William Doreski

Smokeblue

Smokeblue plains, swollen rivers
rumpling from town to town. All the way
to Albany the thunderheads cringe
in stratospheric gouts of bile.
I rarely drive this far alone,
the radio chattering, tires hissing.

The government, a perfect cone
of defunct volcano, looms
in golden light. Sooner or later
the lava will flow and overwhelm
this dreary state capitol spoiled
by skyscraper office buildings

that jeer like open mass graves.
I park at a delicatessen
where men reeking of cigars chat
about the public, meaning everyone
but themselves. I order corned beef
on a Kaiser roll, lots of mustard—

and suddenly I’m Hart Crane leaping
from the stern of the Oriziba.
Eight bells has just sounded. I leap
in my pajamas and a shark
opens its serious grin
and someone yells “Man overboard!”

On the Vanity of Nations

Knuckles crack all over town.
Flags droop like filthy diapers.
Last night’s thunderstorm broke

the weathervane off the town house
and spiked it into the street below.
Today I’d like to preach a sermon

on the vanity of nations
but I lack a congregation,
not even the Church of Satan

willing to lend me a pulpit.
The morning’s crisp as pecan pie.
Tourists in bold cotton knits

spend and spend, loading their cars
with fake antiques and paintings.
I want to preach my sermon

before the Supreme Court reverses
the First Amendment forever.
Meanwhile, obese with runoff,

the river silts the gardens planted
by the garden club early in May,
pansies and marigolds waving

as they drown. Meanwhile phoebes
declare themselves in maples dying
of acid rain and monoxide,

the splayed leaves flopping as couples
pass below, laughing into cell phones,
electronic sublime achieved.

I can’t solve this landscape with silence;
but the flags crawl into my mouth
and choke me, and the cracking

of knuckles carries fair warning,
and the river runs up and over
and deliberately fills my shoes.

One of the Usual Suspects

Although I’ve flown only the two
hundred miles from New York
to Boston , customs inspectors
cluster buzzing around my lone
canvas bag, poking and prodding.

They extract a tiny cactus plant,
a letter from a married woman,
a postcard from Brazil , a sheaf
of photographs of railroad scenes,
two slim bottles of liqueur,
a handkerchief embroidered with the word

“Excelsior,” a goldfish swimming
in a corked retort, a street plan
of Stuttgart , a bottle of aspirin,
an eyedropper, an Indian head
nickel, a blue jay feather, a scrap
of nylon for repairing a tent,
a subway token, and an advance
copy of The Da Vinci Code.

“Explain yourself at once,” they say.
I shrug. What crimes have occurred?
”Adultery, treason, sabotage,
drunkenness, animal cruelty,
drug addiction, terrorism,
rootless cosmopolitanism,
decay and intellectual theft.”

I plead guilty, since the penalty
for pleading innocent is death.
“Also you submitted to
illegal search and seizure.”
Again I plead guilty. “Also
you pled guilty knowing full well
you’re innocent.” For the third
and final time I plead guilty,
and pay a fine of one dollar,
collect my ruffled possessions,
and enter the big fluorescent
arena of the terminal where
no beloved waits for me.
One of the inspectors runs up,
panting. I forgot my cactus.

Poor little prickly thing. I press it
to my bosom and pretend
it loves me, taxis wheezing
at the curb, the urban dusk
smoking from the oily harbor,
and the woman who sent that letter
dead a decade before she wrote.

Mismeasured, Misplaced

Mismeasured, the state of Vermont
lies crushed between ranges,
suffering. Down the valley,
a slot for railroad and highway,
I slip like a coin. No way
to rearrange the forms: river
too eloquent, highway too raw,
Curtis’s Famous Barbecue
too smoky and urban. The folds

of the antique hills suggest
the expressions of those who died
in Europe two years before my birth.
They’ve haunted me all my life,
those turgid ancestors split
between victims and oppressors,
the scent of the Pripet Marshes
reconstituted by the river
I fished with my father in childhood.

That muddle of fish and mud
gives way to soot of diesel
as a trainload of plywood crawls
south from Canada . No wonder
the landscape looks misplaced and feels
unworded, nameless as a brain cell.
Everything shifts north or south or slips
crossways, tumbling into a current
so brackish a sip could kill.

Parking at a farm stand I browse
hefty and Olympian produce
and choose a quart of strawberries
to represent the enrichment
of the soil. On the move again,
back the way I came, I feel
villages cower as the land
hunkers against sunlight so harsh
it’s looking for someone to blame.

Turtle Time

Turtles self-contained as TVs
waddle through my back yard,
purpose unknown but certain. I peer
from the kitchen window and count
a hundred turtles plodding south,
the moonshine of their shells
mellow as van Gogh’s sunflowers,
the poise of their snake-heads erect.
The earth belongs to turtles, snakes,

toads and salamanders. Too bad
highways cease the landscape and spoil
the best routes everywhere. Too bad
government intervenes with weapons
and uniforms. The best dark nights
of the soul lie exposed and ashamed.
Turtles march on regardless, dragging
their conical tails, their shells
vital as hubcaps, decorative

as bottle-tops, disdainful
as hand grenades. Watching them
I feel small enough to slip
beneath one of my fingernails
like a chip of microfilm.
When the stragglers clear the yard
and the moonlight reveals a lack
of movement and clues I waddle
with mock-turtle grace to the bedroom

and sprawl like an upturned snapper
and turn on the actual TV
to persuade myself the world
hasn’t worsened since the childhood
I survived, the wiry cries of bats,
twitter of nighthawks and bark
of coyotes ignored by turtles
carrying not just the world but
the universe on their backs.

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