ALL RESPONSES |
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| I'd like to thank Ama St. John, Dana Hoeschen, Gina Kelly and all members of Northography for making this possible! If you'd like to view a larger version of the image, click here. |
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Narrative
An old house
cools its heels
in layers.
Under it all red brick
mortared carefully,
exposed by a hole in layer two,
white plaster, graying,
fresco crumbling,
it too overlaid,
with graffiti shadows
that have forgotten
what they named.
A oneness is spelled here,
dittoed by two bicycles,
vintage 1940,
leaning against one another,
inspected by today’s cyclist,
in his shiny stripped down gear,
who pulls in closer
as a Ferrari speeds by.
The world merges,
its narrative spun quietly
in layers.
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“We can’t go any further,” whined Charlie, emulating his favorite scene from E.T. “It’s too bumpy!”
Charlie braked at the top of a downhill slope—“rrrt!” He was riding an oversized, orange bicycle with a wire basket attached to the handlebars. The bike belonged to his aunt. The Lhasa Apso riding in the basket also belonged to Charlie’s aunt. It whimpered as Charlie practiced pushing off. One for the money, two for the road… he thought to himself, not really knowing what the phrase meant.
The dog gave an anxious yelp. “It’s okay. It’s okay, little fluffy hairball nightmare doggie woggie,” Charlie crooned. “We’re just gonna go for a wittle swimmy-wimmacus—VROOOM!!!” He pushed off.
The orange bicycle flew down the hill, wobbling as it bounced over bits of stone and patches of grass. It hit a bump at the bottom of the hill and went airborne. It seemed to Charlie that the bicycle resisted gravity, that it flew high as the moon.
Barrrr! The little dog lifted out of the basket, hovering in space like an extraterrestrial being. It’s blue ribbons and ponytail fluttered in the wind. Charlie watched the phenomenon of the floating fur ball until the orange bicycle sank, back wheel first, into the river.
Charlie emerged, a blast of water exploding into the air. His shoes sloshed with water as he dragged the bicycle out of the river. The dog sat on the bank shivering. Drenched, it seemed to shrink to the size of a rat. Charlie pitched the orange bicycle to the side as he scooped up the dog with both hands and bonked their noses together. “Aw, man!” he squealed to the dog. “You should have seen you! You were all like, 'take me to your leader, earthling!'” The dog’s nose pointed down; its eyes searched left for help.
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She had died looking at the ceiling. Her left eye was full of frozen tears and it looked like a bad wizard's eye. A big beetle was running crazy up and down the ceiling riding a small old bicycle, as if it couldn't decide whether to have a free fall on the dead woman's mouth or to shrug in a quiet deserted wall corner.
''Oh my the dead woman thought ''I can't move! That's what death is about? Just not being able to move?''
And she wanted was to laugh but she couldn't. Her lips were cold and frigid and her right hand was lying in an eternal dancing pose over her head. The white creased pillow was hugging her neck tenderly as a devoted friend.
"But, I like this ruby red blanket more'' she said to herself and tried to remember the deep luscious colour of the bed cover because she was in such a position that it was impossible for her to turn her head and just have a look at it. However, she could see just a little piece of it, her eye was still able to capture some of the red colour.
"I will be buried under the soil''
The idea crossed her mind suddenly and if she weren't dead she would be so upset that she would get up and open all the house windows, as she always used to do when upset.
Nice soft wet soil? Or rough, rocky soil full of tiny little stones? Would the soil enter her nostrils? Would it cover her eyelids? Or it might even stuff the cavities of her ears. But she would be buried in a coffin and this was a comforting thought because definitely she didn't like the idea of soil covering her face and body.' 'Yes..a nice wooden coffin which can protect my sensitive body areas, I can think many of them. I am full of sensitive body areas''
Ignatio used to caress her eyelashes with his long fingers before sleeping, when they were younger. This was one of her sensitive body areas which made her shiver with delight. Her breath was gurgling with deep pleasure into his ear which was one of his own sensitive body areas.
What if her family decided to make her funeral on a rainy day? It would be better, because she liked mud. Heavy mud would cover the coffin lid and if she was lucky enough she would be able to smell the heavy brown color. Being dead, smells like brown color. She had always had the ability of sensing the smell of colours. The grey walls of her room had the smell of a wild Norwegian sea, the white sheets on her bed smelt like a burning fluorescent lamp and the crimson blankets were the steep cliffs of a smouldery canyon.
She sighed deeply but then she remembered that she wasn’t allowed to sigh so she only left herself fall deeper into the canyon. And the beetle was waiting there, she rode on the back of its bike. So all someone can guess, is that she is still riding along with the beetle in the valley of death, as poets say. Beetles riding rusty bikes, had been living in the darkest spot of her eyes’ pupils, since she was a little girl.
