Some Other Kind of Place
(Birmingham, Alabama, June 1991)
BY David Bond
1
Once, in late August, I was in the mountains,
almost six thousand feet. It hailed golf balls
of hard, pure ice. I knew nature included
the mind. On that day I believed it.
2
Today, I watched a movie in technicolor,
ate chocolate milk duds and saw the true
incongruity of past and present. I saw
Thurgood Marshall leave his post: the only
one able to understand his loss. I saw a Black
father gently monitor the wandering of his five-year
old son in the pre-film darkness of a movie theater.
3
I have talked about Jesus. I have talked about the rain.
I have stolen words. Elvis. Memphis. Sophistry.
All of them ripped off from the ancient Greeks.
4
It is easy to use we, or they, or you, almost anyone
else. It is horrible to use I: almost as bad as trying
to finish the latest self-help book, or finding myself
so close to it, I can’t even remember when I last
put it down.
BY Randy Turley
I’m in Oklahoma where the wind comes sweepin’ down the plain,
Where the oak and blackjack trees kiss the playful prairie breeze,
Where the Bob Dylan Center casts its dancing spell my way.
I am tangled up in Bob
As the snippets of songs, albums and photos, and
The mumbling voice of the reluctantly interviewed poet
Loose me across the swamp of time—propel me through my life—
I am fourteen,
Forty-eight,
Thirty-six,
Twenty-one,
Seventy.
I am a high-schooler lost in my room,
A love-crazed man,
A law student,
A rotten doctor commie rat,
A divorcee,
A teacher,
A father,
A human being,
Simultaneously confused and comforted by nasally sonics
That impart more meaning than the naked words and tune,
That dredge the cryptic, mystic lyrics which convey more than they say.
I am in Oklahoma where the words hit heavy on the border line
Where the music and a tapestry of rhyme define my life, my soul, my time
I am at Bob Dylan’s Center
. . . and he is at mine
Don’t Look Now: Reading Aloud to Ghosts
By Thomas G. Palaima, University of Texas
“You ever seen a ghost? No
But you have heard of them.”
The blind side, they say,
is what hits you by surprise.
It can drive you
to your knees,
tap your shoulder,
caress you gently.
The sudden smell
of smoke
upon the air.
Milk
poured on cereal.
Water
on the soil
in a flower pot.
Cream
poured on coffee
in your coffee cup.
A place of one’s own,
they say, too.
How was that
on the blind side?
And when?
And just that?
Sometimes the blind side
is a mirror.
Or conjures up a phrase
from Bob Dylan.
“You give something up
for everything you gain.”
Sometimes the blind side
is not there.
Never was.
How can you take
precautions against
what never was?
“So pay for your ticket
and don’t complain.”
A ticket delivered
from the blind side
can have exorbitant
handling fees.
It can admit you
to the blind side
in the mirror.
To see the father
fallen short.
The lover
confused
by love.
The person
placing belief in
what is
no more.
And maybe
never was.
In others.
In oneself.
A deep breath
is calming, they say.
It takes
the blind side
into the spirit
inside.
Like light tendrils
of cream
spreading through
strong hot coffee.
Like water
disappearing
in darkening
soil.
Like milk
that makes cereal
float
or sink.
Like the caress
that had
no meaning.
The touch
that called
attention
to nothing
apparent.
The force
of a
sledge hammer
upon
a
spike.
A whispering
scent
of
smoke.
What’s that?
Don’t look.
But you
already
have.
And you’re
“left looking
just like
a ghost.”
POEM BY Jacqueline Osherow, University of Utah
One chord of a harmonica can take
me back, or a name — Johanna, Mr. Jones —
to that Eden of stretched-out afternoons
on the living room carpet, an open math book
neglected at my elbow, index cards
untouched beside it in a fallow stack.
I’m halfway in a trance, half trying to crack
each cipher in the snarled onrush of words
surging through the stereo’s dark mesh.
Something is happening and you don’t know
what it is . . . I’m fourteen. Of course that’s true
but I get an inkling — as limits vanish —
of word as lightning flash, wick, whiplash, arrow
and soon-to-be accomplice. Dylan, thank you.
Visions of Desolation: Cleveland 1965 Austin 2012
POEM BY Thomas G. Palaima
Ecce homunculus.
This new blank document
could remain blank
for all I care
to reveal or conceal.
Ask me.
I ain’t sayin’.
Coax me.
My lips are sealed.
I could turn myself inside out.
My soul could slowly spin about.
Spin? Turn? Rotate? Whirl?
Like a chicken on a spit?
Like coffee in a microwave?
Like a top? A dervish? A compact disc?
A vinyl record from my youth?
What would you like me to play?
The needle in the groove works
its wonder in high fidelity,
but faithful to the max to what?
The songs from cheap speakers,
two-bit, sentimental,
still sound good to me.
But who cares?
If I stood naked, who would hear?
My dried voice
is more than quiet
and less than meaningless.
Not a whimper.
“Peanuts, here, four bags for a quarter.”
“Buy your rags from Daddy Wags!”
A naïve young
Roman Catholic boy,
Lithuanian-Polish,
thirteen going on ten,
by way of the CTS
(Cleveland Transit System)
Number 35
—“Trowbridge next!” —
after eighteen miles
and fifty minutes
of fading storefronts
run-down bars
reading the same
soon-to-vanish
lexicon of Polish,
Czech, Hungarian,
Irish, Croatian
and now Puerto Rican
names,
steps off
at Lorain Avenue
and 25th Street,
walks from the West Side Market
five blighted city blocks
to the red-brick Jesuit high school,
and sits among other boys,
among, but not with.
What was that shell,
what kind of envelope
kept him sound,
and soundless?
Move, move, move,
you splendid little machine.
Not quite a robot.
What did Eliot really know
about the butt ends of days?
Who can count
the butt ends
of the ways
that life can play
blind man’s bluff
with your soul,
and for keeps?
There isn’t even any key chain.