A story of echoes


“We are an echo that runs, skittering, 

Through a train of rooms.”—Czeslsaw Milosz


ii


the sun’s drunken smile burns, a god in the pale afternoon

a woman shelters on a porch, South Carolina washing stories white as wicker & bone

recount the day her child went long in the ditch, upended

when love lost its laces, forever the wreckage of her heart the Chevrolet steel 

crooked as the Angel Oak up the path shade, a pecan pie sits a windowsill

the splurge of mud and macadam and holler in the wind

all those boys gone now, would you be one of them too

culprits nose-picked and buckle prick, waist-tight their tongues 

chewing grass like thumbs on braille, heads ached a faded photograph

a girl once entangled over a table’s corner, memory bent 

by thumbprint and molar mark, thistle clinging 

bluejeaned thighs musical against July’s leather seats, death goes tailing

a bee mummified on the rear seat deck, dry loss at your back daily 

down the highway, burs in the gravel, the yellowjacket a thimble of dust and crackle 

black legs in long lawns, the tire worn forever black on the road

the ghost tattoo of these things, the gas pedal all accelerator and floor

a white sock in a valley of broken chips found later in the fork of a tree’s knotty fingers

its trunk cracked by fender at the seam, angel arms go green and long and damp with fluid

moss in the branches, plantation hair of former generations, the child is dead


life saw right by through you all, that afternoon 

as you broke in the sun till the sun breaks down1


who was it burned love into your bodies over the barbeque

who was it laughed in a skittle at the pastor’s awkward flatulence

who was it growled at the syllables stumbled over 

whose pause recited prayer creaking in the chair like a broken wall clock, 

rocking, the eulogy fell flat at our feet


tell me your story child, strong enough to light through the buttermilk entire

scraps up the travelway, the numbnut twigs and Bryson’s crab apple orchard

words rot on the branch, an arrival at the departure of the shining in the yard

your dark wood or mine or our both, gone


have you managed the faces in the red soil, the names in the book, the date set down that day

the bee cinders and flower pollen, the shadow rising on the stairs and the rabbit light at night

the bucket in the manifold where life dropped, incontestably

I tire 


I tire of invention now, don't you?

1Thomas