЧАТЬ