Dreams and Other Drifters: An Untethered Blog
A floating record without dates . . .
A floating record without dates . . .
DIS/
<joint
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<joint
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I have yet to visit Vietnam. In Vietnam, we are trying to order breakfast in a tiny hole-in-the-wall place. A blond non-Vietnamese woman comes to our table to take our order. I say, "Good morning." She says, "Pak Pak." My husband is brought a bowl of pho, and I taste Worcestershire sauce in it. I decide to get pho, but the woman has left for the day. I get up to find someone, and my husband follows, taking his bowl with him. He stirs the pho with a white Chinese–soup spoon while I try to explain to a blurry man in the kitchen what I would like. With his spoon, my husband lifts a miniature white alligator from the pho. The alligator, still alive, glistens white-on-white in the steam. We flee. . . . Later, from a window, we look out on green mountains thick with pelts of bamboo, and far below them, a farmer guides a team of oxen along a crooked finger of river . . . then . . . ambling behind them . . . a camel.
I have not driven a car in thirty-seven years. I am driving a car down a hill into a wide, summer-lit clearing. Maybe it's a ballfield. But I am looking for a different place, so I circle around the field and head up the hill, finding that night and snow have fallen on the road. The car skitters, but I manage to make a hard right and park at a precarious tilt below a house. When I go in, the light is dim, as though from a fireplace, but there is no fire. People mill about, expectant. My husband is with me now, and we make our way back to a room where other people sit and wait. Holding up a rectangular pan at an angle, a woman suddenly enters the room. In the pan an infant lies in a deep pudding of mustard poultice that has not been applied with a cloth in the traditional way. As the baby cries and twists, the woman says it was immersed in the poultice to ease the pain it experienced being born.
Under a bright sun, my husband and I are walking on a plain of prairie grass speckled with bluebells. In the far distance, there is a gleaming along the horizon, and the charged indigo of the sky trees with lightning. Somehow I think the Lakota live there.
I lie stomach-down on the bowsprit of an enormous ship that rides air instead of water. Night breezes slide over me in a horizontal baptism . . . Barnacled by the stars' endless nurseries and pyres, the sky breathes a darkness the color of a vein, a triptych angel's robe, Krishna's skin . . . Far below me, strands of cars start-stopping
through city streets, the lit-up weave of Manhattan's DNA fingerprint . . . Exhilaration is all I am.
through city streets, the lit-up weave of Manhattan's DNA fingerprint . . . Exhilaration is all I am.
I think I'm in the house on LaMar Drive, the last place I lived with my family before leaving for good.
Inside the house, a stream carries indeterminate objects past me—detritus? disintegrating books? toy boats?
The water tilts
down
some distance
to where my youngest brother lies, still alive,
on a thin dark rectangle that resembles MRI film.
From where I stand at the top of the stream, I can tell that he still has his legs,
but suddenly I am near him, and they are gone again.
His face says, This is what I want, and he rolls himself into the water. I sob after him as he bobs away,
a giant infant made from surgical saw,
floating like Ophelia toward release.
Inside the house, a stream carries indeterminate objects past me—detritus? disintegrating books? toy boats?
The water tilts
down
some distance
to where my youngest brother lies, still alive,
on a thin dark rectangle that resembles MRI film.
From where I stand at the top of the stream, I can tell that he still has his legs,
but suddenly I am near him, and they are gone again.
His face says, This is what I want, and he rolls himself into the water. I sob after him as he bobs away,
a giant infant made from surgical saw,
floating like Ophelia toward release.
The tiger wanted to be fed . . . It told me its hunger by holding my hand in its mouth, flexing throat muscle; teeth resting on—but not puncturing—my skin . . . The tiger follows me into a kitchen from my childhood . . . I am using both hands now to look for food in the cabinets. I find a bag of something, but when I open it, powder comes out and dusts the tiger's face . . . I leave the house we're in
to go find real meat . . . The tiger waits . . .
to go find real meat . . . The tiger waits . . .
Appalachia . . . Blue Ridge Mountains . . . Born in 1960 on the Virginia side . . . A border cross
to West Virginia often a matter of steps . . . The border between past and present is made of water, like the ancient New River.
