Bible Stories

I

Chime

[wpaudio url=”/audio/8_7/Chime.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″]

Lamech watched his younger wife
minister to ailing second son Salil.
He could see it was a waste of effort.
When little Salil stopped that broken snoring,
the chickens in the yard scattered, keening.

Lamech debated burial. Instead,
he twisted hempen twine around the wrists and ankles
of his little wasted man, and hoisted him into the limbs
of the modest pistachio tree before their door.

Wife wailed, sisters quailed: What was this spectacle?
There was first the period of feculence,
the puzzled approach of jackals and village dogs,
run off by vigilant younger brother Asher.

After he had dried to the consistency of purple jerky,
Salil began to shrink. At father Lamech’s funeral,
the boy had become just bleachy bones, clinking,
in the desert wind, light among the branches.

II

Champ

[wpaudio url=”/audio/8_7/Champ.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″]

To celebrate victory in the senior singles draw,
Ben climbs sweaty into his truck under the sweltering sunset
and drives off down the expressway. Not toward home,
there is nobody at home. Not to a bar, that’s pathetic.

He goes to the river. Under the bridge by the old marina.
He has Scotch in a paper bag behind the drivers’ seat,
kept there in case of emergencies. He pours himself
two solid fingers neat in an empty fast food coffee cup.

His tennis clothes are almost dry as the sun finally dips
behind the hill beneath the high school lights across the river.
There must be a football game about to start, tonight.
Even with the windows down, it’s still hot, no breeze.

Maybe two more Scotches, contemplating his excellent win.
His serve had been huge, his crosscourt forehand scary.
Not bad for a balding sixty-one year old white man.
He is starting to sweat again.

With the permission of the Scotch, he locks the truck,
picks his way down the rip-rap, and slips into the river.
The plan, more or less, is to float, downstream, climb out
at the country club and run back, refreshed, to the truck.

The cold is bracing, at first, absolutely exhilarating.
He is being a wild man; he needs to do more crazy shit!
Then the current closes around him, an icy avalanche,
sweeps him to dead center of the river in two heartbeats.

At first, he fights, his dainty arms and legs thrashing
in the freight train flood, like an insect in a flushed toilet.
At some point he relaxes, actually watches in wonder
as he passes the lights of downtown above the river wall.

A harbor seal circles to waggle a bulging eye, amused.
Then it is just the dark, and his slowing lungs
in the fist of the river, as he passes out into the Columbia.

III

Crooked River Baptism

[wpaudio url=”/audio/8_7/River.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″]

crazy bugger gorge
drops dizzy from road shoulder
to the broken stream
below the highway bridge.

foul Prineville shrine,
where that drunk butch pair
chucked two braying brats
into the unforgiving air.

by these little scabby sacrifices,
testament, Ford sister,
I scrape any taint
of hated male.

but unwashed babies
nor drownded. They fly.

IV

Tom Alexander reflects upon the death of his son,
by oxycontin, at a willowy spot along the river

[wpaudio url=”/audio/8_7/Tom.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″]

They settled upon Michael,
after debating Matthew.
What did it matter? Another healthy son.

Bartlett pear-packing had gotten competitive,
after years of unchallenged prosperity.
Michael had no interest in football.

How can a man sustain a sexual integrity
when his wife cringes as if in pain or repugnance?
The college years a blur. Michael at Santa Clara.

Uprooting the orchards to Zinfandel
restored the good fear of a risky fist fight. Fun!
He called Michael queer. Michael called him mean.

In summer, the Russian River is really just a big creek.
The swirling current suggests laughter, splashing.

VI

leaving

[wpaudio url=”/audio/8_7/Leaving.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″]

he took all her cash
and the six inch bronze bust
of some forgotten French general
that he had gotten against her advice
at an antique store in Visalia
twenty years before,
when, after a work day afield,
it was 115 degrees
and she wasn’t answering
his calls. Then,

well, not then, the former time,
but, now, in the sequential sense,
he slipped out the back door,
doing his best to be quiet,
but the screen door slammed
behind him like a shout: thief!

he ducked under the fence rail
and jogged across the golf course,
hung a left at the caddy shack,
down the gravel track to the river,
paused briefly to greet a pit bull
that jumped in good-natured enjoinder
in a redneck yard where
he considered stealing
from a selection of busted cars.
instead, he staggered further,
stopped on the bank and sat,
his ass in the warm gravel
and his feet in the cool current,
to consider his predicament,
the dog beside him
regarding him
with admiration and forgiveness.