Barbaric, Classical, Solemn
Something happens in the stickerbushes
the day of my first kiss, a baseball game under
black clouds of smoke. The Garden State Racetrack
burns down as Mary Prate clocks me from the bleachers.
She chases me into the clubhouse, she smells
the scallion on my breath. Mary consoles herself
in our passion play. She plants them on me
as racehorses choke off in Cherry Hill.
Frank Sinatra had crooned beside that highway,
Jackie Wilson clutched his heart onstage,
Richard Pryor had complained of a shortage
of white people and cocaine. We kiss
through all of this, the day disco dies, the day
the beat slows down, the night the Latin Casino
burns down in the rain. There’s this presence
that holds me against its cheek. It sticks close.
It surrounds me, it’s a hex that tracks me down.
The day after my tongue tastes Mary’s, my pantleg
rumples down into my sleep. I could call it a fire,
but I only dream it, I wait. I could drop down
and trample on it, and I could sing. But I still wait
for a parentless view under the stickerbushes.
I still smell the burning and do not seek it.
I roll in it and I do not swell.
I will sit here, skull-rubed and, redfaced, return.
Daniel Nester
3 years ago • Notes