Puzzle Piece

Puzzle Piece

11/30/19

Here in the drawer

A lone puzzle piece

Its odd shape designed

To fit only one particular

Space.

On it is a splash of red,

Maybe once   part of a heart

Or a singing flower.

Its edges slightly worn

From having been

Inserted         and replaced

So many times.

And where is the puzzle

It once completed,

Once made whole?

Where is the big picture

Whose promise it once had fulfilled?

Cast away by a careless hand?

            Lost forever

In time’s missing shoebox?

Deprived of meaning,

It is a lonely sight.

I don’t expect to find that puzzle.

            But I will leave this piece

                        In the drawer.

Irony

Irony

I awaken missing you and wishing 

you were here

Then realize you are 

somewhere else wondering if 

You could somehow tolerate 

being around me.

You always lived with one hand 

on the doorknob,

A mental valise packed

And things never mentioned

Now become faults 

And the fault lines become chasms.

This was your idea, you remind me

Over and over again,

            Like some mantra of absolution,

But you got in the car.

John Michael Hurt   11/15/19

The Cheese and the Worms

The Cheese and the Worms

(Thoughts on The Cheese and the Worms, The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller, by Carlo Ginzburg)

John Michael Hurt

The cheese rots and the worms emerge.

Turning into angels, saints and savior,

they rise with shimmering halos

through flickering rainbows

past the winking disco

mirror-ball of reason

to the painted ceiling.

The judge, blinded by certainty,

raises a trembling finger

and Menocchio prays for a windless day.

We expect the Inquisition,

and hide the children of our minds

deep in the hive

where we cap off their cells and hope they will

grow in silence until they are strong enough

to escape on their own.

But when the storms of passion,

rip open our hiding places,

they fly out unguarded and bare themselves

to the harsh, penetrating eye of our fears,

and once beyond the pyre

they are free at last.

Note: One who is to be burned at the stake prays for a windless day so they will suffocate before the flames reach them.

The Burial

The Burial

John Michael Hurt

It was a Saturday and I was sittin’ on the porch with a glass of sweet tea with the sweat dryin’ on my chest. I’d been out on that old Farmall Cub tractor mowing the side lot. I don’t know if the damn thing is going to run from one year to the next, but somehow it keeps goin’. I guess I’ll sell it for a bona fide antique one of these days. Bobby come across the back lot and up through the yard about three in the afternoon. He’d asked me if he could hunt on the back part of my property that morning and I told him it was okay. Hell, I don’t ever get out there to hunt anymore anyway, so it don’t really matter to me. There’s even some pheasant out there that come over from where this rich guy tried to plant them on his property so he could hunt ‘em. Of course, they come over to my place where there wasn’t anybody shootin’ at ‘em. He wanted to come over here to shoot, but I didn’t much like his attitude, so I said no. I figured Bobby was just coming to check in and tell me he was goin’ home. When he got close, I could see that somethin’ wasn’t right. He was pale and his eyes were wide, and he was breathing hard. He come right up on the porch and I said “Well hi, Bobby. Did you do any good?”

He looked around quick, like he was looking to see if anybody else was there listenin’. I could see then he was real scared.

I said, “What in the world’s wrong, boy. You look like you seen a ghost.”

“Seth, you gotta come see something. Come on. I need you to see this. I need your help,” he said looking at me with one of the strangest looks I’ve ever seen on a man. My first thought was that he’d accidentally shot somebody.

“Bobby, what’s happened? Did you shoot somebody or something? Are you hurt?” I asked him straight up. I know about how the law treats stuff like this. I could easily go from ‘helping Bobby’ to ‘being an accomplice’ if he had done somethin’ wrong.

“No!” he kind of half-shouted, half-whispered. “Well… no but I gotta show you. I need you to see.”

Now, right off, I could see he’d been drinking a little bit, but that wasn’t any big deal to me. Lots of folks carried a little somethin’ out with ’em when they were huntin’. And he didn’t seem drunk, just agitated and upset. Bobby wasn’t any kind of a bad guy. I’d known his family since I’d been a kid. He’d done some farmin’, and when he had a hard time making ends meet, he started working over at the paper mill in Winston. He got in a fight over at the Mountain View Lounge last year, but it wasn’t nothin’ really. Just some argument over a pool game. -- So I just thought there had been an accident or somethin’.