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It was a royal blue Schwinn
shiny, with multicolored tassels
streaming from the handlebars
and fat, balloon tires
that Dad said would make it easier
to balance once
the training wheels came off;
but dark fell before
Dad got around to it,
so Mom promised
she would teach me to ride it
the next day.
She was on the phone
when I popped home from school
“In a minute,” she whispered,
with one hand cupped over the mouthpiece
“as soon as I finish this call.”
I set off for the garage,
rolled out the big two-wheeler
and waited below the window
so I could hear when Mom
got off the phone.
“Okay,” she called at long last,
“Just let me put the clothes in the dryer,
and I’ll be right out.”
Only a few minutes passed
before I heard the phone ringing.
“I’m sorry, Hon,
it’ll just take a minute.”
I twirled the plastic streamers
around my fingers
and spun the pedals on their stems
waiting for her call to end
and my lesson to begin.
Just as my sense of irritation
was beginning to rise
I heard the phone ring again
meaning that she had finished
the last call
but then, didn’t come out.
“Muthherrrr!”
A beautiful woman, my mom,
came to the window
shrugging through the dark screen
“As soon as I get off this call,”
she mouthed.
So, I rolled the big bike
across the lawn
to the sidewalk stretching
along the front of our house
straddled the bar
and angrily thrust one foot
on the upper pedal
before throwing my full weight
down on it, driving the big bike forward
then quickly stopping it
before I tipped over.
I tested and re-tested this ability
to start and stop the bike
several times before daring
to let it coast
a little further,
and then
a little further
until magically
I found my center
and could sit the bike
while pushing one pedal down
after the next
proving to all the world
along Canfield Avenue
that mothers weren’t necessary.
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Bicycling in October
There is no brighter morning of the earth,
Where grass lies still in shadow, first-frost glistens,
Woods make no peep, the day burns blue,
And on the narrow road, leaves like ingots.
From the water, warm yet from August,
Mist curls and hovers, a cartoon Halloween.
I cross the bridge; no on passes by.
I won't be tired yet for twenty miles.
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By the Village Hall
The bicyclist rests on a park bench, a swatch of repose
On the busy street. He is the author of speed.
His bike hunches nearby, grotesquely static.
He watches village life with curious eyes.
He has come by the road along the reservoir,
Where it is morning still, quiet, and a fawn
Dabbles in a streamlet. The trivial swath he cut
Has closed immediately in the summer air.
The rhythm of pedaling soothes and sustains him.
When he stops, he becomes again like us,
Time gently flowing past him, front to back.
He sets his bottle, mounts, glides motionless
Until the smell of motion wakes him up,
Whereat he humps and pushes out of sight. |
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Rider
To ride, you have to give all your attention
To the tick of chains, the whine of possible trucks,
The oiled nothingness of metal against air.
Riders move in finely tuned reality.
They cannot be despised, they are above that.
They need only to stay round, to avoid all hazards,
To apply their least strength smoothly at all times. |
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Steel, the way bikes used to be
before they were transformed into flying things
with aluminum and titanium and TIG welded joints
that needed special treatment
because they needed to be preserved
by inert gas while being welded—the thin wounds of metal
so difficult—the frames in triangle postures and well mannered jigs
instead of being grounded as old steel frames are
here, against life’s crusted wall. |
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He offered me a ride
on the back of his bike
across town
into the risqué quarter of our world.
His teeth looked good
with a tongue slipping across,
and his arms lifted me up
as if to say, Yes, it is okay.
And I felt the tires balloon,
and knew his speed, slow
before how fast it came;
And then I paid
and bought a bike of my own
to be stored out of the rain. |
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and realizing your keys don't fit the lock.
Is this a dream?
I have come all this way
my heart, I have traveled.
The door is shut,
the lights inside, out.
I want to play music.
I want to call but
a dial tone or busy signal
is the loneliest answer
A slammed door.
A brick wall.
I walk back to my ride
and it's raining.
Where do I go
from here? |
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Waking and sleeping,
the dream of childhood was
to have a bicycle of my own.
A seemingly impossible dream,
way down on the list of what was needed,
behind bread and soup for lunch
and shoes for school.
Marie next door
watched as I learned on her two wheeler.
In my dreams at night
I would be carried away
on a shiny red machine
with wire basket on the handlebars,
horn that one squeezed to honk,
and a carrier over the back wheel.
Sometimes in the dream, I’d
be curled up on the rear carrier,
my bike making its own way over
the sidewalks of West Mankato
and beyond,
more than status symbol.
Bike of my dreams
never appeared in real life
until it didn’t matter anymore.
The tires could go flat
without it being catastrophic
and two wheels were just that.
