by James Kangas
Rickey's Blues
Finally, it was laughable–
how he left you in the theater like that,
like a partnerless glove after he’d sat through five
minutes of the movie, itching for a brew
to suck down, a worked-up claque at his favorite dive.
Magnet-eyed as he was, the little
metal molecules in your body had jerked
you across the room to his side the first time
you saw him, he had that effect
on people. And since you had glowed
brighter than the rest, brighter
than the Dixie Highway Jesus, your eyes
huge as shasta daisies, he’d chosen your blossom
to fry, your hearth to start calling his
Holiday Inn, your wharf of sleep to unmoor you from
at 3 a.m., banging on your door after he’d
closed the bar, run someone else’s
panting tongue through the wringer like a washrag.
A wreck after three weeks of this, you slouched
in the flickering light through some starlet’s ruin,
her mascara running like Pitch River Falls, and when
he didn’t come back to pick you up, you lurched
next door to the doughnut shop, gulped four scalding
coffees, kissed your bubble good-bye, and phoned
your friend Mary to take you home. Then he got
pissed because you’d left, called you, called you
every name in the book. What balls! It took
another week for you to have it out with him.
That was the most lacerating affair you’ve ever had
the stupidity to put yourself through. That was
the most electrified you’ve ever felt, you said,
whether it was love or rut you didn’t care, too bad
it was a psycho playing cat and mouse, he gave you
gooseflesh and you were thankful, he made your brain
churn like a hive of bees, your blood go crashing
through your body, your bones sob how they’d come alive.
originally published in Embers, (Spring 1990)
One of these days
During one of our Sunday morning chats
20 or so years ago, from 2000 miles away
you said: one of these days we’ll be
calling each other from the grave to ask
how are you?, what’s new?, how’s the weather
in your parts? I think, from the depths,
my answers will sound something like this:
I’m OK; the worms got another hunk of flesh
from my neck, so pretty soon I’ll be
nothing but bone. Meh. To be expected.
Not much new here, except I think I felt
the earth move a bit just now, maybe from
a small quake, or a backhoe digging a hole
somewhere near for a new neighbor. I’m
guessing winter’s coming on, I feel a tad
chillier than I had been, but it’s hard
to tell, one loses track of everything kept
in the dark like this. How about you?
You might tell me you’ve shrunk
like a mummy, that you think of the seminary
you were happy to leave, miss the redwoods
you once lived in, spiring above you towards
an unclouded sky, or dream of driving
the cliff road by the ocean, that you
long for your snug desert house above all,
how sunlight barreled in every morning.
originally published in Free State Review, Winter/Spring 2015 (Issue 5)
James Kangas is a retired librarian living in Flint, Michigan. His work has appeared in Atlanta Review, Faultline, New York Quarterly, Penn Review, trampset, West Branch, et al. His chapbook, Breath of Eden (Sibling Rivalry Press), was published in 2019.