After I pulled my boots back on, he started back over the field with his twelve-gauge shotgun still in his right hand, like it had been ever since he come up to the house. He was walking fast, and I had to tell him to slow down twice before we got to the back part of the property. I was breathin’ hard by then. We come across that little crick that kinda divides my property in half – it was so shallow we just walked on the rocks – and went into the big twenty-acre field I keep cleared off back there. I just mow it for hay sometimes, but this year I didn’t, and he took me out into the middle of the field in the waist-high grass. This was late summer and the broom sage was already yellow.

There on the ground was a person – sort of. The face didn’t look like either a man or a woman. It was wearing clothes that were kind of like Roman clothes, but also kind of space-age looking. I know, that don’t make no sense, but there it is. I can’t say it any better, and neither could you, even if you saw it yourself. What was crazy was that it had wings. It had big wings like goose wings only a lot bigger coming out of its shoulders in the back. I thought about those cloning experiments I read about in the paper, and about how they mixed frog genes or something with tomatoes to make them better. Anyhow, there it was. It had been shot twice. There was two holes in its chest. There wasn’t any chance it could have survived. It was laying sort of face up but the wings underneath caused it to be pushed over at an angle like. There was a lot of blood soaking into the ground. It just looked like any regular blood. I’ve sure seen enough of that to know.

“Shit,” I said. I know my eyes must have been bugging out. “Bobby, did you shoot him..uh, her, it?”

“Well it just popped up and took off,” he yelled defensively. “I didn’t know what it was. It was just kinda automatic. What is it, Seth? What is it?” He was looking at me like I was going to tell him it was okay. Like this thing had been raiding my corn or somethin’, and I appreciated him taking it down.

“Damn, Bobby,” I whistled through my teeth, “It looks like a goddam angel to me. I don’t know what else in the world it could be. I don’t think they can make people like that, at least not yet.”

“Oh, shit,” Bobby said in a whisper. “What am I gonna do Seth? I done killed an angel. Do you think God knows I killed it?” He was really panicking.

“Well, God’s supposed to know everything,” I said thinking hard, “But if he did know, and if he was mad about it, I think you’d already know that by now.”

Bobby threw the shotgun down on the ground. It was a pretty new Browning, so I knew he was really upset.  It was an automatic. That’s how he was able to get off two shots so quick. The angel laid there with its eyes open starin’ at the sky. It had a beautiful face and its eyes were dark brown. Its arms and legs looked slim and strong, kind of like a marathon runner or something. I was in Vietnam and I’ve seen people die, so…… that part didn’t affect me…. so much. I felt like I ought to close its eyes, but….. I was really kind of afraid to touch it, as though I would be acceptin’ part of the blame for killin’ it if I did. When I saw that Bobby wasn’t going to do it, I finally reached down and pulled its eyelids closed.

That was when I had a sort of like a flashback. I was in a hamlet outside of Dong Ha and we come in there after the Viet Cong had been in there the night before, and we hit it too, and a lot of people got killed by both sides. There was a lot of what they used to call ‘collateral damage.’ That meant non-combatants…civilians….. had gotten killed. There was this girl that was dead in front of this one hooch. It was like she had just laid down there to rest, but when I come up, I saw she was dead, but I couldn’t see a mark on her. She was so pretty and she had these dark eyes. I reached down and closed her eyes, and the angel’s eyes were just like that, so I guess that’s why I thought about it.  I hadn’t remembered it really for a long time.

“Damn, Seth.” Bobby said. He was sort of fuming around. “What are we going to do with it?”

“We?” I said, but knowin’ that I’d have to help. “You shot it!”

“You got to help me hide it,” he said and he seemed as desperate as I ever saw anybody act before.

“Who are you hidin’ it from?” I asked him. “God?  The police? The police ain’t gonna know about this, and God already knows!” I just threw my hands up.

Bobby was crying now. “Just help me bury it or something. Just help me. Please help me Seth.” He was really scared and panicked.

