Hungry Ghosts and other poems
by� Claudia Grinnell
A Constant Hum
Night drapes the bayou where cats raise a ruckus over bone
Meal. Fresh fish preferred over vegetable alternatives. What a cat does
Out of sight remains a secret to those who prefer to think
They exercise power connected to ownership. Ownership valued above all
Other forms of control. The point of the pyramid is control: the all-seeing
Eye. The eye reaches up your skirt, over your hose, fondles your secret
Benchmark. Just us blind people may be held back at certain primary levels
(It�s for your own good.) or in diapers at any age. One, two, three
Steps too late to any event, in any event. The lowest common element:
Bodily fluids against which we must be pure, vaccinate for and against,
And march with vigor and commitment. The alternative is less desirable. Location
Matters, totters at the brink of all major fault lines. Fault lining is what we do
Well. Expensive machinery dragged to the edge, inserted to earthen core, measured,
Analyzed and recorded. The numbers avalanche, one after another, snow job
After snow job until we�re buried deep. Blow by blow, they say�dig yourself out,
Pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Great idea if you got boots.
Nine inch heels doom you to pole dancing, a benchmark if it points true north.
It�s a cushy job, a union job. The machine hums in tune with a bigger
Machine which roars from time to time. It never breaks, never
Needs oiling, repair, or time off to tote a fallen relative. The heel,
If you still have it, clacks in rhythm with the hum. The eye blinks from time
To time�still here, still here--not going anywhere. Not leaving scorn
For burnt offerings, just keeping the joint tidy for the superiors. Those who left
On the first bus, the last flight out to a ranch in South America. They paid dear
To hold a slot on the manifest. The hum got a bum leg thrumming, a crippling,
Debilitating injury as a result of too much rhythm and blues. We have
Reasonable emulations of legs�some with shoes attached, every nail sacred,
Every hammer a tool in the hands of the greatest passion. The eye blinks at first
Light, when the question of sun and son and sin leavens itself with someone
Else�s blood. Bread will have to do for now, the circus comes later, hard
On its heels another alliance with wolves. They come by air. They come by sea.
They come in cars dripping oil. Who wouldn�t be bullish, given such
Circumstance. Watch the leaving self, rising above the most optimistic
Benchmark, the highest shelf holding the best cookies, just out of reach.
����������������������������������� That Woman
Drives too close to the curb, children play here.
A squirrel sits at attention. Young sparrows pick
Seeds from my lawn. Later, the jogger, this time with wife.
If I kept paying attention to the cicadas, I�d go insane.
God Bless America, this most Christian of Christian nations.
God Bless America, this most Christian of Christian nations.
Let me tell you about this man.
Or better not.
You wouldn�t believe it.
But listen: there must be millions of them.
I�ve counted them: exactly 47 trees on the right side of this street.
If I wanted to, I mean if I really wanted to do: this.
Taken into python, sliding, waving in and out, no
Edges here. No. I drive the rotting chicken to the gas station.
God Bless America, this most Christian of Christian nations.
God Bless America, this most Christian of Christian nations.
In dumpsters we trust. This one has a lock: only certain garbage
Admitted�whoever gets there first�and flies. Fat, sluggish
Flies. Something for every man: meat. We eat. We eat.
The neighbor�s leaves are burning.
Short, stubby calves. Peasant calves. Calves that dance
The flamenco. Portents of demographic inevitability, say
Hola to the new Mommy. Virgins come and go.
We appreciate the sacrifice. We sure do.
God Bless America, this most Christian of Christian nations.
God Bless America, this most Christian of Christian nations.
It�s dark now. And late into the night, I sit here, counting
Cars, estimating their speed. Too fast, the lot of them.
That woman is home now. She tells her husband about nearly
Ditching the car. About starting over. About getting it together.
I.
For reasons known only to me and a handful of others
II.
I have the answers: common
Screams. Pistols at dawn, if you disagree
III.
Men with cats. Men who refer to themselves
As we. Men strangling dragons
On their forearms. The people, women two by two,
Have been invited to shop
Large selections of bombs, context-specific
Rockets (surface-to-air,
Surface-to-surface) and other weaponryAvailable at reduced price
IV.
