USA

Jeff.Friedman.St.@alum.dartmouth.org

Poem for Larry Levis
(My teacher at the University 
of Missouri, 1976-78)

You turned your cigarette upside down
and breathed on its glowing tip
and watched it burn.
Then you walked to the window and stared out 
without speaking. I had never seen a teacher
turn his back on a class
for such a long time.

Did you see the gray smoke 
curling over the low flat 
buildings, the bodies sprawled 
on the green, the black stripe 
of asphalt that crosses a continent?

Did you remember the grapes
thickening on vines, how you reached out
with your curved knife and cut 
the stems and dropped the tight 
bunches into the metal pail, 
how you bit slowly into the hard skins
to hold the sweet juice on your tongue
until you could no longer taste it?

Did you hear the migrant workers humming
in the vineyards of Malaga or the sounds
of our unformed poems floating down
over the pavement like white feathers?

When you came back to us, the sun
fell on the right side of your face 
and your green eyes flared 
beneath heavy brows
and you read each of our poems
with such intensity 
that all of us believed our words
had been struck by some blazing light.
I couldn't imagine where your power
came from, for when you sat back down
you seemed so world weary 
slouched in your chair, your eyes
were barely able to look at us.

Then you lit another cigarette,
puckered your lips and blew
smoke rings out over the class
and watched them curl and stretch
and break open and when you spoke
the glowing tip of your cigarette
burned your words into the air
and you rose once more to show us 
where poetry might live,
threaded through our dreams and flowing
from the heart, quietly ticking
its own lovely, mortal rhythm.

"Poem for Larry Levis" 
(NEW VIRGINIA REVIEW)

In the Kingdom of My Palm

From far away
my mother calls out to me,
a thread of voice
that floats through air,

words breathed
into the darkness.
Near death
she sits in a room

with all her things
and calls out to me
with her hands curled
like irises,

with the pain spreading
along the ridges of her shoulders,
with the soft touch 
of her tongue on her lips.

She wants me
to come back to her
before she closes her eyes,
before she lies down

and gives up her body
to dust and ash.
She calls out to me
from the blue blush of light,

from the swirl of molecules
colliding in the kingdom
of my palm, from the roads
that rip through me.

I am the son
who kicked his feet
and splashed in the dark waters 
of her womb, and made her cry.

I am the son she set into motion
like a small planet orbiting around her,
the son she taught
to lift a spoon and eat.

Now a wind enters her room.
The metal chimes jangle.
The gold swans
reach toward the flames.

I sit with her one last time,
close her eyes
with my fingertips,
and call her "mother."

"In the Kingdom of My Palm" 
(CRAB ORCHARD REVIEW)

Mr. Clark's Last Class

They said he'd crawled out of the trenches 
in a hail of enemy fire
to save the lives of two 
wounded soldiers, but he looked
effeminate in his pink shirt 
and blue blazer, limping from his desk.

As he patrolled the aisle,
I wondered what he thought about 
when he stared out the window at the spaces 
between the bare sycamores, the snow flurrying
and bursting in mid-air. Did he remember
crawling through the cold mud
to save his friends, the feel
of their wounded flesh against his body? 

Did he want to come home
again to the crowds and parades--
ramrod-slim in his uniform--
to dance in the streets as in a newsreel 
I had seen? Or did he wish he had never
gone off to war? He was 
the only male teacher 
at Glenridge Grade School.

Every hour, he excused himself
to walk down the hall to the fountain. 
When the door swung shut
my classmates burst into laughter, 
mocking his hawking noises
and mimicking the way he bent over
to deliver his wad of spit
to the shiny white basin.

I sat in the back and watched
the big hand of the clock
tick slowly around the white face
and waited for Mr. Clark
to tell us how he'd become a war hero
or what it means to be brave,
but as the cold winds blew away
the leaves, and snow covered 
the tarred blacktop in silence,
he never said a word that seemed to matter.
 
Soon water dripped 
from the drains, the earth thawed,
rivers ran in the streets,
and we went out to play 
on the glassy blacktop.
Mr. Clark rose from his desk
and disappeared into the long corridor,
into the crowds of men dancing
in the newsreel, his face shining 
as the last glittery shower of confetti
merged with the whiteness of the screen.