“Okay, okay,” I said, “Take it easy now, Bobby.” Like I said, he wasn’t a bad fellow. No worse than anybody else. I went back to the house and got a shovel and a grubbin’ hoe and some sack cloth. When I come back, we dug a deep hole in the bank of the little crick there and put the angel in and covered it with the bags. It was really light to carry, like a kid…. I looked at its face one last time as we laid it in the ground. It was still really beautiful, even in death. We had to fold the big wings behind it to lay it down. They had feathers, but they was soft. Then we buried it, and I said a few words over it. We did our best to cover the place up so’s you couldn’t tell there had been anything there.

We walked back to the house without talkin’, and Bobby went back to his truck and went home. I think he was still shaking when he drove off.

Well, If you was to ask Bobby about it now, I know he’d say he don’t know what you’re talkin’ about. But that’s just because he’s afraid to remember. I remember it very well and sometimes I see that angel’s face in my dreams……but I have forgotten exactly where she is buried. Maybe that’s for the best.

  

Michael Cimino-Hurt  / 2014

Construction

Construction

Yes, I made this great dark creature.

Put it together on rainy nights,

            working furiously

under a single bare bulb,

on a folding table in the reptile

            basement of my mind.

Scraped in the damp corners

            for that nameless goo

                        my soul had

            tracked in after days of

                        aimless wandering.

Tacked on a skin of betrayals

            sculpted on a leer of cowardice

                        that drooled numbers

painted limbs with falsification

I made a heart of plaster of Paris

            like the one in my doctor’s office

fashioned a brain of disappointments

            broken glass

                        razor blades

When the ballbearing eyes snapped open

            and saw what I had done,

It ran away to hide.

But now I have tracked it down and I will

            finish the job.

John Michael Hurt   11/9/19

Fifteen

Fifteen

I want to tell you about the mouse in the bottle,

and how memory can punch a tunnel through time

to bring you back to the consciousness

of a fifteen-year-old boy,

on a cold, quiet night, when the stars

are pinpricks in the black velvet,

and he is walking back from the parade.

He will be wearing a marching band uniform

of black and gold and brass buttons,

and white buck shoes he has polished,

and there is a shako on his head

and maybe it has a plume in it.

Maybe his buddy is walking with him and

in his hand is a cold trumpet.

Not so cold as when he has to play it

at the football game when

he keeps the mouthpiece in his pocket

so it won’t freeze to his lips

when he goes out to play worship tunes

for the football heroes he is not.

But on how walking back with his buddy

under the cold stars,

he sees a coke bottle by the road

and picks it up,

and in it is a dead mouse,

and he thinks about how the mouse died

looking at the stars through

the prisms of the coke bottle

that was his prison,

and that he saw the beauty of those cold stars

magnified and glorified as he died

beside a dirt road in a small town,

and how that memory punches a tunnel

through fifty years of time

to be focused as through a crystal ball,

through a lens so pure and so clear

that I am frozen back there in that moment

with the mouse and the trumpet and the cold stars.

John Michael Hurt / 2016

Drums on Pennsylvania Avenue

Drums on Pennsylvania Avenue

The drums of Kennedy’s funeral procession

rolled in somber steps,

The rhythm to a collapsing worldview.

I hear the same rhythm from the broken faucet in the library restroom,

and I tell the librarian about it.

She smiles and exclaims because she is my friend,

but not because she can still see in her mind

the little boy saluting the passing caisson,

and she does not hear the drums.

In my mouth is the taste of glass,

the flavor of half-a-century’s distance

from the collapse of the capital F Future:

the death of the supersonic, spandex,

happy and germ-free future,

In which we could see by the dawn’s early light

the glory of forever.

The taste of glass separates me from the world

where segregation gasped its last gasp,

and all would be well just tomorrow, just tomorrow.

I land on the moon and take that first step

Onto the Mall to protest the war without understanding

that one day my son would stand on foreign soil

fighting for an unjust cause,

and that my heart would be laid on the front steps of the

Washington Post and Morning Edition every day,

until we ran from the bleachers onto the parade ground

to clutch those who had returned to us.

The taste of glass is the taste of that search for pure spirit

that led my soul down a rabbit hole

to emerge in confusion so profound

that I still shudder sometimes when I awaken

to an emotion I do not understand.