All that.
V.
And let�s call it a miracle then: all that
Which happens only once.
Which straightens the way
For everyone.
Which smacks of posing
For the perfect picture�dog in lap.
Competitive mode: to be
The fastest in a race of one. Each
Story has its own truth�the power
Of imagination briefly suspends
Reason, and Billy commits the first act.
It�s probably
Murder. It�s a tool, of sorts, which can be written
Off as opportunity cost.
������������������������ Unqualified Success
Men, vicious men, kept apart by at least two islands
and separated by an uncertain body of water. Uncertain
about lives lost more than once. There
these men invent games of strength involving posts and heaving
after periods of excessive drinking and fucking. Posts
necessitated sticks what with the unfortunate loss of life. Carrots
came later. Certain paradigms shifted poor voice habits to good ones:
she sells sea shells by the seashore to seven silly seamen sailing
south. Slumping strictly discouraged. The leads,
the leads, and the self-reflexive jealousy coupled
with just enough room to sketch the barest outlines of the vessel. Not that
it mattered. By then, the tectonic plates forged a fortunate
alliance. Identity forced everything physical modestly draped. Certain
exaggerations preceded The Hero, who deep in sub-conversation�
so the story goes, but don�t believe a word of it�accidentally disclosed
his tool-making abilities. He knew the background, the everything
about before, the first thin layer, the last turning leaf. Sentiment
became his bag of tricks. His complete
collapse came when new voices conjured a new clan,
a terrible miracle of truth from the further hill country. Say what you will,
there must be limits. These people never understood. These people.
����������������������������������������� About the Cat
The cat�s on its own and has been for years, distant, unavailable. Feeble
attempts at familiarity or family�lack of children will drive you
to that place, to serve nothing. She�s been coming �round late afternoons to snooze
under the oak by the shed. Those are familiar points in the fenced off space:
the tree, the building, some bushes--boxed in by slatted wire and wood. The oak
dominates. Squirrels avoid it and the shed is empty now, empty of all
gardening tools even the most pessimistic gardener might want. Not ready
for gardening, rapidly descending into chaos. And it comes with a biscuit. Channel
Seven runs late night money schemes: call in, get the offer, you�ll be on
the way to the first million. It�s total quality management from the belly up, in
pursuit of all power for the sake of same. The biscuit smeared with jam if
you�ve been good--a form of bonus in lieu of pay. We must trademark the biscuit
because we are running out, so they say. No better necessity than invention,
so they say. The great biscuit die-off, so they say. When the biscuit train ends
nobody�s tide will rise. Never mind the boat. Send it back to the bank. The tree
loses out every September. But it too gets a biscuit. Try not to act surprised,
be of good cheer. Check the positive metal in your pockets. Everybody
wants to scale the highest, the most difficult mountain, not some puny little mound.
Show your work. Pound your plan. Work: the doing of one thing, action,
always action never a rest. Items of motivational interest: gold, diamonds,
vintage clocks stuck at the 11th hour, slightly before twelve, of course.
����������������������������������������� Hungry Ghosts
����������������� putting away childish things
�the emergence from snow, sludge, to find the sky finally
empty of everything but gray. Some things work in gray that don�t work
in any other color: ideas and impulse.� Silver contemplates desertion
from precious metal to make the trip to gray.� I encourage such foolishness,
such deviation from the norm. In gray we trust, in gray we truest.�
Because all else is foolishness, fiddle-dee-dee, Ms. Scarlett,
and just not proper. And o my! My gallant Hero dressed in gray: I will hound him
for the rest of his living years and beyond for having lost this war.�
It is not acceptable to lose, certainly not a war, most certainly
nothing this epic, this clash of civilizations--if you are given to hyperbole�
which I trust you are, else you wouldn�t be here.� Tell me, friend,
how do we extricate ourselves from this trap, this place of high drinks and low music,
soft women and sweaty sleepless nights and cotton so dry you swear
the harvest will fail.� The invitation to the island still stands.� You are packed.
