A Newly Discovered James Wright Poem

The ghost of my life travels with me,
toe to toe like a prizefighter,
eyes shut, bloody nose.

The referee looks closely at the lyrics,
waiting for the first sign
that the poem is becoming defenseless.

Left hook, jab,
body punches, sweat pouring
onto the mat.

The hands seem to defy gravity,
they do not seek their home
of their own accord,

yet,before you know it
they are back where they belong,
and then the bell rings.

The fight is over.
The winner and the loser
have been beaten to a pulp.

The crowd cheers and boos,
throws beer cans, yells in anger.
One poem wears bloody black trunks,

the other poem wears bloody white trunks.
The gloves are cut off,
and the hands blossom.

Copyright 2003 The Estate of James Wright.
Thanks to the anonymity of the Internets
and to the obscurity of my blog, I am publishing
it here without permission. Hopefully, a sober
Franz doesn’t stumble upon it by accident. Damn
Google!

Mechanic

My father took the motor apart,
pistons, connecting rods, cam,
tossed the oil pan aside,

oil splashing all over the place,
the floor of the garage
covered in what used to power the car.

He pulled the fenders off,
the radiator, the front tires,
back tires, trunk, taillights.

It was getting dark
so he told me to turn on
the lights.

He tore out the seats,
the radio, steering wheel,
stick shift, ashtrays.

When he was done
he took a red shop rag from his back pocket
and wiped his hands.

It was then, at the age of eight
that I realized
how to write a poem.

Rebecca Gonzales(my neice)on the far left
wearing the red helmet,she's a jammer.In
roller derby, the jammer starts in the back
and has to skate through the pack to score
points while getting shoved and elbowed.


Here she is battling a much bigger opponent.

The Sloop John B

When he jumped from the bridge,
he saw his own shadow
fly off to one side

as if it was afraid
of being crushed
at the end of what was happening.

And sure enough,
the shadow saved itself,
but only for a moment

because the jumper
somehow was able to land
precisely where the shadow sought refuge.

The thud disturbed
a mound of river silt.
A bystander rushed to the scene to scream.

The autopsy revealed
that the poet had suffocated,
yet no one suspected

that he had created
the world’s most marvelous poem
on the way down.

Why I Am Not A Painter

I heard that some artist
had put sardines in his painting
so I put sardines in my poem,

but after a few days
I couldn’t stand the stench anymore.
It smelled like a decomposing Frank O’Hara.

Betty’s Escape Pod

Betty’s little skirt
torn all the way
up to her hips.

The policemen and firefighters
salivate in a corner
of the dust and doom.

No one can be rescued
and even cartoon eyes
can be blinded by sight.

The fireboats
lift their stones into place.
Betty’s chest bounces

in God’s face
as she runs,
convinced it’s the end, and then some.

Slate Gravel Company

It’s not as if the towers
were made of pebbles,
and what of the neighbors?

BamBam crushed by 99 Tears
and the Mysterions.
Sunglasses wore sunglasses

and they still saw them crumble.
Fred’s foot-powered car
crushed to smithereens by the Arab Joneses.

“Wow! That ain’t good!”
said the fellow on TV
who speculated some more and spit.

But, ah, now Fred
don’t have to drive
that far to the gravel pit.

Bukowski

At the topless club
a girl offers him a free lap dance
because she says he resembles her grandfather.

His Edgar Allan Poe mustache
brushes her breasts
with the hard smell of liquor.

Her belly
a flat antithesis
to the real roundness of women.

He heard his heart
telling a tale
his conscience thankfully ignored.

On the taxi ride home
the scent of her thighs still twisted and wriggled
as if it was stuck to his zipper.

Interesting read over at Jim Murdoch's place.

During an interview Oprah Winfrey asked the Nobel prize-winning author Toni Morrison: “Do people ever say they have to go over certain passages a bunch of times?” to which Morrison replied: “That, my dear, is called reading.”

I've written about reading before but I'd like to dwell a bit on close reading. Vladimir Nabokov suggested that, "In reading, one should notice and fondle the details." Consider for a moment the concept of speed-fondling. Okay, it's a fun concept, take a few more seconds – enjoy.

Right. Enough of that you at the back. Pay attention.

The Goldfish

When you heard my wife’s car
pull into the driveway,
you jumped out of bed,

attacked your blue jeans,
stuffed your panties in my pillow case
and ran out the back door

still tugging at your blouse.
I lay in bed
and relished the aftermath,

recalling the days
when my wife and I
had a sex life, too.

“What did you do all day,
you lazy butt?” my wife barked
as she peered into the bedroom

before heading to the kitchen.
“What do you want for dinner?” she yelled.
“Meatloaf.” I said,

and then I flushed your panties
down the toilet bowl
like a dead goldfish.

Dirt Farmer

My father was a dirt farmer,
that’s more than I can say for me.
He plowed the earth over and over,

planted the seeds
he was denied in paradise.
Fought weeds tooth and nail.

From sun up to sun down
he was out there in the fields.
When he got home,

he turned a tub of water into mud.
Burned to a crisp
by the sun during the day,

cajoled by the moon at night.
Stumps and stones to no avail,
my father was a dirt farmer.

Some Tortillas

after ashbery

These are amazing, each
on top of a neighbor, as though speech
was this transferring of heat and time.

You and I are suddenly
what the tortillas try to tell us,
not what some bread-eater has dreamed up.

Love and touch, yes.
Explain? Hell no,
who needs explanations for this roundness.

I break off a piece
and fold that piece over
to scoop up the beans and eggs, you do the same.

A chorus of smiles, a Texas morning,
these accents seem their own defense,
“Jew no whad I mean, dhon’t jew?”