And who are you now looking in?

And where have you been?

Were you too bound with Odysseus to the mast when the sirens sang?

Do you still hear the drums?

John Michael Hurt / 2016

Paramitsha (Faerie Tale)

Paramitsha (Faerie Tale)

John Michael Hurt

I wasn’t afraid of the gypsies. I went right up to the wagon and said hello. Over dinner the night before, my father had told my mother and my sister and me that they were there on the west side of the orchard, and that he had told them they could camp there for a week if they wanted, but no more. My mother didn’t like that, and she made that little twisty disapproving face. “Just a week,” My father said flatly. “They ain’t going to hurt nothing in a week.” My ma shrugged and said nothing. I decided I would go over and have a look at them. I had just finished my final year of secondary school and the summer was in full swing. I still had to figure out what I was going to do. I had thought about college. With government help I might be able to afford it. Or there was the army. In the meantime I was drifting in that world of indecision, and there was always a funny feeling in my stomach like when you have had a strange dream and you’re not sure you’re awake yet. Sometimes I would look at myself long and hard in the mirror as if I might see some clue there to who I really was, where I was going; as though there would be a map on my face to guide me to the future.

The wagon was green with flowers painted on it. It had wood panels on the sides and a curved roof with a little metal chimney sticking out. The chimney had a conical pointed cap on it, and a little smoke came from it and was pulled away on the breeze. The wheels were painted red and yellow. A kind of awning was extended out from one side of the wagon and there were chairs and a table and some other things under it on a rug. Two horses were grazing absently under a big oak tree. They looked like really fine horses, big and strong.

As I walked up, a girl about my age came around the corner. She stopped abruptly until she saw that I was smiling and that I was alone. When I said hello, she smiled and said hello, too. Of course, I noticed immediately how pretty she was. Her hair and her eyes were shiny and her skin was smooth and golden.

“My name’s Tolly,” I said, holding out my hand. “Tolly Ransom. This is our farm here.” I gestured around us. For a moment she looked concerned. I think she thought I was going to ask them to leave. Then I realized she might not speak English, but she came forward and shook my hand and said, “My name is Djidjo.”

“I’m pleased to meet you.”

She bowed a little curtsey. “Will you come sit by the vurdon – the wagon - and have some tea?” Of course, I said yes.

About this time, her father came around the wagon. I guess he had heard voices. He wasn’t a big man, but he had a kind of muscularity, a kind of solidness. His dark hair was curly, not straight like Djidjo’s was. He had a black mustache, which, along with his brown face made the smile he wore flash white in the shade of the orchard. He walked over and looked at me curiously for a second then said “I am Veshengo, you are welcome to our camp young raklo.

“Excuse me sir, but my name is Tolly,” I said.

He smiled. “Oh yes, raklo is only the word for a young man. A young man who is not a gypsy. Chey,” he said looking at the girl, “Can you get some tea for us?” She smiled and nodded and went up the wooden steps into the wagon. “I hope everything is well,” he said with a concerned look as we sat on the chairs under the awning. “I spoke to the owner.”

“Yes, that was my father. Everything’s okay. I just came to see you. To be honest, I’ve never seen any gypsies before.”

“Well, we don’t usually say gypsies. We call ourselves Rom or Romany. I am grateful to your father. We are not welcomed by most people. The Rom have a culture that has, well, different ways from most people these days. For instance, today many of us live in cities and live like other city people do, but some of the Rom follow the old ways and may … take things.” He shrugged. “I think, though, most people had a culture like ours many centuries ago. You might say like stealing, but I think many tribes used to take things from other tribes when they could, like horses. Nowadays business people take money away from other people. They charge interest or cheat and this culture says it is okay. So…” He shrugged again and smiled, looking intently at me.

Djidjo came back with the tea and we sat through the warm afternoon that was like a magic spell. The sunlight made stained glass patterns through the orchard leaves, and the breeze was fat and pleasant against my face. The feeling of dreaminess fitted well with the strange unsettled feeling in my stomach, and the tea filtered down like liquid amber into my body. I think they liked me, and I know I thought Djidjo was one of the prettiest girls I had ever seen. We talked about places they had traveled and about the times they had at the big meetings -  the Patshiva. When I left, they asked me to come back tomorrow. Djidjo fluttered her big eyes at me, and Veshengo smiled as he waved me on my way back to the world of chores and expectations.

