Pawtucket Canal Poem
Hope you
re not Waiting
around for me
(Elliott Smith, No Name No. 5)
(Elliott Smith, No Name No. 5) from Aiken's red brick camel back
the homeless camp is a patchwork quilt
blue yellow orange
tents tarps and cooking fires
at the arc of the Merrimack
where VFW and Brook bend
boogie-woogie
reach a star
She caught between locks
Silver spraypaint grotto beneath a blue sky
Misdiagnosed at 11 the signs all pointed
To the rotary at VFW and 38
To the trails across the Merrimack behind the monastery
Sandwiched between Pleasant Ridge Green and Trull Brook Golf Club
Fucking up sightlines that keep order
The Bay Circuit they call it now was an old trail before roads or rail beds
Before flood control or mind control
Circuit breaker homeless trail dodging cross-country
Laughter made her small against the sharp winds doglegging Kearney Square
Innovative bookend retailers ripped
From Somerville someday
Tripping festivals sleeping the street
It was her aunt’s place she was sick in pain uninsured and proud
Everything went down with her
To Manhattan island
750 river bank feet forested wild green
Tilted clockwise 45º on its axis
With a little Hudson snuggling up between it and VFW Parkway
West below the apex at Beaver Brook
The arc
Our grotto
Below Pawtucket Falls
Turbines three or more dimensions
Out of site downhill behind a cyclone fence
Snaking through mottled pixel broken links
Her first sleep along the river was
Peaceful cooking fires light
Noisy thugs rejects and families
From the shelter around her
Some of them followed the light
The day she met her second husband
The one wandering for methadone and mental health
She knows he’s downtown close to Dunkin’
Probably sleeping day-old in some alley nook
They both had jobs
Before the bubble burst
It happened three times last summer once so far and holding
The Merrimack roars over the falls
100-foot whitewater peeks down
At 500 year flood zones
We dropped our kids at school one morning
Maybe ten days before water rise
Our backs to the river against tree trunks
He was making small talk when I said
Let’s get it on with a convincing leer
Wearing jeans and a tight shirt surprise
In Pawtucketville where he rented a room
Near my apartment
Where the river walk merges into sidewalk along VFW overlooking
Green velvet and concrete patina
Ball-diamond wide chute of water over 2000 diagonal feet of hard rock Pawtucket
Head-banging was a perverse term when the blows came
The terrible shifting river rock taking his pain
For months she watched him when they
Before that night she trembled his loss
Made love the first time
Found themselves on that hillside over the river
Behind the seminary
Where he was a child she’d never seen or imagined
Surprised the day she finally saw his face so close
Thirty feet above the trail behind a forked oak
Improbably close to thrive beside a birch
A quiet refuge in her arms
Until the jobs let go the town fell hard
Short sold cotton stores and second chances
That night he lay to rest in a cool valley
She slept after cooking dinner as long and slow as the night came on
Dreams in a jimmied boat moored at Pawtucket Canal
Where glassy sheen above the dam from VFW is a mirrors peek around a corner
You’ll never get the angle never see petals thrown to the canal never know how They flow-floating through the body of the city
The canal’s heart beating river watches cars
Pump over the Aiken Street Bridge
Pretend patterns when traffic thins tempting sleep
This man to visit mother at LGH
That dream deferred
And everybody in between
She knows them all
Might even wave in daylight
2010
Spokane
Spokane is a fully-justified prose poem in first-person persona - b-c its fun
2005
Pawtucket Canal, Lowell, Mass. Site-specific proposal, 2008
Spokane, Wash. Documentary video, 2001
heat lightning
market basket at fletcher and broadway; local corn is up to five for a dollar seventy-nine; summer’s over;
when asked local tomatoes? the produce clerk sneers points potatoes; I spot loose red onions, bag two, then;
small red onions packaged six on green foam, first selection
abandoned beside bell peppers;
produce clerks roll stock carts braggadocios into cell phones; indiscretion unnoticed browse tomatoes hothouse plump and tasteless;
at checkout a carton of eggs hides in candy bars; a dozen reasons why not abandon every question; outside heat lightning fills the sky; it plays the fluid horizon;
the storefront glass refractive index;
three acre babes talking between cars; a can into a handbag on aisle 4;
ghosts on glass juxtapose conversations; heat lightning makes stage things;
through the lot a slowly towncar lost with official tags on unofficial business;
passenger window down into cell; we don’t come into lowell that often;
the man driving has another set of keys for a gas hog back home;
a squad car approaches, white-with-blue-gold-stripes-low-speed-no-lights; unmarked cars; all directions flashing lights dreamy-dimmed behind grills;
townie bumper strikes crown vic quarter like that stopping caught;
passenger’s cell phone pops the plane through the open window shatters
on goalpost-lined asphalt;
unfinished words ride airwaves;
from his report the cop deletes the phone; the towncar; and
its passenger, terrified wishing the odometer rollback not the pension;
Additional Media
Market Basket, Street view screen capture, 2010
