Nine Martinsville Screens

Eastern tiger swallowtail among vincas—

Splintering swing

in a line of walnut trees,

my daughter’s wild hair.

The toddler names the action

as it is done, the just-past

rendered in the present tense:

I eat the grapes. I spray

the hose. I fall down.

~

The twice-two-timed wife

two-timing two men,

one from before she met

her twice-two-timing husband.

My father to his

sister about their

mother: Why was I

never told these stories?

Tomatoes ripen on the windowsill—

That dead oak’s

like a giant cactus.

~

Crepe myrtle’s way:

almost as soon

as surfacing,

the trunk divides.

Crepe myrtle bark—

easy to peel,

quick to stab.

Fill, fret, flee—

a dozen blackbirds

in a scrubby myrtle

little bigger than you,

its limbs like bone

the color of lime.

~

Another porch beer—

waiting for night

to fall into place.

~

Buzzards loop far above

the carcass, and memory,

likewise, I’m sure.

They twirl like searchlights,

beckoned and strung.

From trough to crest,

from topsoil to dust cloud,

the arcs and coils confound.

Is this the same person who—

Love baby, love baby,

that’s where it’s at. That’s

the faded red spray paint

on the yellowed cinder block

of the B&R Appliance store.

~

Downstream of the Fieldale Bridge,

Canadian geese

loiter the jutting rocks.

The arm that guided my own

now guides my son’s. How to draw out

the thick green glowing line, the growing

what is stream, to know what is strike.

The arm that guided my own now guides

my son’s. I never really learned.

The swollen leather of my father’s hands,

the minnow’s lithe and silver gleam.

Let me know what to preserve

and what to discard,

what to hang and what to sing:

The river

where you set

your foot just now

is gone—

those waters

giving way to this,

now this.

~

To break the power of the past,

boil nine black walnuts

still in their husks

and bathe in the brown tea.

On the west side of 220 North

to Roanoke, ambassador

of peace and fertility,

a doe squats to piss.

~

Against white azaleas, an eastern comma’s black flash,

at the center of its wings, a tiny orange throb.

The black wooden ball of a rotten

walnut, unfetched, ruined by webworms

in the first place, O wayfaring purpose.

If damaged by sunburn, drought, or husk fly—

So many branches

of so many trees,

bound by the mist

of fall webworms’ nests—

and they’re all over

the tent we pitch

as we pitch, as we talk

into a fire, as

we sleep and wake.

~

As tears brim—“You are

a good man”—

meteors shower

generations.

Massive stream of debris

in the Perseids’ 133 year orbit—

my father’s halfway there.

Midnight piss—one meteor’s

green murk, long and thick,

slashing up the sky

beyond the roof of the barn.

Two cousins talk family in the 4 a.m. driveway, while directly overhead,

Perseids. One’s flash, almost painfully white, longer than its streak,

like a tear with no trail.