I had felt the meeting with the gypsies was fine. Somehow, with them I had not felt any push or pull from my own world - a world that was always expecting me to make choices, do things, plan and know. With them, I had no role to play, no promises to keep and I had just been me. It was heady and seductive.

The next day I did my chores and got released from duty in the early afternoon. I cleaned up and headed out toward the orchard. The orchard was on the far side of our farm and it seemed to take much longer to get there than it had the day before. I arrived at the wagon and helloed. For a while there was no response and I had almost turned and headed back, when Djidjo came out of the wagon wiping her hands on her apron and smiling. We sat on the ground underneath one of the apple trees and talked. I asked her what Gypsy life was like, but she wasn’t sure how to answer, as that was all she had ever known, so how can you compare. I asked where her mother was.

“My mother was named Dritta,” she said with a little sad smile. “She was very beautiful.” Looking at Djidjo, I could easily believe it. “She was suddenly … very ill and the hospital wouldn’t take her in, because…you know. We were camped alone, so there was no help from the Kumpania – the family. She, um, passed away in the vurdon. I was twelve years old. My father still grieves very much. He will not take another wife. He says if he did, her ghost would not give him any peace so why bother. It is his little joke.” Djidjo seemed flustered for a minute, but then she smiled and the world was a little warmer.

Vashengo came suddenly through the trees riding one of the horses. He dropped to the ground with a lithe dismount. He looked at me with a very serious look on his face at first, then at Djidjo for a second, then his expression softened. I think he saw that we had not been doing anything improper.

“How are you raklo,” he asked with a wink as he walked over to us.

I stood up. “Fine, sir,” I said as he pulled over a chair and sat with us. “Oh, I brought some things for you.” I pulled out the bag I had brought with some presents of food. It was just some beans and potatoes, a bag of rice and some peaches and jam my mother had canned. Suddenly, I thought the simple offerings might be an insult to them. A huge cloudbank of embarrassment hovered near my heart. But they both smiled and it dissipated.

“Thank you for this kindness,” Vashengo said. “You know, I think you are almost like a Gypsy in your heart.” He jumped up and went into the wagon and came back with a bottle of wine and three glasses and poured one for each of us. “Let us toast the full moon,” he laughed, “it is only a couple of days away,” and sure enough there she was, rising above the orchard trees in the east. Her great gold face beamed down in the summer evening as we talked about the place of a man in the world, of sorrow and of Dritta, of the power of life and death. Djidjo and Vashengo and I, all talking, and sometimes one of them singing part of a song to emphasize a point. After we had finished the bottle, Vashengo leaned so close that his face was almost touching mine.

“Because you have been so kind and your father has been so kind to us, because I think maybe you have the heart of a Rom, I will show you a special thing.” He looked over at Djidjo who suddenly seemed a little nervous. “Wait,” he said with a sweeping gesture of his hand, “And you will see something that will surprise you.”

Now the twilight was upon us. Two lanterns were glowing under the awning by the wagon. I hadn’t noticed anyone light them, but I thought Djidjo had done it while I was transfixed by one of Vashengo’s stories.

Vashengo came out of the wagon with a kind of box covered by a cloth. He set the box on the table and pulled the cover away with a dramatic gesture. The box or case was very elaborate like a gilded birdcage, but more complicated than one would expect a birdcage to be. It was very beautifully decorated and seemed to give off some kind of light. There was a little latch on the door that was arranged so that it couldn’t be reached from inside.

