Trains of Stumptown (2008)

I.

No-no, yes-yes.
There are ways in which we yell
or whisper to them:
Ouija boards, lit candles in holy copses,
even someone from the future
walking over your grave,
you shudder in cramped delight,
your shoulderblades prescient
and bony science fiction,
an old Twilight Zone episode.

We write letters to them,
to which they never respond.
That is very rude.
We use the common business-school
salutation:
Dearly Departed.
And they never get back to us,
even with an R. S. V. P. S. V. P. S. V. P.
with rock sugar on top.
We will not beg.
Please.
We will not go on our knees.
Please.

There are ways in which
they are said to signal back:
coughing radio static, ouija boards, again, yes-yes,
like angels, they leave freckles when they kiss us,
or they roll over in fury;
bump their noses against lead-lined oak,
regarding those hideous curtains
we just put up in their former living room,
over our bisexuality,
over our marriage to a Jew,
over our habit of not scrubbing
behind a cistern clogged with hair and piss and dust.
Their mediums are often old themselves, bigots,
and frequently related to us.

There are no happy mediums.
All psychics eavesdrop on the late lamented, eventually.

Dimes are New World myths, star-spangled, shiny new:
and every time you spot a dime
someone dead is thinking of you.

Yes, dimes appear, we’ve heard it said
when we’ve been thought of
by someone dead.
Why not nickels or quarters? It makes no cents.
Those other grimy discs of steel
embossed with presidents.

And yes, the dime myth is especially frequent
amongst right-wing housewives,
who find dimes on streets, in garage corners.
The Christian wives say the dead person
is just telling us “hello”, innocent enough.
But perhaps the dead person (cut off in their prime)
is thinking about the man on the dime,
Franklin Delano Roosevelt,
who started up the health-care movement in the United States,
reminding us to pay more attention
to labor unions and social security
otherwise the dead person might not have died prematurely
from cancer bills they couldn’t pay.
That’s right, goodwives, they went before their time,
oh brother, can you spare a dime?
Yes-yes, no-no, hello-hello.
You fundie bitches.
That one was from Grandpa, who sent his best wishes.

Dimes, IM chats with the deceased,
who say how nice that you’re still kicking,
and that you have your health,
no vestigial guilt, just minor wealth,
spare change, something you might have willed
or been willed anyway,
the prettiest of coins, these thin-lipped peppered mints,
silver-scalloped edges flung all the way
across the U.S.A.
A Hansel-und-Gretel moment,
That’s what they do say.
The dead do like to say hello.
Bonjour and Guten Abend.
Willkomen, bienvenue, welcome.
The witch at the end of the long white tunnel
sharpens her teeth.
That is a joke.
That only happens if you mess with ouija boards.
No joke. Non-nicht joke.
Dimes are much safer, when all is said,
for communication with the dead.
One-way conversations are always on par.
We’ve unanswered prayers. They’ve got FDR.
Stay away from ouija boards.

II.

Portland is a town with cognitive-dissonance issues.
Portland is a town that,
having ditched its lively Stumptown moniker
and re-named Asylum Avenue
to shopping-district-friendly Hawthorne,
has never dealt with its 19th-century train problem.
The whistles go off on the hour through the night, loudly,
and probably explain why the citizens
drink so much dark-roasted Fair Trade coffee.

I walk Stumptown’s tracks in the rootless dark,
these cursed hoots mean I cannot sleep,
I leave dimes along the rails
for the carriages to crush to plate.
Such alchemy from one still kicking,
they say (admiringly).
This is why they call me the witch of Stumptown,
and why all the housewives phone me
when they need more than just hello.



Niceties (2006)



Central Oregon, grass seed capital of the world.
It would suck to have hay fever,
but luckily I am not a sufferer.

The mouth of the beast, now that I’m back in it,
always says have a nice day
and asks too many personal questions
during casual shopping transactions.
No, I have a girlfriend, actually.
I stayed in Europe for ten years
because it’s not legal in the United States
for me to bring her here.
Don’t you think that’s homophobic,
and aren’t you glad you asked? I am, nearly.

My country hoods its enemies and tortures them
with anal suppositories and menstrual pads
(fags and women the dirtiest threats conceivable,
from both sides of the electric fence).
Unspeakable. The government won’t speak out. Unspeakable.
The government at last speaks out,
and makes allusions to promoting torture,
but the beast never says sorry.
I mean, that’s Business Management 101, you never say sorry.

We don’t know the first thing about suffering.
Citizens float dead in the taint waters,
though Barbara Bush thinks it’s working out well for them.
Network, cable, FOX news, such pleasant manners.
A mouth (devoid of duct tape) drones on, it’s ceaseless.
You scum, unspeakable.
Have a nice day; it’s all good.

It’s now legal to spy on Average Joe.
Let’s make a good Patriot Act obediently.
Make a nation outraged, simply disgusted, over media cursing.
The FCC will worry for us, furrow its brow
and censor the Anglo-Saxon shit and fuck, also known as bad words.
Make a people mourn for lone white girls
while a quarter million in South Asia
slither back across the Styx with the undertow.

The last item of every news program,
(which lacks any statewide context,
let alone federal or international)
is always a dog-up-the-tree story.
Or cat. I forget.
The anchormen and women wink and sign off.
You know what that is?
That’s a four-letter word not permissible on live TV
by order of the Federal Communications Commission.