The plane can be here in � hour, fueled, ready.�� Are you ready
to pull your toe from the brown backwaters, the occasional rattlesnake,
water turtle, horsefly and hornet.� They built their nests close to your houses
as if to commit you to something, a long term tenancy agreement.� Defaulted into it
on my part and assumed from then to entropy; on their way to replenish
the dinosaur juice for some future world of roads to nowhere. It takes a lot of gas
to drive to a destination that cannot be reached by any highway. Well, like they say,
it's the journey that's important. I suppose that even if you never get anywhere
you know where you've been. What you've been is had. Sometimes there's nothing
you can do. Of course you do what you can.� Perversion� arrives
at virtue by way of persistence by way of horse.� Trojan, his claw foot tub, swishing
water across a fine mesh. The church ladies pass, wondering of the signs
and wonder. They are certain he is drunk or used to be. Crazy at best.
Some days he makes minimum, others he does better. Considering the nature
of war and fleeting alliances between good and bad and right and wrong
or evil or post-evil, in other words, good or bad,
we leapt at the new-born panda baby Habbibu in Stuttgart�s Stadtischen Zoo.��
A get one might say, in the rough newspaper biz the age demands.�
But zoos, being zoos, had caged animals
for sale, and we, being us, the reading public, ate that up.� Elizabeth Taylor�s horse,
Black Beauty, and NASAs sleepy monkey came--came to in 1000 thread count cloth,
silk, most likely and cuffed with ivory, not pearl�pearl being a whore�s
accoutrement.� But they came too. They all came true. In Nashville
church bells ring.� Pay Attention.� Remember last time. Remember the whole
bloody mess of it, the thoughts and the things, and the thoughts about the things
and the things about thoughts:� all� brought here by land and by sea. To text,
meaning (verb) an action, an ongoing process, not a text, a destination,
a Key West for exhausted language processors, every lounge,
in every beer joint jostling past Fire Marshall Fred�s specific instructions.��
The people enjoy the last gasp, then the relentless drive home.
Yusuf farted again, you said.� I know, I said, and I did. Next year,
when nothing has changed again except the narrative describing
limitless passages of time, next year then: bodies stacked in the streets.
Next year, we spring into action�
������������ ����������� Theory of Ordinary Things
An explanation of revealed fact proved unsatisfactory: workers, used to
Long hours and unpaid wages, simply failed to attach authorized labels
To items mass created. The surplus, whispered and speculated,
Rampaged through the muck, hitched rides from on-ramps
Beside spray-painted viaducts: why not a chicken in every pan. Previously
Grave matter flipped in the Court�s last session. It was cold
Most of the time except when we agreed on warmth. For sentimental reason,
This was understood, never written in the record, the women
Of these times grew skinny and furtive, drained after centuries of accusation
And allegation. Big-bellied men belched noises, seeking interpretation
Of formulae that no longer mattered. The birds toward the end, stopped,
Briefly near the West Coast for new lids, all the better to see
Power lines stretched across the flood. East, past the range,
Some touched down on various lakes and tarns. Certain
Speckled fish greeted them glaring at the sun. Appeasement
Cried the rest.� Authenticity: all agreed. Pictures
And books with pictures not plated for lack of ink and paper.
Everything truncated to A. A is for tree, and anything else
Ever conjured. The body conformed, fashion followed, here and there
Hurry Back stores pandered clabbered Carnation�considered a delicacy
After Master transferred the last A: as always, the arc of A not accountable.
Claudia Kreuzig Grinnell was born and raised in Germany. She now teaches at the University of Louisiana at Monroe. Twice a finalist for the Pushcart Prize for poetry, her poems, fiction, and essays have appeared in publications such as The Kenyon Review, Exquisite Corpse, Hayden's Ferry Review, New Orleans Review, Review Americana, Triplopia, Logos, Minnesota Review, Diner, Urban Spaghetti, Fine Madness, Greensboro Review, Public Culture and others. Her first full-length book of poetry, Conditions Horizontal, was published by Missing Consonant Press in the fall of 2001. Grinnell was the recipient of the 2000 Southern Women Writers Emerging Poets Award. In 2003, she was a finalist in the Ann Stanford Poetry Prize Competition, and in 2005, she received the Louisiana Division of the Arts Fellowship in poetry. Her second book of poems All Roads...but This One was published in 2005.
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