Macias Mexican Bakery

Macias had been operating his Mexican bakery
for thirty-eight years
when the doctors broke the news to him.

His wife had three months to live.
Still he woke up every morning at two,
went to work, made everything

that his customers were accustomed to
and at three in the afternoon he hurried home,
left some girl in charge, I forget her name,

picked up flowers, roses mostly,
and cherished the little time
he had with his wife.

But the day after he buried her,
he boarded up the bakery.
I was ten and sorely missed the maranitos.





maranitos-a pig-shapped
molasses flavored morsel
made for chicanitos like me.

Flaco Fuentes

Flaco Fuentes, lowly Chicano,
ate only beans and tortillas
and survived by luck.

Flaco loved the days of old,
Aztec and Maya and Olmec,too,
though he never surmised the blood.

He sighed at what was not
and dreamed of fighting Spaniards,
slashing at them with his golden sword.

He mourned his empty life,
fought abandoned gas stations
and overgrown lots.

Dreamed that his tattered clothes
clanked like armor, shoved his sword
into leafless shrubs.

He went home and wrote such marvelous words
he thought the world
would some day need.

But the days turned into years
and no one noticed when Flaco
didn’t even notice them himself.

Contrast The Foregoing With This: Turin, 2008

There were so many things to see
inside the Louvre,
for example, Van Gogh’s ear, Sartre’s nothingness.

A part of the Mediterranean
brought back by the Crusaders
still in chains in a dark corner.

Soon I knew I’d worn out my welcome.
It finally sunk in
when the French girls

started wearing panties
and an ancient Mick Jagger
didn’t care.

Gotta be heading back to Turin,
someone take that hunchback to a chiropractor,
someone release Napoleon --- Leon to his black friends.

Hope Al Sharpeton
don’t get me fired from my cushy desk job
praising Etruscan jars.

Just My Magination

After a shower
I took a taxi to the tower
of that in fi del,

ate unholy meat
at Mickey Dee’s,
elabated up to the observation deck.

Why do they call it a deck
if it ain’t a boat
I said to meself

and meself answered back,eyes don’t know,
so I asked an innocent bystander,
has that ever happened to you?

And it hadn’t.
Went back down,
obeying the laws of gravity to a T-shirt.

Flight To Paris

Flew from Switzerland to Paris
on Baudelaire Air,
uncomfortable flight,

wings wouldn’t stay on,
stewardess complained
if I caressed her thighs,

pilot put grease
on the co-pilots hands,
couldn’t fly straight,

couldn’t fly crooked.
I was overjoyed
when we finally landed.

The plane taxied
up to the gate
and crashed into it.

When I got to my hotel
I realized that all the other passengers
had tagged along.

Overland

The Alps can shove a glance aside.
An ice axe lingers
on an annoying hand.

I look out the window,
the clouds are heavy baskets
a Swede quotes from memory.

I travel in the company
of my shirt.
What an occupation---to be buttoned on!

I wonder if the train regrets
the straight and narrow?
I lick the window and retreat.

A girl laughs at me
and then her laugh turns into a smile.
Hey, have you ever seen a smile die and decay?

Live coverage of the
Consumer Electronics Show
here.
Here also.

Waiting For The Train At Turin, 1973

The train had muscles
cloven from Italy.
Oh, Roman girl rippling from a wooden fountain.

The machine brown like a penny,
bubbles bunched up
against an aqueduct.

My other leg hung in a star,
ganglia stuffed
the sky in a straw.

When the train passed
it picked up after itself.
So far, I’m unaccounted for.

Wild One

for janay gideon

He marks the woods
with his Canadian pee,
the black bear balanced on one knee.

He slips on ice
but catches prey,
Stephen Vince Benet.

He munches frozen grass
in Dali’s melted time
and tree limbs rhyme.

And you, my sweet Janay, sitting in your Rambler,
I endeavored to caress
what God put in your dress.

Father At Eighty

Looking down from the mountains,
I see the scalp of Indio, California
spread out before my lifelong mechanic hands.

Someone please bring me the envelope
so I can announce the winner
of my eighty year old heart.

I’ve chewed up the desert
into grains so fine
that I can’t see them anymore.

I’ve lost a wife and a son
to this burning heat
and cold and vile discomfort.

I’ve forgotten
all I’m ever going to forget
of junked Indian cars against sheds.

Of desert winds blowing
through doors and windows
as if they weren’t there or at least complicit.

I saddle the horse
and head into the canyon
until the words fall off me like tacklers.

Bukowski

At the topless club
a girl offers him a free lap dance
because she says he resembles her grandfather.

His Edgar Allan Poe mustache
brushes her breasts
with the hard smell of liquor.

Her belly
a flat antithesis
to the roundness of the others.

He heard his heart
telling a tale
his conscience thankfully ignored.

On the taxi ride home
the scent of her thighs still twisted and wriggled
as if it was stuck to his zipper.

Landscape

This muddy creek was once a mighty river
until all its trees were cut down
and its natives moved into the cities.

Species that existed nowhere else
lost their habitat
and disappeared from earth forever.

Great waterfalls stopped flowing,
flesh-eating fish refused to eat,
boas became constricted.

The great river which used to pour
mud for miles and miles
out into the Atlantic is no more.

Nature is no match for man
until the day it takes its full revenge
and restores the Amazon after we are gone.

Bukowski

At the topless club
a girl offers him a free lap dance
because she says he resembles her grandfather.

His Edgar Allan Poe mustache
brushes her breasts
with the hard smell of liquor.

Her belly
a flat antithesis
to the roundness of the others.

He heard his heart
telling a tale
his conscience thankfully ignored.

On the taxi ride home
the scent of her thighs still twisted and wriggled
as if it was stuck to his zipper.