Clendinen Holler—the deer staring back, silent and vigilant, among the trees; the coal train leaving its Doppler lament on the tracks below our house . . . a wake of black gleam shivered to the rails from the heaps in its cars, picking up our frugal harvest because "poor people have to do poor ways "; on the porch, walnuts pulled from rotting green husks, then cracked open with a hammer; on the wall, a small machine-woven tapestry of The Last Supper my mother bought from a traveling salesman; down the road a ways, my mother's friend, Barbara, whose people belonged to a snake-handling church; about four years old, standing outside in the cold, clear air, tilting my head back to throngs of stars and the vast blackness that holds them all; inside, after the lights are turned off, the night's black disappears everything in an opaque clasp—the room, the bed, my sleeping brother, and me, crying my fear into it. . . . Coughing awake as my mother's arms reach for me through smoke jack-o'-lantern light because fire is eating the house the Last Supper on the wall the TV popping red-orange stars flames reaching out from the broken screen fire is its own channel my mother running barefoot in the snow looking out the back window of my father's red Scout the fire can't be held down by the black sky or the stars my mother's crying voice . . . the silvery black of burnt wood, the melted head of my doll in the coal bucket, my blistered face from the fire, the charred swing-set in the yard, the smell of wet ashes in the snow . . . in my grandmother's house on Wayside Mountain, my mother in bed with double pneumonia and something called side pleurisy . . the doctor with the black bag keeps coming to the house; my brother and I sleep in a bed across from our mother's; I ask my father to bring me something when he leaves the house one night; "What?" he asks. "A baby doll," I say, even though I don't care much about dolls. . . . Later, light blasts into the room: half-asleep, I see a dime-store doll, sheathed in plastic, on my pillow. . . her hair is the color of flames . . .
Powell's Mountain—as children, Tammy and I sit in her grandmother's kitchen . . . Grannie Wills stands at the sink,
getting ready to wash her hair. She wears it combed tight to her head, but it winds into a soft coil at the back. When she takes out the bobbie pins, I am astonished to see the slow fall of freed silver landing well below her shoulders.
to West Virginia often a matter of steps . . . The border between past and present is made of water, like the ancient New River.
Clendinen Holler—the deer staring back, silent and vigilant, among the trees; the coal train leaving its Doppler lament on the tracks below our house . . . a wake of black gleam shivered to the rails from the heaps in its cars, picking up our frugal harvest because "poor people have to do poor ways "; on the porch, walnuts pulled from rotting green husks, then cracked open with a hammer; on the wall, a small machine-woven tapestry of The Last Supper my mother bought from a traveling salesman; down the road a ways, my mother's friend, Barbara, whose people belonged to a snake-handling church; about four years old, standing outside in the cold, clear air, tilting my head back to throngs of stars and the vast blackness that holds them all; inside, after the lights are turned off, the night's black disappears everything in an opaque clasp—the room, the bed, my sleeping brother, and me, crying my fear into it. . . . Coughing awake as my mother's arms reach for me through smoke jack-o'-lantern light because fire is eating the house the Last Supper on the wall the TV popping red-orange stars flames reaching out from the broken screen fire is its own channel my mother running barefoot in the snow looking out the back window of my father's red Scout the fire can't be held down by the black sky or the stars my mother's crying voice . . . the silvery black of burnt wood, the melted head of my doll in the coal bucket, my blistered face from the fire, the charred swing-set in the yard, the smell of wet ashes in the snow . . . in my grandmother's house on Wayside Mountain, my mother in bed with double pneumonia and something called side pleurisy . . the doctor with the black bag keeps coming to the house; my brother and I sleep in a bed across from our mother's; I ask my father to bring me something when he leaves the house one night; "What?" he asks. "A baby doll," I say, even though I don't care much about dolls. . . . Later, light blasts into the room: half-asleep, I see a dime-store doll, sheathed in plastic, on my pillow. . . her hair is the color of flames . . .
Powell's Mountain—as children, Tammy and I sit in her grandmother's kitchen . . . Grannie Wills stands at the sink,
getting ready to wash her hair. She wears it combed tight to her head, but it winds into a soft coil at the back. When she takes out the bobbie pins, I am astonished to see the slow fall of freed silver landing well below her shoulders.
