aayoungmy Uncle Etheridge
was grace personified
a Kentucky horseman
of noble heart
my grandmother’s dear brother
who frequently had
a formidable pipe
clenched between his teeth
and from him plumed
rich histories in tobacco smoke
finely crafted stories
commanding our young attention
dignified in a way few men are
what I loved most about him
was his deep bass voice
a black velvet tide
rolling toward you
a gentle thunder
over a Bluegrass prairie
you can sit at a table
drinking wine
palms flat to the wood
without remembering
that table was ever a tree
but my heart will never forget
it bled for you
once
it’s your voice
that always got to me
you damned well knew it
causing me to explode forward
bloody haired
through the windshield
of our history
i
i saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
thoughts of kissing me
sleep on disreputable futons
show up at hotel room doors
unexpectedly
.
just about the time
one of my gods said
i was coming close to my
howl
.
but i’m nowhere in proximity
.
upping the ante is perhaps required
my addictions too mitigated by motherhood
and the yolk of practicality
.
i’m not lesbian enough
i’m not disenfranchised
i’ve never been to france
i’ve never given anyone a hand job for a grant
ted hughes has not yet abandoned me
.
i soften remembrances of you
so that i may live
but there are days
when the truth
of what you were
is flung from your grave
as the world
stages another revolution
terror rises from my earliest memories
my big sister
running with tiny me in her arms
to lock us behind a door
away from your belt
because i had toddled too near
your neatly pressed slacks
and
the day you walked to my swing set
to beat four year old me
mercilessly
for innocently repeating words
i didn’t understand
from your tongue
to grandma’s ears
you were kind enough
to slam me back down on the slide
when you were done
leaving me screaming atop the play mountain
the stream of urine
running all the way down between my legs
past my white sandal feet
the full length of the hot metal incline
then finally
dripping onto blades of grass
and it’s all i can do
to not drive deep into kentucky
with a shovel and lye
to liquefy your bones
alleviating me
and the earth
of what’s left of your weight
oh, fred
you’re perfect dead
a casket was the best place for you
when it is
this cold
i worry more
about
lost
things
i walk along the street
with widow’s ankles
beneath an umbrella of spider webs
and butterfly wings
wearing
the wisdom of last night’s lipstick
passed unadorned doorways
watching the
ornamental cherry lanterns
hanging from trees
drip autumn rain
onto
leaves who have lost their desire
to retain chlorophyll
exposing bloody red motives
cast to a barrel for burning
our love affair boarded up in the summer house
the light is giving way to tones of decline
a soft funereal glow
i kiss the lamp posts to ignite their fire
a sapphire ring upon my finger
tucked into a pocket of london fog
this is the time of year
memory holds court
as we mourn the never wills
and the never was
mausoleum chambers
fill my mother’s house
the lavender room
with grandmother luvenia’s bed
and soft pink crystal light fixture from the old house on fishing creek
is where the spaw and bates families are entombed
the bed spread woven from funeral ribbons and loss
cherry framed antique portraiture
hang as illuminated death masks of my ancestors
behind the old convex glass
shoe leather faces
whip stitched lines
and battle scars
their backs curved
from bending to god’s will
their great depression was their existence
i look into the women’s changed eyes
who lost children
they had faded to a barely living shade of gray
known only to battlefields
and beds sickened with scarlet fever
country life is a sort more merciless than most
particularly to the feminine persuasion
mother swears the cicadas were screaming in the june apple trees
that pot steam august day meant for sewing bicentennial dresses
the day aunt lena jumped in the well
i often walked by the sealed haunted thing as a little girl
lungs filling with fear
wondering why that day
she chose to turn potable water into tears
was it the four year old daughter
named venus
born and died in the month of april
buried beside the church
had the clocks her late husband made wound her tightly enough to do it
or was it simply senility
i’ll never know
when had she stopped hearing the piano music
what had she suffered
that an abyss seemed somehow more comforting
than another day lost in the valley of stones
i close the memory of her with a crystal doorknob
cousin leland went into the well after the body
but her soul
never resurfaced