Monday Message

via sadieDELUXE

xoxoxo

Boots

Hello and Welcome

Hello. This is my new blog. I have an old blog but hopefully it is taking it's last breath as we speak. I believe I strangled the life out of it. I hope so.

xoxoxo

Boots

Cherrylog Road

Cherrylog Road

BY JAMES L. DICKEY

Off Highway 106

At Cherrylog Road I entered   

The ’34 Ford without wheels,   

Smothered in kudzu,

With a seat pulled out to run

Corn whiskey down from the hills,

And then from the other side   

Crept into an Essex

With a rumble seat of red leather   

And then out again, aboard   

A blue Chevrolet, releasing   

The rust from its other color,

Reared up on three building blocks.   

None had the same body heat;

I changed with them inward, toward   

The weedy heart of the junkyard,   

For I knew that Doris Holbrook   

Would escape from her father at noon

And would come from the farm   

To seek parts owned by the sun   

Among the abandoned chassis,   

Sitting in each in turn

As I did, leaning forward

As in a wild stock-car race

In the parking lot of the dead.   

Time after time, I climbed in   

And out the other side, like   

An envoy or movie star

Met at the station by crickets.   

A radiator cap raised its head,

Become a real toad or a kingsnake   

As I neared the hub of the yard,   

Passing through many states,   

Many lives, to reach

Some grandmother’s long Pierce-Arrow   

Sending platters of blindness forth

From its nickel hubcaps

And spilling its tender upholstery

On sleepy roaches,

The glass panel in between   

Lady and colored driver   

Not all the way broken out,

The back-seat phone

Still on its hook.

I got in as though to exclaim,   

“Let us go to the orphan asylum,   

John; I have some old toys

For children who say their prayers.”

I popped with sweat as I thought   

I heard Doris Holbrook scrape

Like a mouse in the southern-state sun   

That was eating the paint in blisters   

From a hundred car tops and hoods.   

She was tapping like code,

Loosening the screws,   

Carrying off headlights,   

Sparkplugs, bumpers,

Cracked mirrors and gear-knobs,   

Getting ready, already,

To go back with something to show

Other than her lips’ new trembling   

I would hold to me soon, soon,   

Where I sat in the ripped back seat

Talking over the interphone,   

Praying for Doris Holbrook   

To come from her father’s farm

And to get back there

With no trace of me on her face

To be seen by her red-haired father

Who would change, in the squalling barn,   

Her back’s pale skin with a strop,

Then lay for me

In a bootlegger’s roasting car

With a string-triggered I2-gauge shotgun   

To blast the breath from the air.

Not cut by the jagged windshields,   

Through the acres of wrecks she came   

With a wrench in her hand,

Through dust where the blacksnake dies   

Of boredom, and the beetle knows   

The compost has no more life.

Someone outside would have seen   

The oldest car's door inexplicably   

Close from within:

I held her and held her and held her,   

Convoyed at terrific speed

By the stalled, dreaming traffic around us,   

So the blacksnake, stiff

With inaction, curved back

Into life, and hunted the mouse

With deadly overexcitement,   

The beetles reclaimed their field   

As we clung, glued together,

With the hooks of the seat springs   

Working through to catch us red-handed   

Amidst the gray breathless batting

That burst from the seat at our backs.   

We left by separate doors

Into the changed, other bodies

Of cars, she down Cherrylog Road   

And I to my motorcycle

Parked like the soul of the junkyard

Restored, a bicycle fleshed

With power, and tore off

Up Highway 106, continually   

Drunk on the wind in my mouth,   

Wringing the handlebar for speed,   

Wild to be wreckage forever.

This is where my blog title comes from.

xoxoxo

Boots