Mississippi Delta . . . Heading down the Blues Trail . . . Highway 61 flanked by lowlands, an enormous flattop with one steel string . . . Yet-to-bloom cotton sleeping in green fields . . . Ghosts there . . . Spectral pickers hunched over the bolls, their bristle-cut
hands . . . Ghosts everywhere . . . Bessie driving her Packard on this Road before the crash just outside of Clarksdale . . . The Voice of Son House filling the car. We are having trouble finding his marker along the Highway. We finally spot it when he starts singing "Preachin' the Blues": "Oh, I'm gon' get me religion,/I'm gon' join the Baptist church./I'm gon' be a Baptist preacher,/And I sure won't have to work." When I read the marker, I see that it quotes the same lyrics. . . . The Abbay and Leatherman cotton plantation, where Robert Johnson lived as boy. At the foot of the marker that tells us this, my husband leaves a guitar pick. . . . Bessie died at the
G. T. Thomas Afro-American Hospital in 1937. Now it's the Riverside Hotel. I sit in a rusty glider in front of it. A sign in the window says CLOSED. . . . Spirits can't be bothered, bustle anyway. . . . Tamales at Hicks in Clarksdale . . . glistening in a puddle of oil . . .
ordered only 4 . . . hard not to eat 40. On the way back to Memphis, Mr. Johnson sings "Hot Tamales (They're Red Hot)" in my head.
hands . . . Ghosts everywhere . . . Bessie driving her Packard on this Road before the crash just outside of Clarksdale . . . The Voice of Son House filling the car. We are having trouble finding his marker along the Highway. We finally spot it when he starts singing "Preachin' the Blues": "Oh, I'm gon' get me religion,/I'm gon' join the Baptist church./I'm gon' be a Baptist preacher,/And I sure won't have to work." When I read the marker, I see that it quotes the same lyrics. . . . The Abbay and Leatherman cotton plantation, where Robert Johnson lived as boy. At the foot of the marker that tells us this, my husband leaves a guitar pick. . . . Bessie died at the
G. T. Thomas Afro-American Hospital in 1937. Now it's the Riverside Hotel. I sit in a rusty glider in front of it. A sign in the window says CLOSED. . . . Spirits can't be bothered, bustle anyway. . . . Tamales at Hicks in Clarksdale . . . glistening in a puddle of oil . . .
ordered only 4 . . . hard not to eat 40. On the way back to Memphis, Mr. Johnson sings "Hot Tamales (They're Red Hot)" in my head.
Litany of the Street
People whose names I know:
Philip; Millie; Miriam, who was "named from the Bible"; Leroy; William; John; Adrian; Mr. Camacho;
Omar; Silas, standing prophet-like by his salvaged office chair with wheels,; Quentin; Patrick; Raymond;
Douglas, veteran of the first Desert Storm; Baby Amber; Richard;
Dee, a man my husband and I hugged on a cold Christmas Eve; Euripides; a different William; Zoe;
Gerard-from-Chicago-61-years-old; Anne; Jasmine, who's saving for an apartment
and sometimes works the door at the 7-Eleven for change. She was fond of my dog and was sad that she'd passed; Baby Girl;
Robert Ray Richards; a different Robert; Calvin; a different John, who was shy about shaking hands because he said his were dirty; Andre-who's-related-to-Smokin'-Joe-Frazier-on-his-South-Carolina-grandmother's-side;
Ezekiel, walking on ravaged bare feet and wearing a parka in the summer, sometimes teething a stogie in his smile;
Lawrence Warner; Carol, who reminded me of my sister, and then called me "sister"; Reynando; Ethan; David; Raymond "Bill" Galucci who, after I introduced myself as "Dee," said he knew another Dee who used to ride with the Hell's Angels; Nikki, the pretty young girl with missing teeth, who sometimes covers her face in a mask of makeup and wryly calls herself
"Nikki Poop"—an ironic street twist, I suspect, on nincompoop; Stanley Rich (not Rick, as I'd first thought, but Rich,
"with the last two letters like the first two in Christ") Pittman; Glen, who asked for money to buy water;
Barbara, a sentinel wearing a winter coat in the August Dog Days, guarding her belongings
in two carry-on suitcases and some plastic bags; Michael Lee from Portland, Oregon; Corey at the Portland, Oregon, Saturday Market, who built a bike propelled by compressed air; Reynardo, who lives in a shelter near 41st St; Steven, swaying from one foot
to the other, near the turnstile at the 28th St., 7th Ave.,subway station; Consuelo, who called me "Mami"; Stevie Williams teetering on 39th and 9th Avenue, a red scrape on both sides of his nose; Michael in his cardboard shelter under the Port Authority bus overpass; William Klein; Jennifer and her pitbull mix, Elsa, on 44th and 8th; John John, the man with the double name and one leg, sitting in his wheelchair on 9th Avenue and discussing with himself how to describe his personality to me . . . .