“Come and see,” Vashengo said, gesturing with his hand for me to come closer. I came to the table and bent down to look into the cage. Inside was a tiny person, perfectly shaped, but no more than twelve inches tall. She, for it was very obviously a she, had small diaphanous wings like dragonfly wings. She stood in the cage and once in a while the wings fluttered and she lifted into the air. I saw that the light that emanated from the cage actually came from her. She glowed as from some internal light and she looked almost translucent there in the twilight evening. Most of all, she was beautiful. So tiny and perfect. It broke my heart to look at her because she was so beautiful. Her glowing skin was perfect and flawless. She looked out at me from the cage with a look that was both imploring and sad. Her eyes spoke of a terrible loneliness – imploring but afraid, apprehensive. They spoke of desire and of love, too. I felt that she wanted me to stop the loneliness, as if only I could do this, but was afraid. For a few seconds, her lips moved as though she were trying to talk to me, but couldn’t.

“What is she?” I asked breathlessly.

“She is a faerie.” Vashengo said, looking from the cage to me.

“But …a faerie?”I spluttered. “There are no …”

“What you see with your own eyes, raklo, is true.” He nodded at the faerie.

“Why is she in the cage?” I asked. “Can’t you let her out?”

“Oh, no!” He shook his head. “Faeries, they are very dangerous.”

“Where did she come from?” I asked, still stunned and transfixed by the sight. I couldn’t take my eyes away.

“She was passed to us from family, a Sumadji, a what? You might say an heirloom.”

“But what does she eat?” I asked, suddenly concerned.

“She eats sunlight, like a plant, and of course water,” Djidjo answered. “But in the sunlight she is nearly invisible, like a shimmer in the air. I think it is because she takes in the light. Only in the night can she be seen.”

“What is she saying?” I asked Djidjo.

She shook her head. “I don’t know. It is beyond our hearing”

I kept looking at the faerie. Something in her perfect beauty filled me with desire. Something about her rang in powerful harmony with the strange empty feeling that my life had put into the pit of my stomach, my loins. My breath seemed to stop and I realized that my heart was pounding. The tiny sad, but beautiful, face was burned into my mind.

Sudenly, Vashengo threw the cover back over the cage. I jumped back with a jolt and realized it was later than I had thought. I excused myself, thanking them for their hospitality and started back home. All that night and the next day, I couldn’t get her out of my mind. The next evening I had promised to meet some friends in the village. We went to the usual places, talked and ate at a little shop. Afterwards, we went round to a pub and drank some toasts to the life we knew we would soon be leaving behind. But the whole evening I was restless. Kira was sitting across from me at the little table in the pub.

“Where are you Tolly? You’ve been so quiet all evening. We depend on you for intelligent conversation, you know,” she said with a cross face. “Josh only wants to talk about ale and food.” Josh made a face and threw a pretzel at her.

I didn’t want to tell them about the faerie. I didn’t want to tell anyone. I apologized for being so distant, and said, “I’ve just got a lot on my mind, I guess.” Soon, I excused myself and headed for home. That night I tossed and turned feeling every lump in the bed and hearing every sound, perspiring through long breaks between strange dreams. The round moon, almost full, made a backlight in my room to the phantasms in my head.

The next day I went back to the camp. Vashengo was splitting wood and he paused to greet me as I came up. I helped him stack the wood he was splitting, and we had some cool juice he had brought. We sat under the awning and I told him about my confusion about the future. Talking to him about all this wasn’t like talking to my family or friends, it was more like thinking out loud. I asked him what Djidjo would do in the future. He shrugged.

“We don’t have as many choices as you,” he said wistfully. “And I am a man. Her mother would be better to help her plan a life. A man, even a father, can’t advise a young woman very well about things.” He looked disconsolate for a moment, and I thought he might weep, but he recovered and looked at me in the strangest way. Just then, Djidjo appeared from across the way with a two big pails of water hanging on a staff across her shoulders. Of course, I ran right away to help her, and despite my good intentions I caused her to spill a lot of the water from one of the pails. This caused an exasperated expression from Djidjo, which caused a contrite expression from me, which in turn caused laughter from Vashengo. In the end we were all laughing.

Vashengo asked me to stay for supper and since I had left a note saying I might not be home until late, I accepted. Vashengo did the cooking, with Djidjo helping. A couple of times over the dinner of lamb and vegetables, I caught Djidjo looking at me in a solemn wistful way, but she smiled and I smiled back.

After supper, we drank some sweet but fiery wine that Vashengo said was Hungarian. Then I asked them the question that had been in my heart for two days. “Vashengo, can I see the faerie again.”