"Mr. Clark's Last Class" (PLEIADES)

Marvin Miller Gets His Shirts

All day he unloads
trucks that back into the dock
from the alley behind Delmar,
then wheels the boxes through the warehouse
and stacks the shelves and tables
with shirts and pants that come
from Taiwan and Singapore where labor
is "dirt cheap." Mr. Knepf,
a round man with a round
face, who always wears
a blue Ban-lon and dark trousers,
points his finger at the empty
spots and tells him, 
"Let's make it snappy."

He sees the customers picking through
the merchandise while Nancy
cranks the cash register
and takes in the bills and makes
change. The light fixtures hum,
the cash register rings
and his dollie clinks and clanks
over the cement floor.
Mr. Knepf is smiling and talking, 
making a small fortune
selling brand name 
rejects to men who know
a good deal when they see one.

Now the fading light grays
the windows, and as Marvin untangles
the hangers in the clothes cages
and hooks them to the racks,
he watches the men leave
the store with their packages
and cross the street to Fat Hat,
open until 10 p.m..
Mr. Knepf locks the door
and says, "Leave the pants,
but the shirts are all yours."

At the first table he turns over
a blue oxford shirt
with a discoloration barely visible
on the tip of the collar--
two bucks. And under 
a pile of messed up shirts, 
he finds a Gant
with a slender red thread
in the blue seam of the cuff--
two bucks. And at the next 
table back from the window
he picks out an Arrow
with pin stripes and a loose
ivory button--two bucks.
And two bucks more
for the white Hathaway--the prize of the day--
whose mistake even he can't
find, no matter how many 
times he turns it over
and holds it up to the light.

"Marvin Miller Gets His Shirts" (PRESS)

Jacob

I survived as the struggle
for power that began 
in the womb,
one hand clutching
my brother's heel
to ride into a world
that would destroy everything
we came to love.

I survived as the final blessing
of an old man too blind to see,
who even in death remembered
how his father lifted his blade
to murder him
and the brightness in his eyes
in the heat of noon.

As a birthright
no one is alive to claim, 
I survived, as a small bird
beating in the blue air
of a ribbed hollow,
its beak glinting yellow.

I survived as the dank odor of death
rising into the nostrils of the hyena
as it catches its prey by the neck 
and rips into the flesh,
and the smell of something bitter
sweeps over the plain.

As the blackness 
in the eye of the flame,
as the promise that turned to dust
on the tip of the tongue
and traveled four thousand years
in the wind, I survived,
as the ash drifting over villages
that disappeared long ago.

I survived as the rage
that lived inside you
like breath,
as the unfinished telling
of your bloodiest dreams.

(GRAHAM HOUSE REVIEW)

Listening at Night

Braced against the brass headrail,
my sister lets her hardback
textbook with its shiny red 

spine rest against her chest.
She is learning to study  in the dark,
repeating the causes 

of the Depression that Mr. Adzick,
her history teacher, outlined
on the blackboard in yellow chalk.

The smell of brisket cooked 
in onions lingers in the rooms 
of our apartment.

My oldest sister, who has just
pulled both chains of the reading lamp,
bounces the springs of her twin bed

as her body flips over and she pulls
the sheet over her brillo pad
of black hair, pushing into the pillow

spotted with red and yellow flowers.
On the tv in the living room,
the rabbi offers a prayer

to the world before the station goes off
and the high-pitched signal vibrates 
through the walls. My father flicks

the channels of the remote, but the static
twitches and jumps. Then the tv 
pops off. For a few minutes more

the newspaper cracks and crinkles
until his head droops. Now my sister
fidgets in bed, explaining

Roosevelt's New Deal 
under her breath while she waits 
for the snoring to begin to snap on

the reading lamp. And in my room
the needle sssts under the turntable arm
as it rides the grooves of the shiny vinyl,

Elvis singing, "You ain't never caught a rabbit
and you ain't no friend of mine..."
so softly only I can hear him.

All six poems appear in my new collection, TAKING DOWN THE ANGEL,  which will be
published by Carnegie Mellon at the end of this year.

© All Copyright, 8/30/02, Jeff Friedman.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.