John Dorsey

jack johnson will be waiting
with an extra pair of gloves
sent there to show him
how to tap dance
around the ring
giving the sun
a bloody lip
as jeff yells out a poem
& takes his heart
out of an invisible wooden box
passing it around
to all the secondhand ghost girls in worcester & shrewsbury
who never got to know
what it truly felt like to love themselves
pressing their ears up against it
that poem beating in his chest now
like a battered drum
like a fist waiting
to walk them home.

for S.A. Griffin

there is no more wisdom on a hill than this
& even if you picture it in black and white
the lemonade still comes from a paper carton
& the ability to change who we are
before we all get back into our cars
to head in different directions
is the greatest acting job there is.

they would line us up
in the parking lot
of the old hills department store

covered in fake green grass
& plastic eggs filled with penny candies
blowing a whistle
to start things off

we’d claw at each other
the closer we got

tufts of hair
& some light bruising
were a small price to pay

easter egg hunts
were how the romans
first developed a taste for blood
during the great
cabbage patch kid
craze of 1982

minutes later
sunlight poured down
on the ancient ruins
of a suburban strip mall

where we had lived
like yellow chicks squawking
in plastic baskets

the air still cool
the world went quiet
in the back
of a ford escort.

says he won’t wear a face mask
because he just can’t live in fear

someone once said live free or die

that’s where we’re lucky

now we can do both.

for Chris Knopp

true love is six feet away
from where i am standing

the moon is a beautiful sinking boat
when it winks at toledo

my heart can’t whistle

the bar is closed

the sky is a dead industry

the only songs i know

are about girls.

you tell me about your father
dead at 49

we are all just trying
to keep moving

our hearts under attack
every minute of every day

love isn’t a speeding train
but more of a ceasefire
set to music.

meant that i couldn’t yell
not even on the inside
only whoop like a bird
with my underdeveloped lungs
trying to escape
the trailer park even then
as the knack sang
on the radio
about things
more precious
than air.

as curly sits playing keno
he offers me a shot of hot damn
while telling me how last summer
he took a group of writers out on his boat
& mentions that he doesn’t really even like to read

but he has a sense of adventure

he is huck decades later
searching for becky thatcher
from the same barstool almost every night

the fog is thick in his mind
but he is still the closest thing to mark twain
franklin county has on a tuesday afternoon

o sweet becky thatcher
i can feel the heat
coming off of his glass
every time
he mentions your name.

prophets were born and raised here
their bones in the pipeline of the past
when each man was his own tribe

when the lenape cried out
in the sunlight
for mother’s milk

after the jug of the spirit
had gone empty

when the boy from bartlesville
watched young girls dance
just outside his window

pacing the ward floor
waiting for muhammad
to seek his advice

when invisible prairies still offered
the possibility of young love

when the cosmos was powered
by white bread & gasoline

when wind ripped through these fields
like the last gust of breath from the dead

when nothing sacred
could be held down
by a stone.

for Victor Clevenger and Everette Maddox

written down
on the bathroom wall
of the maple leaf bar

is

tell my mother i love her

somewhere the marrow
of our speech
is always
faint praise

& we are all veterans
of some invisible war

but we still need these memories
& plenty of paper towels
to wash our hands.