Tulsa, a Novel

Driving down
past the refinery's
red-shouldered outline

the pungent
sulphur outcast
breathed by generations

it's jobs
they all say

i'd be hammering
staples in post oak

breathing clean
hickory

.

THEN I WENT TO TULSA

Along the Chisholm Trail highway

the braided river
the broken kestrel

and light lifting off her forehead
are only images her mind sorted

his moments i'm thinking
but i was watching

.

The grocery clerk rang up his sleeve

his coat and quick movements

flashes of snow on Keystone Dam

her mind sorted              "No wait;

give me papers."

i answer her

wind sorts in the asphalt next the pumps

.

Night is seeing the cougar
run its ridge

his eyes in my pocket

downwind i'll wait
in the shade

.

Out there past Canyon de Chelly
the elbowed red buttes
the inflamed
eye stick for twisting fire
water lies on the tongue
in drums
and corn milk squirts
food
in mouth full of arroyos

.

The comet fades in my hand
the bottle out the window

he's eating peanuts seriously cramming them

but i have seen what
is coming out of the dark

she is popping bubble gum

and i've opened the door it clicks

.

She turned her head in the night flaring
pink light dark-blooded radio music
jumping the spaces and the mirage waves sound
blistering enamel festering guitar on layered
slabs harp sucking woe and asking can i just
can i ...
half-snapped she turned what was that?

where the bass was just wind
i'm flung out into the night

speed that roping gravity
and motion hauled out in the

awkward and sidesaddle i
have a strange hand in my clothes

the car left tracer eyes
red gasps a timed exposure

tires flat and drenched in the asphalt

That's night.  I'm on my way back to Tulsa.

.

WHO I AM

Why am i CAREFUL?
i will tell you why

in 1953

we got
                 tv
my family               did

we sat                   couch           and watched
an old                    outside              through

the window at the tv inside

i lived on the east side of an Oklahoma town

in Oklahoma the sun arrives from the east ready to fight

when the sun went down
and then
               the flag
                             unfurled rented emotion

i lay on the couch to sleep
but a scorpion
                                         crawled out of
the stuffing
bit my neck

REDWHITE&BLUEred whiteandblue

.

Later we observed that wrestling was fixed
and they threw him clean out the window.

.

"Take me back to Tulsa, I'm too young to marry."

.

The double-stringed guitar

outlasted the tabular lyre

and the lute's twang

was broken off in mid-

sentence

like a posthole in the path at night

and the warm electric fiddle

was too heavy

with its photovoltaic tower

its suntan power

but the music went on without pause

it went:

"Give me bread on the water,"

something like, in many voices, "Feed the stone boat,

melt the hour,

run the lawn mower over."

It didn't make sense, the verses

floated like frog gas up the chinks:

"I hold your fingerprints on my eyes,

o, ego, please hold me tight."

Then

the trumpet now triple-tongued:

"Upward again on slow-firm
        pinions slanting,"

pulling up air in its sweating bell

blasting the small tumblers

of the air

locked up in the bronze pores

wet as barbecue

and sweet as pecan pie in bed.

.

I was
on the phone in the 7-11

midnight
snow in the air

they walked in
out of the night

(Reality is so casual)

and shot the
clerk

i went with them
we drank beer
smoked pot

they didn't
seem to care
much.

Copyright © David Dwinell 2003