The magic faded with the paint
and the horn refused to sound.
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Out of sight, out of mind
two rusty bikes in a basement
lean against a peeling mason
wall; downstairs, around a corner
where darkness and memories
get a reprieve; around a corner,
where a breeze whistles an Irish ditty,
perhaps a drinking jig, from the lips
and legs of your father, he of blue eyes
and nowhere to go
It’s been years since you’ve ridden
a bike, plastic cards in the spokes,
held fast by mother’s clothes pins,
front wire basket for milk or eggs;
father pleading with you to look
up-and-down the block before setting
off and you looking back, catching
a last glimpse of his aging face melting
in the breeze of another autumn day
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“I’ve spent more time with my co-workers than any woman I’ve ever loved,”
he said,
mixing margaritas from crushed icicles.
“And in that time all we’ve talked about is
what’s up
Not much
and you?
Same old.
which leads me to believe that in the last three years
of these people’s lives—of my life—
nothing’s changed.”
The theme of the party was ‘July in Christmas!’ and we were all wearing shorts and the basement was very cold. No one would speak because all anyone would say is
“This is a very stupid idea for a party.”
But it was a happy idea, all the same.
So the bartender kept saying,
“We need to tend time like sheep—nurture it.”
And in muffled agreement:
tend
tend
tender time
All wounds heal themselves, eventually
Which of course isn’t true, as the frostbite sets in around my ankles, because sometimes I cauterize severed limbs with a blowtorch. And, anyway,
“Have you ever really looked a scab in the face?” |
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The wall appears scalded by solvents,
clouded with a storehouse of memory.
The shadow of a bicycle set next to a bicycle
subsides only when rust turns to dust.
The daydream approaches like footsteps
on the ornamental sidewalk.
A crow chases a buzzard over foam-topped waves.
Away, the river boils brown and heedless
on a winter day, marred by the destructive
genius of corrosion. A collision,
brick by image, image by brick
wall, side by each a comparison
experiment of the naked truth.
This is no heated underground parking lot.
This is the night outside, warm
and dotted with lightning and clouds
that move in prematurely and cast
a dark spot on the muddled mind.
Now comes the wind. It triggers
the old gate, which gives its old person’s
complaint, and then the grass, a template
for burgeoning hope. Now the wall
is everywhere at once, exposed to the central
corridor, a monument never to waver,
never to change, as death changes.
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You lean against the wall, tired.
I look at you, old, rusty,
and feel the same weight of time
holding me still.
Our old bodies, do not resemble the ones we once were.
Someone would assume we have nothing more to give,
but I still see the youth in you because time has gone by for us
but has also preserved us in our memories of bike rides, and laughter,
of rain coming suddenly and soaking us, making us stop under a tree or a doorway.
You looked so strong then... I loved watching you.
Two old farts, this is what we are today but still dear to each other,
still precious keepers of secrets, pleasures, and memories.
You can lean on me if you want... you can count on me
I'll be your bike -stand if you need me. |
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An old wall.
Bricks showing themselves
through a layer of old plaster.
A blocked window, a soul that caged,
is trying to break through.
Crackly paint holds, barely,
the temperament of the weather
and the changes in temperature.
Two bikes stand near it,
stilled by the rust and the dust accumulated on them.
Their personality showing through their wire baskets
which used to hold purses and nourishment,
or just a sweater should the day turn cold.
Their colors melt into the wall.
The dark bike almost a perfect shadow of the other
now orange with rust. |
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Bury us
in the basement
among hardbound
books with slick
sleeves and silk,
flushed cheeks
Bury us
next to plastic
flowers with fragile
spines, taken
from an old wedding
Bury us
among old poets,
fatalistic, no forethoughts,
not easy to awaken,
but as easy as regret,
as easy as a one-night-
kick stand
Bury us
together with old rides
to old neighborhoods,
with words that move
with words that touch,
with chains and sprockets,
and handle grips, and spokes
and other languages spoken
in more innocent times
Two old bicycles in a basement;
just bury us
please, just bury us
and leave us be |
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side by side
by the wall
that looks like
broken moon.
I don't know
your name
nor you mine.
But each day,
here, our bikes.
I walk round the corner
to the coffee place
I'm at every day
and so are you.
Always there before me,
always behind a paper,
reading intently.
I order my coffee -
dark roast, shot of vanilla,
in a glass cup.
I don't know what you drink
but whatever, you sip
what seems like thoughtfully,
from a white ceramic mug,
a big red heart on the side.
I open my laptop,
the computer whir
and hello make you
look over, nod,
like always. |
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He was the innocent catch
The one who took the bait
guilty only of his presence
in a certain place
at an uncertain time.
