(4) From: The Wait, BL Seiber, 1994 (The Prize)

Please read 1, 2, 3, 4 in numeric order


The Legend
She waits for the manna of your letters from prison, the love seat by the window worn to her contour. But that's what you want: someone to believe the legend you created enough to hold vigil. In rundown neighborhood taverns where you were most comfortable, grown boys swear they drank with you that night before. The newspapers headlined the murder; your photo, face dead cold, eyes crazed. The only time she broke down was when I told her I didn't care if I never saw you again. Today, I packed three crates of letters, what you call poems, proclaiming the glory of God, the forgiveness of Jesus. Still, there's hardly room for her clothes in the dresser. Both it and the nightstand are full of white envelopes postmarked Louisville addressed to our mother. You somehow think they're important, need to be saved. The document signed by the governor commuting your death sentence slipped into the large illustrated bible you sent home from Vietnam, as if it were some diploma. Ministers call to say they're praying for you. That's fine. I spend hours filling boxes, avoiding the subject.


Letters for the Dark
August will subside in the pale glow of moonflowers. The first opened this evening around eight-thirty while I was occupied with a sketch I won today at auction. A charcole nude of a reclining, slight-built teen, his head turnd away from the artist. I imagine that you, my wildhaired buck-dancing boy. The slim build, little more than a faint triangle nesting small, perfectly formed genitals. All reminiscent of the image of you I keep bound in my head. The face, buried in a pillow, adds to the intrigue, and more readily allows for the fleshing of memory; so like the pornography you left by my bed. The moonflower is new to my garden. A full hand across, the soft white saucer protrudes from a throat extending fantastically from the fence trellis. I would imagine it lonely but for the other buds swirling to unfold with the next night's darkness. Calonyction: A fairness of night; fitting tribute to the motions of loss. One night per blossom.


The Poem I Fail at Writing
Snow filled the path we made through the dark as I opened the drapes to let in the shimmer. You didn't like candles, said something about whores. And I couldn't share this secret with vulger bright light. The world slipped as you made your play. The shirt falls through heaven with deliberate slowness; jeans take a decade to light by the chair. The fierceness of youth. The naieve posing. And after the trembling I whispered "Be my Goldmund," remembering my Hesse. "And I'll be your Narcissus." I thought you asleep. You never answered. Then with my "God I love you," all hell broke lose.


Pleasant Cem try, Era, Ohio
A e is missing from the cemetery gate the otherside of Era, off state Route 3. The scrolling, wrought iron arch reads Pleasant Cemet ry--I know that's not true. A boy is buried there. I come occassionally to stand at his grave, measure my anger against rolling clouds. I think of his mother, if she's any better. I would like to see finches darting between stones, some quick flash of life. Sentinel pines are too dark: morbid. The old mausoleum crumbling to shame. He had said, as we walked cobbled streets of our gay district, "If I ever test positive, I'll kill myself." The sod is quite thick this year. I guess it'll hold. I come to replace what his mother tears out. She's mourning grandchildren, a lack of bright flowers. No son of hers would ever end up... The clouds roll out across the plain.


The Prize
In the garden with twine and Father's bone-handled Case XX, undoing storm damage; tall young tomatoes have fallen from stakes, vines lay haphazard, groundward, confused. Crouching in wet grass, I gather each branch, rebundle the green mass of leaves, fruit and stem. I'm careful to not lay the knife down between steps. The moisture would ruin the blade's patina. The knife was my gift to him, years ago Christmas, one of many I gave him, returned at his death. Twice doubled, the twine cuts easily, no match for the sharpness of forge hardened steel. He understood a boy's need for a knife, the truth of machined blades, bleached-bone and stag-handled. The first that I owned was one I'd stolen from a third grade class closet, with multiple blades too large for a boy. He asked where I got it. I lied, "From a buddy at school." Sin number two. My father pocketed the big knife, multiple sin, gave me a small, worn, single blade Case. "Don't take it to school and get caught," he said. "That's how knives are lost." How did he know? Here in the garden, hands greened, knees muddied, I lash vines to slim poles, lay claim through these labors, his garden and yard.

