HAUNTED

From a long time ago

My desk is cluttered with everything

from a tape measure and the guts

of an old pencil sharpener

to a bottle of ink for that expensive

Mont Blanc from my father

to honor my poems…

pipes I smoked this afternoon

and some shards of my brain

which seem to have to have flaked off

when I wasn’t looking.

It was a hundred and eleven degrees

in Memphis yesterday. Death Valley.

And some of that has leaked

all the way to right here with no let up

in the ten-day forecast.

I’ve been home four hours

and the AC fan is an incessant gasp.

I can’t even think.

The last time it was like this, I was

In my first apartment upstairs,

an old painted lady off Ninth Avenue

in Pensacola, no insulation, no AC.

I worked the graveyard shift at a hospital.

Slept through the all-day heat and

humidity. Once I dreamed

I was swimming the Amazon,

wrestling anacondas and woke

up with a sweaty sheet

wrapped around my neck

and tangled in my legs.

The only relief was a cold beer

to rub across my forehead,

or the occasional wet spot

Sylvia left behind when

she’d stopped by on her way home.

I was lying on that bed

when I heard the news

about Martin Luther King,

and I still don’t know

what to think.

Reviews

[emmajoygreen]

Your words are more than - they come alive word by word, presenting time, place and that unbearable heat. Seems you really can remember the moments, the open gasp of the day to day, the thoughts and past memories.
'It was a hundred and eleven degrees
in Memphis yesterday. Death Valley.
And some of that has leaked
all the way to right here with no let up
in the ten-day forecast.
I’ve been home four hours
and the AC fan is an incessant gasp.'

Visual from the word go.. As to the ending, I wouldn't know where to start thinking, Vol.. but I do know this is more than poem...

[Vol]

Emma,
Thank you, This summer has been a repeat of awful heat... i think I've mentioned how bad I is... Looks like I get a break today... only 98... sigh. So let me ask, what's an average summer day where you are? How many times a week does it rain there? Does the rain come in, stay a little while, then drift away, and come back in again? I guess everyone is always leaving their umbrella somewhere and picking up someone else's? Inquiring minds want to know...
Vol

[emmajoygreen]

To be honest, can't give you averages, our Summers are so different year to year m similar re Winters - they can be cold as cold or chilly, As to the rain, yes, we are known for rain in the UK but there again our countryside is greener than my surname! Whatever weather, it comes and goes.. leaving dry fields - or roads that look like rivers. time!! As to umbrellas, yes, they have permanent homes - just in case needed! But my response stretches far and wide in this island.. has to.

Wishing you both some essential relief somehow, some time.

[Ken Simm.]

This was a tremendous autobiographical write. Covering so much with subtlety from a superb Amarican writer.
And watch out for the big snakes they get everywhere.

[jacob erin-cilberto]

sounds like Sylvia was a storm, or storm of a person...
this is a really excellent narrative poem, and the ending comes out of nowhere...much like the shots that killed MLK...

Really good read, be careful wrestling those anacondas.
j.

[Vol]

Jacob,
That knot of time in Pensacola, Florida is where my soul was born... Thanks fro commenting!
Vol