His lungs imploded from the excesses
of power
of greed
of a life line stronger than his own.
He was a well educated laborer
versed in the poetry of sweat and
the melodic sounds of hands
working
together
as siblings
as wheels on a bike.
He, a tailor
of wood.
The pure dark mahogany his specialty
cut, carved, molded into art.
The scent of its core in his fingernails
traveling home with him each day
transferred through touch
to the daughter who grew to love
this tree more than any other
this man more than most.
More than anything
he was
a messenger
and a message
from the ones on the right to the ones on the left.
The furious absence of his body
the silence of the bell,
the rusted fenders of his bicycle next to mine
a reminder of the ideological sins
of street dreamers.
The sin of speaking
the sin of electing
the sin of a having a usable voice. |
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You carried me all over the city
in the basket of your bike. I called out
and said that the sights were enough, but
you hunched over and rang out ten more stops.
Until we arrived home—until there was no question
whether we had ridden around. There was no question
that we saw all there was to see of this town. So
bury me with your arms wrapped around me in photograph—
turn my face to the sun—or laugh one last laugh with me,
together, under the patio, under the stairs
that led us from one day into the next. |
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His eyes rest on rust
But his heart holds
memories of Mont Ventoux
Breathless in the tracks of his heroes
the merciless sun eating at every ounce of ambition
Each turn of the peddles carrying him through
a grey earthbound moonscape
The sweat of a man
In the eyes and dreams of a boy
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Those two of this tavern are still,
until what they love walks in
they are cougars waiting in the grass,
their teeth gratefully greet
down and hard on the street
found in my tender years
without any best playbills; and
their her viscous stresses,
tears the poster from my cling toasting
of my favorite parts being eaten.
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I want to ride my bike to the
Otherworld
With a whistle in my mouth for
All the trees and nests and birdsongs
Left behind
A tune comes up from the spokes like
The click of nimble bony fingers
Urging me on
To the grand finale,
Urging me on to a place where
They tell me the party
(including my relatives and best
Friends)
Has just begun
I want to ride
The wind and reach out
With both hands, balanced
Graceful and
Strong my seat between
Wheels, between what
Happened and what is
Yet to come |
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When bicycles age,
they seem to search
for their own loneliness
They hear their hours
passing aimlessly,
yet gently as miracles
Time is what contains
their love; it is what awaits
them in other dimensions
The lives they were given,
they lived; hard gravel,
well worn paths; pity those
who waited with patience
for more and plunged
into rust like old crows
beyond the ruins:
broken spokes, airless,
left for dead in locked
garages, or worse,
Aunt Viv’s basement
with no hope at all
of sharing someone
else’s sunlight |
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For me. Or for you.
This is one of those moments
those precious moments
like the porcelain collectibles
of wide-eyed innocence
who, for some reason
I'd like to blast into bits with a shotgun
just to remove their ugliness from
my earth
my universe
my struggle
Your unfathomable, wide world
Your jittery, anxious heaven
Your bon appetit
Now let me fix my bike
its rusty frame
its broken spoke
its smiling chain
And let me be the judge
of whose words ride the road
of chromium syllables
of Homeric linkages
I'm not trying to win
I'm just trying to fix my bike.
It's a cycle for me. |
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sometimes you got love like two lines intertwined
sometimes it’s like rage and justice
facing the same way when a train rushes by
sometimes it is only the closest of rushes
near the shore of a lake
where your paddles have ceased
their dipping, for a moment, and then
the song of a blackbird singing
sometimes love catches you
like the wind carrying scent
toward a road that helps you remember
childhood
sometimes love is the last day before
eviction, and you selling your ring, and he asking
sometimes love is nothing
more than grabbing at wares
on the shelves of a thrift store
and not asking for anything else
sometimes love is arriving
on a bike old as sin
and lusting
and staying
and never leaving. |
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In the ruins of the evening
we made love, then decided to take a ride.
I pulled the bicycles from the garage,
wiped the dust, cleaned the chains,
and we set out down the clay path
to the main road.
The sky was spalled like concrete,
the menacing underside that soon enough
tore with a roar of rotting canvas
to release heaven's oceans upon our heads.
A tumbling, brackish tidewater mixed with
seaweed, and the barking multitude
of things alive and long dead
wetted us to our core. Faster, you said.
The only way out is through.
So faster it was.
We hit the wall at mach 8.
Bounced. Lay flat. We'd arrived.
So we lay like stunned fish on dry land,
gasping in the falling salt
until it passed. Then we broke ourselves from
the mud, shook off the chunks of wall
and watched the clouds retreat.
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bicycles succumb to rust;
natures persistent chase
returning forged steel to earth.
paint chips lifted by ocean wind,
orange and blue confetti
land and rest at my feet.
neither memory tarnished. |
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I am away at parade.
