'Night Oklahoma

for Jack Mongomery

He must have banged down out of the Big Sky,

and he must have hit hard

and rattled out all his teeth.

The black hole in his face said

"I'm from Oklahoma."

and I understood him.

"I'm from Kentucky, " I drawled

and the hole said "For real?" and chuckled

as if he knew the Dark and Bloody Ground.

The hole rambled on about

an old woman and a frog and

I realized I should be laughing.

The hole smelled like cheap,

Tennessee sour mash and

I shied away as he spoke Okie at me.

He sounded like Appalachia and lonely,

he looked like a dry river bed

and he had lightning bugs in his eyes.

He got up from the table and

went back to the doorstoop.

Some pork rinds disappeared

into the hole.

I must have looked like home to him,

must have seemed like a fishpond

or a sparrow nest, or maybe

an ear of corn off the stalk.

I should have laughed at

the old woman and the frog.

I should have said "For real?"

Later, when he vacated the stoop

he called out as he passed by my shoulder

"Good Luck, Kentucky!"

and I hollered back,

"'Night Oklahoma!"

one time i said to jack...

"i just like to picture you sleepin up there in that park

on Russian Hill, Jack, with the stars for a blanket and

wakin up with the birds singin."

and he says back to me...

"Try picturin me sleepin over there in that doorway

why don'tcha, cause that's where I'M sleepin and that's

what I'M talkin 'bout!" heh heh.

The Last Time I Wore A Dress

About My Mother's Business

I have never been about my mother's business.

She sat starving while my father fed me.

It was he who painted on my lips, one Halloween,

and told me I looked like Bette Davis,

and I went around the house screaming "WHAT A DUMP!"

What a dump.

I learned to curse like my father

and bit the hand that fed me.

I flipped my silver Zippo

for anyone who needed fire

and changed the spelling of my name

because she said I was just like him.

No one called me hers.

Sometimes, I see my father's belly

swollen, with me inside.

And now I reach for my mother's part in me.

I ask her to hold me but her arms are indifferent.

The defection was completed long ago, hers and mine.

I have never been about my mother's business,

and now I am the hungry one.