WHAT GRANDFATHER DID AT HIS FUNERAL
People at the funeral said grandfather rose
up in his coffin,
looked around, and
slammed the coffin lid back down.
When I got home and told my family,
they said,
"You're just a crazy little kid."
But people were afraid of grandfather,
said he could come
back as one of those big black
squawking birds if
we didn't get him now, get him good.
I hadn't thought about his funeral until
today, years later.
These people, a bunch of nose hairs, dressed
me
in this suit that is too tight, tried to plaster down my
hair,
and started lowering
me in this casket
into a grave. It
feels like your bed is going down
through the floor
and you can't wake up.
Now they start to pull me back up out of the
grave,
and what I am
thinking about
is the river wearing
away this hill
and one of these
days the river will lift the cemetery
and float it off,
and maybe grandfather and I
will float down the
hill, too, sitting up in our open caskets.
The town will be flooding. We will save a
couple of dogs
and dock at a
magistrate's house, tie up our caskets
to his porch
railing, introduce ourselves,
suggest that he
break out his Silver Fox,
the renowned vodka
of our region,
and call for some
scraps for the shivering dogs.
WHEN
THE RED WIND BLOWS
Where do we go when we finally go?
Does go mean gone? Or is gone a flow
that goes on
forever? What does it mean
if there's above and
below? Can you tell,
before, which way
you're headed?
O dear in the dark I don't want to know.
What about Mom? What about Dad?
What about our dog buried out back?
Some nights his ghost plays on his bones
like on an
xylophone. I can't sleep.
At school I fall asleep. My teachers,
why can't they leave
me alone,
let me sit on my
shadow
on the bank of a
brook? I promise, I won't
shoot birds, I won't
light bugs on fire.
But what if I have to go to war
and I'm the ball
turret gunner on a B-17?
Will I blubber into my oxygen mask?
Will I sight in steay
on enemy planes
or freeze in my head
and pee in my pants?
Mom and Dad, they say that when the right
time comes, they'll
be ready to go.
How do they know? They could be hit tommow
by a car or fall
down a hole. I bet they tell us
all this so we'll
sleep through the night
when the red wind
blows.
MEAN
I'm so old I barely remember driving,
but I remember my
brothers and cousins asking me
when I was any
taller than a big dog, Hey, Shrimp,
are you ever going
to grow enough to see over the dash?
They sure thought that was funny.
So they said it over again. Well, when I
couldn't stand
being in the house
with them any longer,
I went outside and climbed into the back seat
of the car.
One time the sunset
came down into the
car and made a yellow space in the backseat.
From there I pretended to steer.
The door next to me swung open, my brothers
and cousins yelled.
You bet it scared me.
They about choked on their laughing
and sprawled across
the hood of the car,
swinging their heads
as if they were tryiing to swing them off.
Their tongues like little rollercoasters
and their eyes
bouncing around like bullets.
You can hate people for being stupid,
even if you don't
want to.