Who is wearing one/…favorite color, Red, I am asking you,
to feign martyrdom,….where it passes by
whose mouth drew/….open my eyes,
never to kiss;…………..the leaded white teeth
keeps the wheels,……..from wandering,
on that day, he was left shaking at my stoop.
These are the surroundings
the poster does not cling to: never forgiven or never forgotten
What is my favorite part of the State Fair? Never been. I am a Rennie.
One of my favorite thoughts are mourning
with worn out eyes/……..have read are massacred
Over these Columbines….massacred into the ages:
soft and white,……………..I’ve just trued spokes to
thumbed these fingers into your what you spoke,
cranked it over while in that corner, flipped out
he slaps down the face card.
The butter that he built
to tunnel into
he leans to;
as places take
oily drink to
in the caves
only as real
as time it takes
to return to.
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Beside a forsaken bike,
a second old bike,
both propped upright
on the small elbows
of their kickstands
as if patiently waiting
in shared solidarity
with all things
comfortably paired,
like wings of birds,
or matching socks,
or a long-married couple
on our block
who still walks about
holding hands. |
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When I said I loved you
I really meant that I imagined
the bicycles we rode in Europe.
How they waited for us
in shadow by the cracked
wall. Our legs pumped
whirligig like a locomotive
through town. I thought of
how a train’s lonely whistle
is more howl than peal in
its mechanical tantrum—
I am here, I am here, I am here.
I saw the hill we coasted down,
The broad stone street.
The smell of warm bread
from the bike basket.
Grief is too easy to imagine.
My life without you.
Two minus one
is not in this equation.
Nor did longing ride with us
in the wind, through our hair
across our suntanned faces.
But later, I admit to
a full grandfather moon
watching down over us
as we found the sea,
the beach, the sand,
and made good use of them.
And there was a moment
I felt like driftwood
as if the water could cleave to me
and I would wear its history,
fill with holes, all that enters
wash right out of me.
Then there was the second
I met your eyes and knew
we were possible.
That you’d know me
better than I knew myself.
Know what I’d do
and stop me before I did it.
That I’d find no way to leave
without bicycles, a hill,
a harvest moon or sea.
When I said I loved you
I imagined the door to my past
as shut. I imagined
everything as forgivable.
That a sea could go out
and come back in again.
A moon rise each night.
A train could pass without harm.
That bicycles were made for round trips.
That what was held in a basket
could be consumed and satisfy.
That home was a place
you could take with you
anywhere and be safe.
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I met a man today
his eyes the color of jade
his hair lined with stories
of burned cedar leaves
of burnt lives
many times his own.
He told me his father
made him afraid
of men, of bicycles, of people.
His singing mother, a fiercely moving stream
taught him to move, in phrases
to live with a purpose
turning water into vapor
tears into seeds.
Like me, he left home
guided by some arrow
pointed North
where he found
the medium for his drawings
the cover for his past.
My arrow found you
(and the wind)
rolling down rugged trails
boulders the size of our history
walls carved by seasons;
your curves under mine as we race
the rusty color of your freckles
taking shape into constellations as we age,
your shoulders steady as handle bars
your body the best frame ever made. |
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We always thought they would come back. There were only four bikes in the village, two of them theirs and we always thought they would come back. Why we never moved the bikes remains a mystery, maybe some misguided sense of loyalty, no one saw them go though some of the old people said they heard the truck taking them away, it became an unwritten rule that they were not to be touched other than to oil the moving parts ready for their return.
Years passed and the bikes slowly rusted until the awful truth came out, they were not coming back, they were never coming back, it wasn’t meant as a racist thing but from then on we called them the Jew bikes.
Nobody owned up to starting it but one a year and every year thereafter flowers would appear, those old enough to remember them would gather in silence, it didn’t need saying, we all thought they would come back.
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1
You slept through his visit—
the lover you waited years for.
All that’s left, his orange bicycle,
odor of his caroty hair—
smoke and hay— more forlorn
than if he never came. You lean
your own bicycle against the wall
where he must have rested,
imagine you hear him
laughing or scratching his beard.
And then it all dissolves
like fresh water in salt.
2
You and your dream child park your bikes
at The State Fair and she slips away from you—
a glimpse of orange hair, a green skirt—
run after her, almost near enough to grasp,
then you lose her for good
and the crowd closes in around you.
3
Blackbirds jet from behind a wall,
shoot straight into a rain cloud.
Scraps of paper from a notebook
drift out over the bay.
4
You love a sibyl girl
but there’s a funeral
in her eyes—oh her promises
even the bricks in the wall
know she won’t keep them—
I’ll pass this way again, she says,
before the dream’s over
and you know that’s the last
you’ll ever hear of her.