He stopped and sat back in his chair. “Listen to me Tolly, very carefully,” he said with look in his eyes that demanded it. “She is dangerous, I have told you. If you want to see her once more, I will let you, but you must not ask again. No more can I say, and you have to accept it.” I nodded. He looked at Djidjo. She looked upset and a little afraid. She shook her head slightly, but Vashengo only gave a little shrug. “Very well,” he said and he rose and went into the wagon.

He returned with the cage and looked at Djidjo for a few seconds before he pulled off the cover and there she was.

The sight of the faerie was like a knife thrust into my heart, but I welcomed the pain because it felt good to hurt like this. I lowered myself to the level of the faerie and gazed at her with tears forming in my eyes. Her beauty reached out like a beam and hit me full in the middle of my being. My hands moved to the cage and her features burned into my mind. A desire that didn’t make sense swept me like a tidal wave. I felt Vashengo reach his powerful arm across and hold me back from the cage. Djidjo threw the cover back over it, and I collapsed back, the connection broken.

“You must not see her any more,” Vashengo said with a lead gray voice. He looked at me cautiously as if to see what I would do. I simply sat back in my chair and nodded. He seemed relieved. We sat in silence for a few minutes and drank the rest of the wine. Finally I pushed myself to my feet and after thanking them for the dinner, I walked home.

The next day I tried to act normal and to put the Romany, and everything that had happened out of my mind, and for a time I was successful. The chores, lunch with friends in the village, a stop at the library and the school and dinner with my family flowed together as a seamless whole. I went to bed thinking about colleges. A couple of hours later I was wide awake and sitting on the edge of my bed. I put on my clothes as though it was morning, as though in a trance. I went out of the cottage and made my way across the fields, silver in the light of the moon that was now completely full at zenith in the sky above me, so bright that most of the stars weren’t visible. The fields smelt of the earth and the grass. The orchard wafted the perfume of its blossoms down on me as I moved quietly between the trees. I reached the wagon and saw that Djidjo and Vashengo were sleeping on cots under the awning.

I crept quietly up to the door and the chirping of the crickets covered the sound of the creaking steps.  Inside, by the moonlight that followed me through the door, I located the cage and set it out on the table in the middle of the wagon. I took two long deep breaths and pulled the cover off. My head rocked back with the force of her beauty as the glow from the faerie filled the room. I was transfixed. The sounds of the night swelled and blended together and rose into a maelstrom that swirled about me blocking out everything except me and the faerie. My hand reached out as if with a mind of its own and opened the twist lock in the door. I reached inside and the faerie backed against the other side of the cage. My hand stopped, and then reached out and touched her.

For an eternal moment I cried out with a sound of a million heartaches that reached to the full moon and back. Light filled me and my arms were flung wide. In my mouth I tasted blood, earth, nectar, time, moonlight. I expanded balloon-like and then suddenly I collapsed, rushing down a tunnel of night like the only burning lamp in eternity. I felt a panic, not in my body, but in my very soul.

I lay on the floor of the cage, thinking no thought. After a time, I struggled to my feet. There was a buzzing and I rose a little off the floor. Dazed, I looked out through the bars. The world looked different, as though it were made of quicksilver and clouds, but I could see Djidjo and Vashengo tumbling through the door almost as if in slow motion. They came across the room and Vashengo slammed the cage door closed and locked it. Then they were picking someone up from the floor. For a minute, I thought it was going to be me, but they were raising a woman with dark straight hair from the floor, supporting her under her arms. Then they were all three crying and hugging. Vashengo repeating, “Dritta, Dritta, Dritta,” and Djidjo crying “Daja! Daja!”

And then I understood it all. When Djidjo and Vashengo finally came to the cage, their eyes red and swollen from crying, and their hands still holding the hands of the beautiful woman sitting on the stool behind them. I knew what they had done. I felt a strange calm, listening to their tearful apologies. I tried to speak - to tell them that I understood, but they couldn’t hear the voice that sounded even to me like the wind in a dream. Vashengo went out with Dritta, and Djidjo stood by the cage crying and talking to me. “I really like you Tolly,” she said, tears running down her face. “I didn’t want this, but it was you or my mother. What else could I do? We’ll find someone, I promise, and set you free again. Then it might even be you and me. Soon, I promise. I promise.”

