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Edited on Thu Aug-09-07 01:07 PM by BlueIris
"The Cord"
The campground grew gray and fragile,
the orange tents dimmed, children's voices
were like a powder on the air.
We were full and waiting for night to fall fully,
for its flap to unfurl and allow us our gathering
around the Peterson's trailer, where Saturdays,
a sheet was hung so that movies could be shown.
Oklahoma, South Pacific, Damn Yankees,
musicals each and every time,
their characters rippling in the man-made lake’s breeze,
each plot seemingly orchestrated
around one central, barely discernable semen stain
(that made everything bearable),
and unwitting bugs drawn to cleavage and open mouths.
I wanted reality, at twelve. I had three ravaged beer cans
which proved that bears lived near. I had seen stringers
of gasping pan fish knotted to the floating pier.
Baseball teams singing in showers made me want to gag.
But my mother adored them, and I was indeed privileged,
now allowed to wander without a flashlight,
pee at will in the woods, and crouch
beside the inner glow of tents, within inches
of many a voluptuous silhouette. As long
as we had musicals, I was free
to act in my own movie—the one where I patrolled
that complacent outpost and singlehandedly
faced down the local toughs.
And the girls—almost larval, sleeping bags
zipped to the chin
beneath a moon like a paper plate nailed to a tree,
its handwritten message too faded to read—
how tender and vulnerable their faces were.
Is this what memory is?
A long extension cord stretched into the dark?
I've never known better, since.
Each move, then, dictated by fear and romance,
the one-dimensional, ghostly nature
of being young and finding oneself
projected on the earth.
—Mark Cox
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