Being the person
September 25, 1996
Providence

This is where we pretended we were someone else and wrote a poem about where we came from.

Jeff

I came from the mountains. Trapped in a trapper’s lodge without a spare rib. We banded bears, banded together, banded aid to travelers. Traveled those mountains, spiking ice in the winter, spiking winter in the coffee, spiking fevers.

Feverishly I grew. Grew, not in the normal upward and outward sense but more in the non-sense. I learned to sense the nons in the air, in the earth, in the fire. The fire was non-water; it watered the air with its many sparks. It plugged up my imagination with coals and charred bones. I brought the bones to the mountains to cool and gnawed away the marrow.

And now I work in the pith of the City, where the rocks don’t come and visit. I lodge a few hours a year in visitation rights, turn right at the sidewalk’s end and wait.

Wait on the table in the mountain fort he marrow of the bones of the bears that appeared banded and brooded and spiked my veins

‘til the city don’t cry no more.

Julie

Adam

Nobody

not even the mosquitos and the fig trees and the zydeco bands and the lemonade stands

knows where I’m going.

I’ll wake up one evening and decide to go for a waltz down the lane or perhaps take a plane by the Seine

revved on ginger beer

I’ll pass by the halls where gaudy pink stalls hide amoebic monkey-rat tails

I’ll meander about alleys, perusing dark galleys satisfying curious stares

I’ll sniff my last odors, recall rusty motors, and finally whisper aloud:

"this is the place where you last saw my face" and slowly fade into the crowd.

Julie