5
So thirsty after riding you fall to your knees
in a cloudburst—you open your mouth
but the drops all slide up
on strands of blue light
home to the clouds they fell from.
6
Searching and searching, finally you find it
after scraping away the lichen from the wall—
the page beneath the page
on which a letter once was written—
too faint now to decipher.
7
Wheels of fire, wall of cloud
orange the color of trumpet shrimp flowers—
tapestry so close you can’t make any sense
of the pattern.
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I road from the coast that day
(dirty and oily from picking olives)
Beneath the grayed heavy fall sky
Your voice and last sentence repeated
With each turn of the pedal and wheel.
The dusty rutted road longs for rain
Coughs up dirt and pebbles as I follow
My brothers past grapevines toward town.
Sweaty hands from anticipation
Become glued to the handlebars.
Onto cobblestones the bike becomes
Unsteady as I pedal faster - almost there.
I see your bike in the alley behind the café.
Carefully leaning Rusty against yours
I find you beneath a grand umbrella on the sidewalk.
“It’s a girl”. |
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She disappeared on a Friday
morning with a flock of Monarchs,
left the bare wooden floors
of her three room apartment
for Illinois, or maybe Missouri,
no one was really sure
no message, no note
for her few friends; nothing
for her father but an empty bottle
of shampoo and her bicycle
in the middle of the living room
When she was younger and rode
near the banks of the Chippewa,
fisherman would turn toward shore
to watch a young girl, legs churning,
while their own fish flapped
in wooden buckets
At a town dance, a young man
wanted her to go home with him,
but she didn’t know how to speak
his language
In early autumn afternoons, she
rode her bicycle into the fields
along the railroad tracks, searching
for wildflowers: Indian paintbrush,
tiger lilies with their look of tangerine;
she spoke to birds: meadowlarks,
the blue arcs of barn swallows,
to Canada geese flying home
When she was older, and her father
wouldn’t disappear, especially
in dreams where she rode through
lightning flashes; she told herself
she had to go away, told herself
to sit quietly with her apparitions,
to let them touch her with hands
colder than the wind, to search
for mortal happiness for the first time
in a daylight that really mattered
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Two old bicycles wait
like writing on the wall,
spelling what was
in forties design,
pointing to what is,
to what will come,
to future’s zoom and power.
As the wall crumbles,
as balloon tires flatten,
as red paint rusts on the carrier,
a child’s dream,
parked for now,
lives on
in an eighty-year-old
night reverie.
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Two old bicycles
leaning against
a worn wall
are poetry.
When watchers
write the words
they dispel the story,
throw it out to idiom.
The photo tells its truth.
Now we take turns
spinning our own version,
forever reaching.
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shadows in broken plaster mold
we still live here, but our lives are growing past aging
into small spaces where our language falters though our tires stay filled
baskets made of time worn welds and stolid care
even on the rainy days when rust seeped in—no tears
in our looking out toward the next, and the next, and what may come after that
you and I lay side by side
our curves fit to each other and our nubs smoothed by rhyme
there is only today, we know, but hope to fool the chill fingers of time |
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This is the way bikes used to be
before they were transformed
into purified flying things
with aluminum, carbon and titanium
frames and dime welded joints
that beg special treatment
because they need to be preserved
by tank flows of inert gas
while being welded—thin burning
wounds of metal—so difficult. Exact
newer frames glow, built in triangles
and bathed in gloss
and postures and purpose only
jigs, instead of being grounded
in dance, as these two old steel
horses are, rusting, leaning
against life’s crusted wall. |
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Their sprockets have sprung;
treads have spread indifference:
“terra nullius”
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| Grandfather’s cabin was always well kept, even if I didn’t understand what that meant. There was a fish house for cleaning the catch. There was an outhouse in case the bathroom was full. At the cabin I was allowed to be young, and expected to be a man. Mother was expected to relax while I washed dishes. My sister knew enough to help dry, and flick water at my face now and then. And Dad was not missed. He was a lonely ghost out on the lake. He had his part too. |
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when you first met me I felt out of synch
with the world—the words—the anything
but then you put together an assemblage
of how you saw me speaking
and I knew you understood
something
that I could not make out with words
it was art, or maybe just understanding
the same things rode round with
in a circle or a spiral
long evenings looking at the leaves go brown
and even longer days watching the old men
mud dry on the shoreline
and soon the grass whispered secrets
of how I longed for living
and did not know it
and we travelled everywhere for a time
and left nothing to nothing |
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Dank corner
in the hillside garage
weakly lit
from the shrouded door
Approaching the seep-frescoed wall's
scent of crumbling stucco
soft powdered earth
gives gently underfoot
Hard clay bricks remain strong
seem to watch for the sisters' return
where handlebars wait
to accompany their temporary freedom
But other wheels have turned
carried them both away
to darker places
where bicycles are forgotten
Their oxford shoe prints faded
many summers gone to dust
back streets and alleys untraceable
destinations obliterated
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This is a place of memories
Its dark dusty corners like a library
of laughter, of broken hearts.
