golem

I

So speak. So I

             speak to you; measure

             by snake scale the story

we call name

Until we can see a pattern, den born

and squirming, through the witch grass.

To tell it is to rattle;

it is to split it open down the belly,

                                              to expose

the space between each wall. Our unformed spirits

amount to breath

slithering out, into the snow.

II

I am jealous.

The animals implicate their presence

with such obvious subtlety.

Their dim rustle, their calls that

blanket the wood.

The payphone

out behind Smalltownburgville Drug and Grocery

             howls all night like a child

waiting to be grabbed by its scruff

and deposited in a crib.

I ask a favor of you, you, you:

             harvest the scraps of my voice—

sew them into a scarf; anything

to wrap a face in, to hold

heat, candle sure.

The countryside’s a song

growing bars one tree at a time.

Keep this quarter for the call.

III

The forest snickers at each passing:

wind gnaws the branches,

                                    sounds out bone

to the hungry dogs.

We are scared that way,

             that way the dice

eclipsed by your closed fist

shiver like dead leaves

before they’re tossed.

The seasons are vermin

sneaking solemn through the years.

He looks like you

             so say.

He is quite handsome

so say

softly. I am scared of the river which drowns each day,

scared of the thirst that draws me to it—

and to be scared is a sign

of a certain type of respect.

I remember him the way one might lay a wall.

Memorized him,

the way one might burn a field.

V

It was not my brother, it was me

who drowns to return again and again.

Each night

brings the same dream and each morning

                                     over coffee at the Salina, someone new

whines to play with the new toy of it.

             To crack its shell and leave me

with the mess.

Make symbol out of jack shit. Friend, maybe dreams

speak plain, maybe they mean exactly what they mean.

Every night a man drowns.

But no—

please,

go on,

tell me how a body

of water can be unknown, how dying

is the one slow matter

reserved for the living.

How anyone can have the idea of a brother

to lose.

VI

The corpse wood drying in the orchard does not mourn the corpse wood, it mourns

the ungathered fruit.

Of temperature and nothing

                                               more,

of the river’s longing

for whatever touches it: a wavering;

a body to orient oneself by.

(Who would carry a candle through the night?)

             Beneath this bee stung

                                     swollen sort of moon;

the clouds sop up the bloat of

all that rotten yellow light.

VII

(Leave knocking to the ghosts).

(Force is the virtue

that makes God perfect).

VIII

I do have a brother, did,

do. All the cars

in Smalltownburgville are red

                                              and idling

on the torn-up baseball field.

Down

             at the salt ponds

the children night fish

and gig frogs with stolen .22s.

But my brother, my brother

was not supposed to be

my brother. There are no houses large enough

for more than one child in this town. The womb

has been spooned empty as the hills.

Let me put it bluntly:

luck’s the technique

we use to organize

                                                    each of our petty

(and I mean petty) losses.

IX

You mustn’t let it breathe.

Out the chimney whisper the star absent secret, smoke.

             It is expected

that I should be the one

to scatter the two chipped plates, to place

the unwashed silver

upon the table the way the river would

place detritus upon the banks.

Soon it will be time

to hold the bell

firmly; to tug at its arm and pull

out its one dim word again

and again: bruise.

X

Say it in his voice, say it

in a voice that breaks the dirt.

For thirty-six years the Smalltownburgville

mining outfit yanked gypsum like bad teeth

from the hills

                        and when they were done,

they left.

Now, the ground—thin

roof to the grave of each homestead.

The unfertile soil,

a reason why I have no brother. So point

and tell me

that’s where he is buried,

caught

between dirt

and the dirt, as if he were to be reborn

each morning from the shafts

(or the collapsed

hills). Not even the dead

rest in fine fettle tonight.

Please, whisper it to me.

Make it ring

until it sounds out god

through the trees,

the urns,

an empty womb,

any hollow place could be a cocoon—

any place will do.

XI

The trees bow

                          at the waists and

break to the snow. A field of toothpicks

                       stuck

in a pillow.

Just the season molting.

He’s trampling the crowns

of the oaks beneath his boots.

He’s hunting with a pistol.

Snow cries

through the planks hunched

over the brandy pit;

the snow chills it. Pass the handle,

have a pull. Fire;

                        what chars the day

also bursts the night.

A toast:

XII

The night is an ocean. The night is

an ocean. The night is an ocean and

we’re heavy at the bottom.

Cheers.

He once said to me

if you buy the bullets, we can

use my gun.

So (what could you) say (to that)?

(Cheers.)

XIII

Don’t kid yourself,

we’re all on our way to leaving

or to being left—

annul salt from hill; shell

cracked

like hammer to nut.

In the basement, he dug a pit

             to break chestnuts,

to separate skin

from meat.

Climb through the window

that is the entrance into the potato cellar;

wait.

Storage,

the politics of farming;

lord high god almighty

judges us by what we can keep and for how long we keep it.

Virtue, vice, the body

is a vessel for action.

Most legends say man is made of a combination

of something

from the earth and labor.