People whom I see but whose names I don't know
People whose names I've yet to learn
People whose names I know:
Philip; Millie; Miriam, who was "named from the Bible"; Leroy; William; John; Adrian; Mr. Camacho;
Omar; Silas, standing prophet-like by his salvaged office chair with wheels,; Quentin; Patrick; Raymond;
Douglas, veteran of the first Desert Storm; Baby Amber; Richard;
Dee, a man my husband and I hugged on a cold Christmas Eve; Euripides; a different William; Zoe;
Gerard-from-Chicago-61-years-old; Anne; Jasmine, who's saving for an apartment
and sometimes works the door at the 7-Eleven for change. She was fond of my dog and was sad that she'd passed; Baby Girl;
Robert Ray Richards; a different Robert; Calvin; a different John, who was shy about shaking hands because he said his were dirty; Andre-who's-related-to-Smokin'-Joe-Frazier-on-his-South-Carolina-grandmother's-side;
Ezekiel, walking on ravaged bare feet and wearing a parka in the summer, sometimes teething a stogie in his smile;
Lawrence Warner; Carol, who reminded me of my sister, and then called me "sister"; Reynando; Ethan; David; Raymond "Bill" Galucci who, after I introduced myself as "Dee," said he knew another Dee who used to ride with the Hell's Angels; Nikki, the pretty young girl with missing teeth, who sometimes covers her face in a mask of makeup and wryly calls herself
"Nikki Poop"—an ironic street twist, I suspect, on nincompoop; Stanley Rich (not Rick, as I'd first thought, but Rich,
"with the last two letters like the first two in Christ") Pittman; Glen, who asked for money to buy water;
Barbara, a sentinel wearing a winter coat in the August Dog Days, guarding her belongings
in two carry-on suitcases and some plastic bags; Michael Lee from Portland, Oregon; Corey at the Portland, Oregon, Saturday Market, who built a bike propelled by compressed air; Reynardo, who lives in a shelter near 41st St; Steven, swaying from one foot
to the other, near the turnstile at the 28th St., 7th Ave.,subway station; Consuelo, who called me "Mami"; Stevie Williams teetering on 39th and 9th Avenue, a red scrape on both sides of his nose; Michael in his cardboard shelter under the Port Authority bus overpass; William Klein; Jennifer and her pitbull mix, Elsa, on 44th and 8th; John John, the man with the double name and one leg, sitting in his wheelchair on 9th Avenue and discussing with himself how to describe his personality to me . . . .
People whom I see but whose names I don't know
People whose names I've yet to learn
A Lakota chief wears an ornament of your likeness in his hair. . . . A Cheyenne warrior paints your image on the neck of his horse. . . . Your symbol sanctifying a Ghost Dance Shirt . . . Your hillbilly name, Snake Doctor . . . Your beautiful corpse in my hands before I place you beneath a rosebush . . . A cloud of your kind, zigzagging between two groves of trees . . . Once, you landed in the lap
of my dress, your blue wings still . . . . Swift Flier of Here-Now-There . . .
Death Dodger . . . Healer . . . Protector . . . In numbers, a Whirlwind confounding the enemy . . .
Let me always find you. . . . Dragonfly
of my dress, your blue wings still . . . . Swift Flier of Here-Now-There . . .
Death Dodger . . . Healer . . . Protector . . . In numbers, a Whirlwind confounding the enemy . . .
Let me always find you. . . . Dragonfly
I flew only seconds, then fell from the sky. Sitting in the gravel, I laughed as my husband ran up to me.
“You know why I fell?” “No.” “Because I looked back. Eagles don’t look back.” |
At a drive-in theater without a car, in Italy before I ever went to Italy. A storm billowing. The movie screen, blank.
|
Early ’80s Manhattan, 8th Avenue near 14th St. In the tiny store
that sells newspapers, candy, and cigarettes, the Pakistani clerk holds what appears to be a fan, but I realize it’s an iridescent scroll as he unfurls it horizontally. Nodding toward his right hand, he tells me, “This is where the dream begins.” Then he nods to his left. “And this is where the dream ends.” He is speaking in Urdu, but I understand what he says. When I wake, I wish that I could remember his language, but I don’t forget his words.
that sells newspapers, candy, and cigarettes, the Pakistani clerk holds what appears to be a fan, but I realize it’s an iridescent scroll as he unfurls it horizontally. Nodding toward his right hand, he tells me, “This is where the dream begins.” Then he nods to his left. “And this is where the dream ends.” He is speaking in Urdu, but I understand what he says. When I wake, I wish that I could remember his language, but I don’t forget his words.
