Dangerous Goods. Sean Hill
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another, but I
know I doesn’t matter to you. You
don’t know I or me for that matter.
But you are appropriate—
appropriately unfit like the not it
we sang out in our childhood games.
You’re like a confessional or, maybe,
the restaurant suggestion box;
you don’t care if I’m penitent
or cynical. I could tell you about
the side of paradise I hiked
today with its flora and fauna—
the birds! or the Sidle Parade,
a subtle spectacle I saw yesterday,
and it matters not. I could tell
you how I really feel about my
father or my shoe size, and they’d
both have the same weight like
the Weighing of the Heart—the soul
needs to balance the feather to gain
entry into heaven. Tomorrow
I intend to go to the Dead Man’s
Button Museum. They’re also
called dead man’s throttles—installed
in trains in case an engineer keels
over. Without pressure, the brakes engage.
for E. Corral
Leaving Dickinson, ND, on 94W with the sun
rising at our backs, a tractor trailer in front
and from the height of my vision, from nowhere,
or from heaven, a wine-soaked handkerchief, trailing
its edges, falls as quiet as a bruise into the next
lane over—a barn swallow caught in the truck’s wash.
They once lived in caves, but now make their nests
in man-made shelters, under bridges and barn eaves—
barns where might be kept a horse’s harness,
the parts of which you recited to me once—crupper,
martingale, throatlatch—rolling your r’s, lashing those
words lavishly for all they’re worth. I’ve since been told
one should always keep the throatlatch nice and loose.
I’ve heard a man would need a keel
bone six feet long
to cradle muscle enough to pull him
up on his own, keep him in the air,
or wind between a breeze and a gale,
a bit more than enough water
to drown in, and a sense
of displacement to set sail.
A keel bone is not a rudder, but
either can get you here.
I suppose I should say, it was warm
and clear here today, or
boats have keels and birds
have keel bones.
Was I the space between the ruffled
feathers on a robin’s red breast
—a wispy yen for warmth—before
you knew me?
A keel’s leading edge
is called a cutwater,
not to be confused with
a shearwater—a seabird
seldom seen from shore.
This note could fit in a bottle; one’s
being emptied; the last red drop rolls
down its neck.
Soon dregs will rest in the curve
of the wineglass’s belly—a hammock’s
sag here, where the day’s dregs sit on the sea
at the far edge of everything.
Here is me; I am here; I am desire; I
am nothing when you come, I fear.
I’ll miss you when you’re here. Stay
home; keep me forever.
BAHAMAS VOYAGE: MEDITATIONS ON BLACKS ON BOATS
Day 1
Up the gangway of the Big Red Boat
the SS Atlantic
white, red, and blue
banners and streamers
A colorful crew croons along
“The Star-Spangled Banner”
Accents thick sing-songy high
and guttural low as the boat
leaves port out to sea traveling slow
Day 2
A cruise to the Bahamas
on the 4th of July
occasioned by a family reunion
Below decks cramped in with
my little brother and a complimentary
bottle of champagne
The champagne goes down
The water on-board briny that of coastal cities
port towns to which slave ships made their rounds
Day 3
On deck in the sun
headphones on listening to
Charles Mingus: Town Hall Concert
Two songs “So Long Eric”
and “Praying With Eric”
After the first they clap
and Mingus introduces:
This next composition was written
when Eric Dolphy explained to me
that there’s something similar
to the concentration camps once in Germany
now down South.
The only difference being
they don’t have gas chambers
and hot stoves to cook us in
yet.
He continues:
So I wrote a piece called
Meditations as to how to get some wirecutters
before someone else gets some guns to us.
Conflation and conflagration
Day 4