three poems

Secret Origins of the Super-Villains

The comic book arrives in the mail,
found on eBay, sold by a stranger,
my childhood memory only $10
plus postage.
I’ve wanted this since I was six,
the oversized DC for $1.00,
cried over its disappearance
from the rack at Grant’s,
my parents screaming at each other
over why they wasted money
on Lion Country Safari,
when all I wanted was the comic:
Secret Origins of the Super-Villains.
The cover emblazoned on my brain,
a holy grail for almost thirty years.
Superman, Batman, The Flash,
and Wonder Woman all hard-charging
toward the enemies, Lex Luthor,
The Joker, Captain Cold and Cheetah.
Now I have it in my hands, and it means
nothing. It’s as perfect
as a summer day in 1975, unscarred by time,
pristine in plastic wrapper.
Maybe I just wanted that year back,
and the twenty that followed.
To take those days, put them under
lock and key or on a high shelf,
protected from damage.
Maybe I just want to believe,
like when I was five,
that someone could save me.
Could keep my parents together,
save people from dying,
and buildings from falling.
Even at thirty one, sitting in front of a TV
on a blue September morning
as the planes crashed in NYC,
I held out hope there might be a Superman.

Reconstruction

Wrap me in heat gauze
and take me back to New Orleans,
where the dead dwell above ground
on the coast or as ghosts,
and the rain remembers more than me.
I want the old times to be buried
along with those dead, hate put to rest.
I want unifying flags flying over every state,
Billie’s strange fruit gone to seed,
and the city to stop at its limits
and never push beyond.
Leave me those places I remember,
when I was naïve,
those buttermilk and cornbread summers
on two lane roads burnt by the sun.
Put those pecan trees back in the fields
where we once played instead of parking lots.
I want my first girlfriend
to wear the veil I made of Spanish moss,
my bride of the wind, now blown away.
Daddy bring me ears of sweet corn,
my redneck lollypop, and put peanuts in my Coke,
the one he pulled from that old 5 cent machine
in the hardware store filled with wondrous things.
I want to watch mama
putting on her white gloves, lipstick perfect,
ready for a Sunday drive
to the department store lunch counter that served
the best chicken salad sandwich she’d ever tasted.
Then to grandma’s deep front porch,
the cicadas singing us through twilight
into pitch perfect darkness.
I have left this place over and over
and always found my way back.
My heart slows to match the rhythm
of heat and rain, the rain that remembers me,
and all those who came before, washes us clean.
Hang me out to dry on that backyard line,
the history of where I came from soaking
into the fabric that is the sum of us.

Katrina: Origins

Kat, other half of Kit,
chocolate and crunch,
or haughty pussy,
nine lives shot away.

Trina, trailer park girl,
baby clinging to hip
or maybe trinket,
bits and baubles saved.

Katarina, Russian princess,
like Anastasia, dead alive,
becomes Americanized,
one shot, palace to shack.

Hecate, Greek goddess,
ruler of tombs and undead
that eddy in fire rivers,
bring pox upon houses.

Catherine Wheel, torture device,
rotating breaking bones,
left in shock, dehydrated,
braided for birds to eat.

Katherine, black woman,
hung from poplar tree,
could be 1905 or 2005,
still rain gathers, wind sucks.