Color Negative Oh Jorie Graham how I used to want you those photographs of you back in the seventies my God how lovely you were but I know now it would never do for here's this piece today about your dog catching a bullet and you dance around the body like an Arapaho calling out to spirits from the past to the smoke curling over the crematorium to angels who lie to the scent of lilacs to childhood to the ravens cawing overhead and if I were with you if you'd brought those pages to show me brought them to the chair by the picture window and knelt to watch me read them watch my lips moving after the funeral after I spent an hour on my knees digging at the clay with the broken shovel like a trenching tool raising it and stabbing the earth stabbing until I'd gotten three inches down and you way up there holding back peering out from behind the closed curtains upstairs and the body rigid in my hands like a piece of driftwood cradling it carefully lest you think I have no feelings my back to you lest you see my face see the body changing already to cardboard to a charcoal sketch mouth frozen open the hairs standing out like quills when I break one of the legs to make it fit the hole oh Jorie Jorie Graham we'll never make it how could we how Lord help me can I weep for your dead dog and the dead Jews you link him to the children the dying children you read about in your books all those books you gather round you like the quilted patterns on the bed the scratchy photographs of the dead piled on top of one another tumbling into the ditch cardboard arms and legs sticking out this way and that until the bulldozer shoves them under and the dog in with them your wounded dog clawing its way up over the shifting bodies trying to get home registration and name tags jingling like a bellwether how can we do this Jorie how can we keep it up are you saying you didn't pull the trigger you're not Mengele not me Jesus what about if you had to back over two kittens at the same time one under each of the rear wheels of the van the left one dead at once the other one flopping around for a whole minute a year chasing it like you would a chicken Jorie when you cut his head off saying you never did that it's crazy no sound just these astonishing Buster Keaton acrobatics and you're trying to hold it hold back your screams cursing the way you used to pray crying out be still you little fuck hold still I'll kill you scrambling about on your hands and knees grabbing for a bloodslick leg just trying to hug the tiny bones up close to you thinking my God no that's not me I never wore that shirt in my life but look at the markers Jorie there they are so many generations scattered over the yard there's no good soil left to put them in only the hardpan and the roots of the elms three dogs six cats and a couple of wretched starving raccoons who lost a food fight with the dogs rocks piled on the graves till I ran out of rocks their names (those who had names) etched on top with a blunted magic marker and Christ do you think I never think about history about the teenage witchy girls from Salem about Nam about the ovens the Poles the Catholics the saints on the wheel the blacks the long trains to Treblinka and the Norfolk and Southern freighter that hurled my son's body eight-tenths of a mile down the tracks before it could get itself stopped are you telling me it's the same are you it's all the same gerbils and missing children and things that go bump on the windshield feathers and bones and party favors scattered by the roadside like sherds of rice like the left-overs from somebody's picnic come on Jorie don't squint say cheese tell us how it was how it really felt when you bent to kiss your doggie in the coffin the hairspray deodorant on his fur the polished fangs painted nails the anxious attendant at your side adjusting and adjusting the veil fearful you might disturb the ochre- rouged flap covering the hole where what's-his-name's brains used to be no don't tell me don't say anything at all Jorie Jorie please just shut your fucking mouth and the next one that gets shot next week or the next do the digging yourself don't hide him in a sack either just toss him in naked and shovel the dirt in his face and when you hear the dogtags clinking from room to room don't come crying to me take your arms from around me stop it Jorie there's no such thing as Auschwitz you made it all up the greenest pasture you could find to lie down in better than Dallas better than Forest Lawn surrounded by the ghosts of little girls marching through the snow in their torn shoes dying babies wrapped in scraps of paper and old men shuffling to get tattooed gutted buried alive doing it for you Jorie for you inching forward on your belly to snuffle the fade photos digging digging like a dog till you've broken through to the yellow powdered bones of all the grief you can get your hands on crying choose me me do me take my picture cheese James Lineberger |