(3) From: The Wait, BL Seiber, 1994 Chapter II, The Prize

One AM
I want to stay up the night, reading, writing poetry till dawn. But the woman who bore me, kept me for years, lies two rooms away, facing east if on her left side, west, if on her right, struggling for position in a threatening world. It's inoperable. I want to write her story, but it always comes back his story, or their story. But that is her story. Half a century of suppers and breakfasts, diapers and wet beds, kids gone off God knows where. I want to make poems of the fires she stoked, the water she carried, waiting for a husband gone off to war. But I fear I may disturb her sleep. She worries over my preference for the dark, my preoccupation with what is written. It's not that I resent the intrusion; I feel her presence as she turns in her sleep. I crave the escape and release of words that have everything to do with meaning so real, her bed and her chair are nothing to the dark.


The Wait
She lies in the quiet of her small room, curved spine unmoving, fetal beneath the grey caul of morning. And I take my place in Father's chair at the table, coughing the cigarettes as he did untill Black Lung silenced his hack. I know she's awake in the dark, relearning the emptiness that cancer brings. The solitude of continuance when half one's life is missing. Lost. She's waiting till I get settled in the hour with my smoke and coffee. Accustomed to life alone before I was called to be the caregiver, I'm not always considerate enough to be kind so early. Smoke fills my lungs, famililar, calming. First Father; now her? Chemo alone might not be enough, slight constant weight drops whisper the toll. Steam rises and spits as coffee sputters. The pot needs cleaned again, It's the hard water. The whole house begs for repair. With luck, the worst will wait till spring.


Radiation
How is it watching the present undone? Winter in small rooms. Curtains pulled against the light. Details less noticed in the dim: thinning hair, unbrushed; skirt and sweater, comfortable but coarse, colors never really matching; hands worn rough by radiation, injected weekly. Room to room, uncertain steps and a trail of words. I wish the mail would come. Your brother hasn't called for days, aware that I'm not really listening. I hear her well enough. It's just the repetition: an echo for her jangled nerves. Smoothing tangles of hair, I wonder how it's come to this, and say "It's only a little thin."


May 5 6:15
It's spring and mother hardly knows. Safe behind locked doors, she rarely hears me turn into the drive. Quick naps; the house shut. She's dreaming a childhood of orchards and churchbells, a rail fence and gate in a holler near Harlan, a time before other sons went bad and were caught. I knock loud, unlock the door, keys jangling. "I'm home." She stirs in her chair by the window as I open rooms. "I've not seen a soul," she says. "The phone doesn't ring." "It works both ways," I reply, pouring fresh coffee; as always, my ashtray in place at the table. "I've tomatoes to set out before fixing dinner," I say, changing shoes. "Well, you would," her asnswer. The coffee is strong.

(2) From: The Wait, BL Seiber, 1994

Questing
The final nickle-movie season in the old Great Southern: sprung seats retaped, gesso putti facade crumbling, jujubes and Steve Reeves, Jason and the Golden Fleece, weekdays noon and three o'clock for five cents in the cool decline. You're a boy alone in town for the day, familiar with the first floor near the back. A summe ritual, the nickle movie brings the kids in from street trouble. No news here. But out of nowhere in the dark, a man takes up the adjoining seat. No one you know. On the screen, the cyclops roars through his island domain. Unlucky sailors, ball-tossed, are eaten whole. A hand slips over the barrier between the seats to your inner thigh. One touch. No more, but more than enough. You get up from the movie--you've been warned--and walk toward the lobby. But who is there to tell. The cyclops screams in anguish from within. You're in this alone. You stop at the fountain and he approaches; unattractive, small, disheveled. "Wanna make five dollars," he says. You answer cool as water, without looking, "No," and he slips back into the dark before Jason ever won the fleece. If he had looked like Reeves, had looked as though he could have made good on five whole dollars? Then, perhaps you could have said yes, and been white-knighted toward oblivion. That thought remains paramont as you step into the aftrenoon. Jason's returned home with the fleece. You've nothing but a lingering question, boarding a #4 bus, headed south.


Return From Darke County.
White lost its purity one summer, the sky nothing but blue for the sake of the finches, their song, the fence row. The red Nova wagon slipped into the drive; my father and sister returning from an overnight in Greenville, Darke County. She'd needed a rest they said, a short change of pace. I sauntered as best I could at thirteen, got the door for her, my practice dance partner, years older than I. She paused when our eyes met, not smiling as I would've imagined a young lady rested, returning should be, sporting a new trim fitting white dress. "Greenville was generous," I said. "Your sister's tired," father repiled. And I had to agree. Her fair, pale skin, always somewhat enemic, looked thin and translucent, touched by a blue I'd not seen before. The distance between us could not be crossed in my father's presence. But later that evening, the phonograph in her room traversed the void, beginning with the Platter's Yes, I'm the great pretender, pretending that I'm feeling well, and ending with Maxine Brown's Smile! You can smile at lots o' things, the good the bad, the hurt, all of it's so true! Blues purchased by Michael, her white-Chrysler boyfriend, at a small Hilltop store, where the puds dress in chinos and expensive Ban-lons. We swayed to the music. Her tears wet my shoulder. "What is it," I asked. "Won't they let you see Michael?" "He's busy," she answered. "With his own wife and daughter." She looked straight at me: "I'd have given him a boy." And I wish, how I wish someone would care. Don't ya think someone should care?


