Ghost, like a Place
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Ghost, like a Place - Iain Haley Pollock
An Abridged History of American Violence
The boys are kicking over garbage cans
and smashing car windows with heaves
of glass bottles. Time in the pest house
of school or remediation on a road crew
has moved them to boredom with bare knuckles
and stolen knives. Soon, their insecurity
will concentrate on the grip of a Glock
till an enemy, who a minute before
was unknown and not an enemy, appears
under a streetlight. The provocation
will be slight: soft palms hardened
to a shove. In days to come,
friends of the enemy will strip bark
from the few trees they know and graffiti
their grief onto the trunks. And the boys,
even after the votive jars have filled
with rainwater and plastic rose bouquets
have somehow wilted in the humidity,
the boys will also mourn their killed.
In their woe they will want for a light
to slow-drag through them, a light
like the reflection of sequin or chrome.
They will not find it and they will not
find it until they are discovered faceup
in a dirt lot where neighbors remember
a house, a while back, was torn down,
where now bricks and teeth of glass
push up, like Indian bones, through the soil.
I
GHOST
We, the Rubber Men
We gunned each other down,
gunned each other down in the street, abandoned
each other unburied. Later, those left bearing
the palls burned to show their love. Burned to light
our streets with the dying asterisms of their rage.
And we watched until our watching made of them
a carnival: He, the twirling fire-spitter.
He, the glass-walker. He, the sword-swallower. He,
the smiling bullet-catcher. From our vantage,
we allowed ourselves to admit no wrong. No
wrong. We were only watching. We were only
breathing in. Breathing in. Breathing in the ether
of routine and accumulation. When we came to,
the field, where in fall children trotted back and forth
like a cloven herd, eddied with snow. Wind-driven snow,
the field buffeted with thin, cold clouds along its camber.
Wind-driven, an uprising of whirls gathering
into the clawed shape of a loss we did not know
we felt. That we would have said was not ours.
That returned into itself. That returned into itself,
no trace. Like breath into breath. Snow into snow. Flesh
into flesh. That leaving no trace, could not be ours.
Violets for Your Furs
Garbage men in this city
don’t see fit to put the garbage
in the garbage truck, and in the streets
the dented bottles and cans spin
and roll like the gait of a man
clutching a brown-sacked beer
in his hand. The discount grocer
on Girard sells week-old cuts of pork
and tins of black beans a day
from expiry. And the antique dealer
by the bus stop hawks one-eyed
dolls and green vases. I haven’t once,
in eight years, seen the store open
for business. In Dancing Girl with Castanets,
the model for the figure’s head, Gabrielle
Renard, is posed with rouge on her cheeks,
a garland of indulgent red peonies
in her hair. She looks bored.
And I know this boredom
from Rhea Humphries’ eyes in school
when I told her, again, I love you.
As for the girl’s body, for his gaze
Renoir never paid Georgette Pigeot,
arms bared in a diaphanous traje
de flamenca more Hellenic than Iberian.
I can guess now why Rhea never protested
in the halls when I’d stare so brazenly
at her tits. Will I always want something
other than what I have? Which is to wonder:
who knows if I ever loved Rhea? Probably not,
as maybe the young can never love,
or not the young as blindered as I was.
Let’s just agree, Gabrielle, let’s just agree,
Georgette, I went about it all wrong.
The garbage men are back, girls:
Bottles and cans, cries the heart,
bottles and cans. Bottles and cans,
cries the heart, bottles and cans.
Never Drink a Six-Pack in Sight of Jesus (If You Want to Keep Your Faith)
Summer nights after summer jobs: The Grotto.
Which wasn’t one. A clearing in a copse
at the edge of St. Margaret’s House. But dank
with condensation under those boughs
as we thought a grotto must be. Talk. Beer.
Teasing. Beer. Beer. Groping & tongue
in the bushes, if you were blessed enough.
Or she enough unbound. Talk. Beer. Above all,
our own rules. Behind a screen of hemlock
& too far down a dirt track to be seen
from Jordan Road. Too