Light swimming over Tree Branches. The Sky aches/raptures Blue.
Light seeping out from hems, borders, skirts, veils, edges. Everywhere, Atoms swarming like electric Bees.
I’m Alive!
My youngest brother is still living, a boy who still has his legs,
walking up the steps in sunlight.
walking up the steps in sunlight.
My husband’s brother is still living, still a man in his thirties,
his beard still holding his smile. The house in Oceanside still belongs to the family. From there, he makes a phone call with a seashell. |
I sit in a small boat, drifting on a dark mirror of woodland water. Aboard another boat, three Buddhist monks approach from my left. They stand side-by-side . . .saffron-robed . . . silent . . .
heads shaven and pale.
When they are just a few feet across from me, they suddenly raise their oars and pound the water with them! My boat teeters.
The dark mirror fractures.
heads shaven and pale.
When they are just a few feet across from me, they suddenly raise their oars and pound the water with them! My boat teeters.
The dark mirror fractures.
Iterations of shithouses . . . doorless stalls, gas-station commodes,
buckets to squat over, outhouse in front of the hog-pen fence
buckets to squat over, outhouse in front of the hog-pen fence
Echoes of nakedness . . . along night highways, on city streets by day, in stores, in banks,
climbing through slivers of space between rocks to reach
where a cave’s
narrow mouth
opens
climbing through slivers of space between rocks to reach
where a cave’s
narrow mouth
opens
I climb up a cave wall in the dark, bat guano on the ledges. Suddenly, I am lying on some kind of stone platform in the middle of a sun-blazed plaza. Pueblo people stand around me, smiling. “Do you know who saved you?” a man asks. He turns and points. “It was Tokpeli.” Tokpela, the Hopi First World of Creation, and Kokopelli, the fertility Kachina/Trickster, have been mixed to make my rescuer’s name. For some reason I think this person will be the Spider Woman of the First World, but when I look where the man points, I see that Tokpeli is an ancient Hopi man. He nods at me, his eyes crinkling
with silent laughter. |
The way the dead say hello . . .
the jingle from an ice-cream truck, a woman walking on 13th Street, a large bearded man wearing a kilt and dancing gracefully at a street fair, snapdragons, a hill of junkyard cars, cattails, gingko leaves, daylilies, a horror-movie billboard, TV muscle-car auctions, cayenne, jazz piano, a phrase spoken by someone on the bus, an amputee wheeling his chair on 10th Avenue, hymns sung behind a door in the hallway, dog fur tumbleweeding across the floor |
I have never been to India. In India . . . vast sun and haze . . . I wander in an enclosed bazaar walled with dark carpets
The beloveds are still running off their leashes.
I still get to touch them sometimes, and when I do, their fur is still warm beneath my hand.
One girl named Pilot. One girl named Brain.
I still chase after them.
I still get to touch them sometimes, and when I do, their fur is still warm beneath my hand.
One girl named Pilot. One girl named Brain.
I still chase after them.
My husband cradles an owl in his arms . . . strokes its head.
Burlesque lessons come in handy. Flash tape can be used on regular clothes, not just for pasties!
Diving out of the plane free fall
120 mph the wind
is a roar G force
ripples the skin back
JOLT chute opens . . .
d r i f t o n b r e e z y s h o u l d e r s o f a i r I a m a h a w k . . .
When my brother sees my G-forced face in the video, he says I look like Truman Capote.
120 mph the wind
is a roar G force
ripples the skin back
JOLT chute opens . . .
d r i f t o n b r e e z y s h o u l d e r s o f a i r I a m a h a w k . . .
When my brother sees my G-forced face in the video, he says I look like Truman Capote.
I’m walking in a high-school hallway, on my way to an assembly. Cheerleaders appear, dressed in zip-up Kachina mascot suits.
I follow them to the auditorium, where they vanish. A black velvet cloth has been stretched over all the seats. Night-sky stars punctuate the cloth at random. I realize that the stars have openings when prairie dogs pop their heads up through them.
I follow them to the auditorium, where they vanish. A black velvet cloth has been stretched over all the seats. Night-sky stars punctuate the cloth at random. I realize that the stars have openings when prairie dogs pop their heads up through them.