Yellowed letters stacked neatly inside handmade boxes,
lie awake, begging to be read again.
Our words carefully written in days of rain
or scribbled hurriedly under the summer heat
when time was meant for long kisses on eternal bike rides.
We left our lives here.
My face in her hair as she rode on the frame,
the turns drawing us closer
the wings of time spread outward;
her lips with the perfect taste of the present.
Her bike, retired to this back room that year
sat against the wall, patiently
waiting for mine.
This place carries the scent of our sweaty bodies,
the perfect mixture of oak barrels and wine,
the sweet perfume of her sandalwood feet
rubbing against my leather shoes
oiling them just enough to make them shine
another year and another
lasting for a lifetime
the way our lives together were meant to be
the way her soft whisper in my ear never did |
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It was a simple gesture, and he didn’t know why he bothered. His wife never
did. Still, every September 3 , Professor Lutey found himself outside Teeter’s
Cards and Gifts on Hebrink Street to purchase an anniversary card. He settled his one speed
Schwinn roadster into the bike rack as gently as he would lay crisp bacon into a BLT.
His Schwinn was rusting a bit, as most things do, as most things have, but he would never
think of trading her in. She was sturdy as a horse. She was trustworthy.
As he entered the store, he thought about past cards he perpetually left for
her in the same place: the telephone stand in the square foyer, next to the radiator.
Since he left for work before her - exactly 6:22 am - every year he had left his card
where she could find it. Not once had she reciprocated.
On their ninth anniversary, he had left a Hersey’s Kiss beside his card, certain
that would spur her to shame. It did not. Granted, she would often cook his favorite
meal on their anniversary. One year she bought him a rechargeable screwdriver. But
never a card. Not once.
Professor Lutey was a patient man; nonetheless, he sighed as he walked
past the Husband selections and began scanning the Wife section. His eyes wandered.
His mind settled. Professor Lutey loved browsing for cards.
Abruptly, his heart skipped as his hand dipped into the chrome rack, extracting
the exact card he had purchased last September 3. He caught his breath. What would
she think? Should he dare? Oh, contraire. He would. He would put the card on her
vanity again and let life settle as it may.
During the ride home, Professor Lutey stopped and admired his Schwinn in
a store front window. It looked strong. Dependable. He pedaled with ease. |
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We picked a path and fled the city
rode and rode until we’d left behind
our responsibilities, our hectic lives.
Giddy, like kids who’d run away, we rode
until we were sure no one knew us
then rested our bicycles against the wall
of a farmhouse abandoned years ago
by a family no one remembers.
In a summer field, we sat on sun-warmed grass
and ate our lunch from red bandanas.
Below us a river flowed wide and cold
to the horizon and beyond to the sea.
Bees circled the trumpets of wildflowers
birds sang to defend their nests
and in the trees, cyclical insects buzzed.
Here, time was measured by the rhythm of our pulse.
When we laid back and looked up at the sky
into which oceans rose and from which they fell
we could not tell if it was the clouds
or us moving with the turn of the earth.
We were at the end of the known world
and everywhere around us the center. |
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Two relics
set aside and
encysted in time
just like my sisters --
Leaving a legacy of loss
the first had passed before my own time began
More ghost than sister
her haunting virtues ones
I could never attain.
The other intruded when I was 12
not yet 17 herself
she snared my brother’s heart
and stole him away from home
Redemption came soon
in the gift of a nephew
but was later forgotten -- as
the brother became a jerk
she, an enemy of state
(I, a traitor . . . .
either way I turned)
Buried,
like relics in a basement,
and revisited only in later times
of loss or emptiness
they belatedly press
for final disposition --
what to toss
what to keep
what, possibly, to restore.
