Rabbit Hash, KY
—for Gurney, and all the other story tellers

The mayor of Rabbit Hash goes by the name Lucy Lou.
She looks to be about 20 inches at the shoulder and
if you want my honest opinion she’s one of the finest
Border Collies this proud state of Kentucky has ever seen.

Rabbit Hash, for those who’ve had the general misfortune
of having never been, is a town in Boone County, Kentucky,
so small as you can sneeze and drive right through it, and
in my short time there I met more cats and dogs than people,

but the people I met were good people—though I suspect
half of them were good people just passing through, same
as we were—as the town, like I said before, is so small as
to be missed if got stuck fiddling with the radio.

I recognized the mayor at once, or thought I did. I’m ashamed
to admit that she was soaking wet and more than a little dirty,
so that a part of me wanted to believe that I had run into her
good for nothing younger brother. The Jeb Lou, so to speak.

After tossing a stick with the gal, I found her as down to earth
as any mayor I’ve ever met, and I remind her detractors, who scoff
at such a public figure licking herself in the General Store, that at least
she’s not a pig or an ass, both of which appeared on the 2002 ticket.

Just like any southern lady accustomed to lending her hospitality,
Her Honor lead us down a make-shift path, through heavy foliage,
to the bank of the Ohio River, where she invited us, by example,
to splash about and watch the Tall Stacks riverboats roam eastward.

We watched as the mayor splashed about the shallows with her friend,
a noble looking brown mutt, who far as I could tell was nonpartisan,
and then she climbed back up the muddy slopes to where folks were
sitting on old wooden benches facing Rising Sun, Indiana.

And we sat a while, thinking about how good it was to be among
friends, and how nice a breeze feels with the smell of moss
and grass, and about how it’d be to live here, and how much better
politics are when they’re run by the good sorts of animals.

**

Dinner

Watching the red blossom slowly to white,
I count to myself the dollars this piece
of meat cost me, the minutes before
it is safe to eat, peppered and salted.

I become, for a moment, a bubble in the oil,
shuddering within the smallness of my lifespan so that
time expands between my birth and burst,
my unnoticed spray in the air like a fallen plum.

I don’t remember, so I reconstruct the package,
bones poking like hips from cellophane,
a cashier’s vacant smile, the drive home,
not noticing another face on the road.

Then, me cutting the plastic with a knife,
pulling the meat apart, and placing each in its own
Gladware container, setting those in the freezer
and scrubbing my hands with soap in the sink.

A month or more later, I stare into the steam.
How even in this long stretch of a second
when frying a pork chop is a lifetime’s work,
seeming, as it does, like it is all I can give to you,

it is still not enough.

**

If We Could Decompress Diamonds

The President’s teeth
are overworked and black,
throbbing in the swollen fields
of his gums.
His pain is real, crippling.

It becomes hard
for him even to spit, words
are gathered
every day by crowds
like precious gems for polishing,
but his guts are coiled tight
as a whip.

The President isn’t there
to oversee the task.

One hand is placed squarely between
throat and chin.
A knee set like a flag
on the broad black forehead.
The surgeon loosens the bones
in his shoulders and takes
grip of his pliers.

It is hard work.
He sweats as he thrusts forward,
lost in the moaning rhythm.
He rocks his whole body
at the white stump so firmly
entrenched in its shell,
and finally rips the roots
from their home
in a deluge that leaves
cradled in the air the brackish taste
of warm bread worked
after having long handled chains.

This wooden bowl of ivory
is carried triumphant to the house,
steeped like tomato soup
and taken to the smooth chair where Washington
has been drinking, his head now back,
mouth agape, a black yawn
patiently awaiting its white prize.

**

Tree-Talk

Yellow Wood
looking for all the world
like the fingers of a hand.
Not in the way that poets say,
but really, like the clenched
fingers of a hand,
tight, as if considering something
concrete heavy.

The trees of far-away Covington
sing them a dirt-song, give chorus
to their cousins—
these Yellow Woods, living here in the outskirts
of Cave Hill Cemetery—all about being
crowded and crushed by sidewalks
in the city.

How those trees bubble up, viscous, in their 3×3 squares of dirt,
like elephant
feet, limbs still attached, reaching
for their matrons.

Those far-away ankles
bleeding out about
what it really is to be alone, eyes in the ground like potatoes,
instead of flying in the sky,
wind shook,
and these Yellow Woods empathetically clenching,
being hands, accustomed to holding,
or being held.

But don’t worry,
the Covington trees say.
Our roots are reaching
and they push,
every day, they push,
against our stony prisons.

Don’t worry, they say. Don’t worry.