Tonight I could smell the sweet dusty incense of the full moon outside and I knew you would be back. Just like I came back. Only the wise and strong don’t return. And now you’re here with your face pressed close to the cage. And I know what you’re feeling. And though I know you can’t hear my voice, I have been telling you my story. You see my lips moving and I am telling you all this, but you can’t hear me. Your beautiful young girl’s face is pressed so close to the cage. Can I stop you from reaching inside to touch me? Do I really want to? 

Utah Tryptich

Utah Tryptich

Utah 1

This is the land where stones fall from the sky,

where the rainbows are made of earth,

where water is gold,

and you can drown in undrinkable oceans.

This is the land where miles are time

and the song of one bird can be heard,

the land of freezing heat.

This land is like the long, cool drink

to the parched, dry throat

from a poisoned well.

This is the land where God pauses to look over his shoulder,

where the hand is open, but empty.

This is the land where red and blue live inside the mind,

where brown is taste, where green is dream

and safety is distance.

Our arrival in this land is an act of hubris,

and the people reach out for cobwebs

left in the corners of ancient houses

to make them feel safe in this land

which must always remain

a friendly stranger

suspected of harboring

a dark secret.

Utah 2

A distant thunderstorm

makes promises

which it will not keep,

and no one is fooled.

The rain falls on Zion,

crying tears on the upturned faces of thirsty stones,

sculpting the parched sand.

Unlucky,

this water will never reach the ocean,

but trickle down to the sea of tears

at the heart of this land,

or dwindle and fail

in attempted escape,

stopped cold by the ghosts of thirsty machines.

But who can doubt that an ocean exists somewhere,

that these drops will someday swell its tide,

and so we must believe in the reincarnation of the water,

in the transubstantiation of the spirit of water,

so that the wetness of upturned faces

and the taste of tears

will have meaning

in this land.

Utah 3

space and light unending

breathe in dust

breathe out religion

breathe in salt

breathe out concrete

breathe in stones

breathe out certainty

breathe in desperation

breathe out iron

breathe in fever

breathe out visions

the hand is raised  to the rainless sky

to the empty sky

the hand shades the searching eye

the bird sings deep in the valley

where the water hides

the snake sheds its skin in secret

and waits for the cool night

the coyote sitting outside the campfire’s circle of light

raises its muzzle and sniffs the smell

of paper money and felt,

of the drops of oil

caught in the blinding lights

the coyote hears the sound of the engine

and turns for a last look at the redrock

breathe in dust

breathe out fate

breathe in salt

breathe out histories

breathe in stones

breathe out reservations

breathe in fever

breathe out visions

- John Michael Hurt

Shoes

Shoes

My father died and joined my mother

in the place that is just beyond

whatever wall I am looking at the moment.

Years spent attached to a machine

while the vampire of modern medicine

sucked him dry of everything

he had spent his life struggling for.

My sister popped the balloon of their now-empty home

and let the memories fly out with a whoosh,

like dry leaves from the apple orchard

and butterflies from the bookcase,

like an electric train on a track

that didn’t circle back,

but just ran on out of sight.

The lawn mower woke up

chugged off looking for grass

that was two inches too long.

My mother’s attic of compressed memory,

frozen on dry cardboard, blew out

in piles of images of a family that would no longer

travel down blue highways

to Cherokee motels with rubber tomahawks.

Dolls whose eyes were now blind

stumbled off on stiff legs, arm in arm with

little boys in cowboy suits and paratrooper boots.

In the end, all that was left of him for me

was three pairs of strong shoes –

shoes for holding your own,

shoes for bracing yourself against the onslaught of life.

shoes for standing your ground.

They were not my shoes.

My shoes were designed for going,

for speed, for getting from a place

I no longer wanted to be to the greener grass of Eden,

to the greener glass of the Emerald City,

so that I could confront Oz the Terrible and Mighty

and get my wish granted,

but I polished those shoes

like I did when I was a boy trying to please him,

and then I put them on to see how they felt,

and now I can’t get them off again.