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| These bikes were never meant for the trails we took. Endless days of wandering surrounded by trees rooted to an underworld of possibilities. The trails hugged the Atlantic coast for weeks with forests as green as the sea bordering it. But there wasn't much sun here this season, just rain and salty mist, enough to rust bones and metals alike. Yet we travelled, mud and all, until the paint peeled and skins faded to a pale dull absence. We rode in silence until cranks and joints could remain silent no more. The sweet dampness of this solitude touching us deeply as love. And yes, there was love in every sound, every leaf, every fallen trunk that protected the underlying growth. And surely in the kisses stolen under sheltering canopies of leaves and silky hair. The softness of the young vines reached by our hands contrasted only to the strength of their will against our bike tires. My parallel yearning for you just fierce enough and tender enough to let you go just far enough out of my reach. There was no word at the end of the trip. The fire of the beginning that burned the wood to smoke and ambers glowed for years, warmed my memories for a lifetime but never again ignited. The bikes carried us on their own for the final days. It seemed our passion needed a constant flow of wind and a fuel that we could not keep, collected in a human vessel for so long. We placed our bits and pieces in the shed, along with everything we could no longer fix but didn't dare to forget. |
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Two old bicycles
in one neglected garage
Stories forgotten
Two aged women
unable to recollect
Memories faded |
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| The old women were coming down, in flocks, from the sky, riding old rusty bikes. It was an awesome sight. It had just started getting dark and their massive descent was impressive as the joints of the their fingers were rattling and their white long hair was waving in the deep violet sky. They sneaked in every corner of the city and began to chaw its foundations. Chomp chomp , the city was shrinking and shrinking and losing its original size. My pavement could suddenly fit in my palm and their bikes were blooming like giant copper flowers. They had become a huge wave foam inside my chest till the morning came. |
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And we rode between them the way we knew.
What might have made them different---
the sources of light, the line and stucco of
built things, the hand-drawn lanes--
now were crumbling.
And it was quiet, as disrepair is quiet.
The first times we rode, we were young, illiterate,
we rode on borrowed bicycles.
We had everything we wanted
for almost nothing. In street signs
we saw the codes of new countries, the thrill
of getting lost. Older, we knew their names
from other places. We looked to them for guidance.
Most things we saw, we expected.
Children on brilliant, smaller bicycles,
sparrows picking pebbles from the curb.
Litter and spindly oaks. And also surprising things.
Elms in good health. A single red potato near
the tracks, its eyes sprouting sidelong as
if looking all ways before crossing.
And finally, two old bikes, the twins of ours,
listing sidelong against a neighborless garage.
Three rusty boats like headstones in the
tall grass around it, a wooden
doghouse on its side. Didn’t you wonder too,
what if we stopped here?
trading these two bikes for those
we might have left? We didn’t say it.
We didn’t say, the ride has been so pleasant.
We found everything we wanted
for almost nothing.
The traction of the past, the frictionless
small surprise.
We wanted the sun
to be shining when we returned
and we moved on.
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1. Bottom Bracket.
All of the stars—lost in the pull
of black space, empty and invisible
—spin around this single point,
at once both huge and x-tra small.
A period or a dot. Your middle initial.
The great O in the middle of rot.
2. Brake Shoes.
Taken up by the hair and pulled back sharply.
I’ve given up on trying to explain myself.
Eyes that open into the night, and
then again by the dim light of morning.
The alarm is set, but always I sit up
to silence it, a few minutes before it sounds.
3. Cables.
These arms were once as small as his.
Now they run like the cords of a vast
suspension bridge. Veins laid down
like cable—fresh rabbits tied up in rope
and hung in the store window—torn
by thorns as I tear through berry bushes.
4. Chainwheel.
A range of mountains comes from a place
deep inside the ground. Many would
scale a mountain, few would wait for it
to walk its way through streams and
valleys to visit them. As sure as that dirt
rose, surely too will it lie down again.
5. Cranks and Pedals.
I think back and wonder why we never
got together. I’d be dying, so single and
alone—the most alone a man has
ever been alone—and when I’d call,
you’d tell me about some new damned
man, and how I really ought to meet him.
6. Fork.
Late summer nights, we used to get bent,
and drive out to our friend’s house, deep
in the country. As soon as we left the paved
county road and hit the gravel of his half-mile
of driveway, one of us would climb out, hold
the windows, and ride flat-bellied on the roof.
7. Frame.
The arm of the excavator opens the hillside,
and makes this cross-section of soil and rock
look like a medical school cadaver. Exposed—
forgotten terra cotta pipes—bare and broken.
The sedges and rushes are crushed and bruised.
And these ferns were here before dinosaurs.
8. Handlebars and Stem.
I’ve never been one to watch birds,
and their songs most often strike me
as the sound of newspaper drying
glass-cleaner off a bathroom mirror.
And yet, I’ve seen a heron hunt, body
so still—beak stuck out like a knife.
9. Headset.
I don’t know why you wring your hands—
cup them around each other when it’s warm out.
And I’ve seen your right hand shake, and
your leg bounce nervously under the table.
I’ve seen that eye twitch unprompted,
and heard your teeth grind out the night.
10. Saddle.
My cloth cap is pulled way down.
The sun is so big, but not yet hot.
The air of morning is here, blowing in
hard against the open rock, and shooting
a stream of cloud up over my head.
I stand before stars and face morning. |
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