First Dance
Second floor dark with a friend sleeping over, the one who refused to skinny dip, that hot, Ohio horseweed summer. At the stream, he blushed when you slipped worn jeans and snow white briefs, laughing, down to ankles; turned away as you stepped free, revealing to the world and his side glances, cock and balls enough you guessed. He watched from the bank beneath the pawpaws, as you cut through shade-cool water, rolling faceup to a clear-sky nothing. But it's here, in the dark, as you lie spoon-close beneath grandmother's tumbling-block quilt. Not quite a touch, too slight to define, a hand abscent mindedly coming to rest near the front of your briefs. A katydid has found its way into the room, strumming from the cieling each night-second, strumming possibilities as you press to the hand so near. Would he respond? Feel the blood rush? Lights from the highway below sweep quarterpane shadows across upperwalls. The katydid's story is all you hear. Father always said they were good luck. The hand finds its place, and you clumisly exchange carresses, shadowed safe from the morality of twinkling juvenile stars.

(1) From: The Wait, BL Seiber, MFA thesis, 1994

The Hudson
A history of my family involves a history of vehicles; large, long, fast sedans whose power reflected some need in my father, some want of a small man for a grander definition. The first ever turn into Grosack Lane was made in darkness. I was ready for the future then. The Hudson's bullet lines slipped quietly into the shadows. My mother, weary from the move and children so young, moaned "I knew it couldn't be," as we sailed past the white farmhouse and through the first gate. Our dwelling lay somewhere ahead in the void. The night engulfed our caravan: Father, Mother, the baby, two sisters and I occupied the Hudson; an uncle drove the moving van; two brothers followed in the Kaiser. At the second gate, my father waited, engines running, the dark playing games beyond the window. He waited to see what I would do before he opened the gate himself. That would come to be my chore: opening gates as he roared by, and waiting to see if he would stop for me.


The Revolver in the Oven
A child, I knew the fix was in, all games rigged, the play over. When Dad was drinking, life became a deteriorating question: a half forgotten notion of what was, when day was meadow full and bright, robin-true, all to be trusted. Life's normal, wheelwork, predictable patterns depended on my father's presence. His plate, at dinner was fixed first, his cup always first full. His pride, that of a small man, was the standard by which by which I measured all men. But in his reverie and stupor, his every trace reeked of cheap wine, urine, death. He had taken to hiding his guns from us. He once thought the oven a safe place for the revolver. My mother, after he'd gone under, lit the stove and went out into the garden before dinner. I was in the yard out back, wondering how true our hound was. At the first report we both came running. She thought I, and I thought she, had put some end to this situation. Another report as, terrifed, we entered the kitchen. Another burst out the back of the stove, and it was clear then what he'd done. She sat there on the floor worn linoleum in front of the stove, and cried, worn out, as two more shots tore through the wall. And through everything, she waited on him. She waited for the car in the lane; for closing time at the E&R Grill; for someone, anyone, to come and tell her just what a woman is supposed to do with her man like death and childern so young.


Envy
Awakened early by Mother's hand, and asked to go search the hayloft for eggs someone forgot for my brother's breakfast. He had to go to the fields soon, and I alone knew the hen's nesting places, which ones were setting, where fresh eggs might be. New cut clover filled the barn with thick, meadow sweetness. Ladder rungs, polished smooth, were no great chore in the not-quite light, even with eggs cradled in one arm to my chest. But I missed the comfort of the bed, my sleep and dreams. One brother and I, we shared a bed. The older chose to sleep alone. He thought himself some Marlon Brando, looked oddly just enough James Dean. I drempt that he had made his run across the field, my mother following as he left the ground. Airborne, they were lost within the breath of stars. I remembered this angrily as I watched him, tanned and shirtless in the summer sun, catching hay bales the machine tossed up. I envied his tight muscles, his size, and the breezy hold with which he kept my mother captive in his clouds.