It’s time to shut your trap,

(please, please, please, stop talking).

XIV

Penny the tracks or cap them—

             the train route splits the town open

and doesn’t stop there.

Toot.

Toot.

                                   Everyone’s daughter

is named after one kind of alcohol

or another.

Everyone’s son

is getting intimate with violence.

How can anyone ask

why do you still imagine you ever had a brother?

And still, everyone does.

Copper pancakes

littering the railway ties—

when the train comes through,

it’s too loud to hear the caps pop against the treads;

you know what’s happened by what’s left:

scorch marks; ash moons stuttering in a row.

XV

An elegy

is an act of love, even

if for no one in particular.

Of a natural

                        moral

order, my brother

would ask

What does a romantic do in an unromantic age?

Kill themselves,

(he) I reckon.

XVI

It’s a way of making sense out of what you can’t.

                                                        Without a pattern,

the sky is barren. Without names, the constellations

are no more

than chalk dust sitting

stubborn on the blackboard.

What if that isn’t a lesson dangling above us, if it’s

the moon as we see it, rippling up

from under the water.

XVII

Looking down on the valley, the hawks are

                                  grackles are pigeons

                                  are motes of dust circling

the drain of sunlight.

                                     All the mineral that’s mined

but can’t be sold, we call that gangue.

Everything elliptical makes a spiraling sense.

We know how it ends because it’s also

how it starts;

which is why the planets tread out

their courses, why everyone’s favorite beer is

whatever is on sale that night at the Smalltownburgville

Grocery and Tackle.

My brother

could be any miscarried baby.

With the right timing, I could have been every unborn child

(which I believe

I might have liked).

Instead, I forsake dusk to listen

for the gas generators oscillating, the static

between stations on the radio, the insects drowning

in the creek is as close as it comes

to the music of the spheres

or other such useless decoration.

XVIII

Every fire should not be

burning cleanly. A romantic dinner:

pasta knotted like the wet hair of a drowned woman;

             the wine, red as dwarf stars.

                                                 Romance is not well

suited for this town.

I once watched my brother burn his love letters

one person at a time. And then

again another time,

so I suppose there are no lovers

in Smalltownburgville or even

out past the field line where the cities begin.

                        This town is the gap between

the right to a thing

and the ability to get it.

XIX

Taste salt, lick the edges of the table

or toss it up

over your shoulder.

Your brothers are not your brothers.

                                                          The salt is snow

come early this year. Apples clutter

the orchard floor, roll down the incline and gutter

at the hillfoot—

the difference between want and need rots sweet as shade.

The breeze collects and carts the desire,

the breeze disappoints.

XX

On the side

of each road, there is a dog

chewing on whatever animal has been left there.

In the forest, the trees cry their leaves

until they stand there, rock naked in the wind.

             Brother for lack of compass,

brother for lack.

XXI

Standing patiently, a suit

in each black closet. A child in each

empty room. A body behind each curtained

tub.

Squint.

Sorry, no, quarantine that to my black closet,

                                                        my unfurnished room,

my clawed bath.

My unshaped form.

You are haunting the world

with your wild misperceptions so say.

I was born out of a union of misfortune and sincerity.

Your brother was a suicide so say

forget him.

I am mourning;

all the universe and farther impatiently

paces—planets

tread their ecliptics until even

night wears thin,

which is to say,

                                                           bullshit

(so say).

XXII

                        Which is to say desperation,

in so many words.

Brother: prescribed fire,

the brother is the smoke and the smoke

is the air

and the air

is stark, it hangs too long

like tinsel,

or criminal,

or a pall

to drape across the town.

Everything’s about logic,

you can trust in that:

to burn the forest to keep it

from burning, to excavate mammoth bone

from junkyard,

drown the name to muzzle ourselves.

XXIII

I have confused myself. It’s not me,

no. No brother, no

brother—

what difference would it make now?

We misrepresent ourselves

one word at a time

as we learn the limits of language.

The rivers hide the dead, they nod the currents forward.

                                                                       Look: here,

if I were sentimental, you wouldn’t understand me

but if I spoke plainly, you would think me simple.

So—no, I did

             have a brother and he was killed

at war, maybe

so I write:

My brother was killed in the war

to make you believe it,

if momentarily.

And when I say, I am afraid to come out of mourning, laugh.

Yes, my brother was killed in the recent war.

Yes, my brother was a suicide. Yes,

the ghosts have grown bored of visiting us.

XXIV

Queen Anne’s lace overtakes the gardens and ditches

of Smalltownburgville. From bloom

                                                            comes patience

and the reward for patience

is waiting, is deaf stalks,

blind potatoes, is unharvested

                                    loss (keep

repeating the word until it takes

root, grows branches, and blooms).

So instead I carved out a hole and then closed it up.

My hands are covered in your face.

Brother was a farmer

with two black thumbs, a breeder of Siamese cats

who refused to work with females, a bulimic sin eater,

allergic to gluten;

             which is my way of saying: he was never

(anywhere) anyone (anymore).