Poor fellows who glide sideways through life ignoring
the elephant of odds: oh my lord can't help but love them.
A wealthy poet might merge with chunky obstetrics nurse
once only, in a waxing moon. Call it shocking, Code Bleu.
Brand of earnestness simply defies derision when Sheridan
sussed the tiny scalloped flaws in my bottle cap collection.
Uncle Raiment, oh he was a Legionnaire—he outlives me
still, I write from beyond the grave, an old Irish Indian trick.
The night Lil' Sonny Sturgaard beat Roy Man Mountain @
Fairgrounds: locked in a war whoop, piggy back, Full Nelson.
Pure gimcrack Italian surgeon from Hopkins fixed my ticker:
I come out of anesthesia, hum the theme from The Simpsons.
I was standing by my car
in late March,
when a wind gust
blew the raffle ticket
from my hand;
part of me always knew
it would: "oh, Shorty, return to
diminishing,"
said the wind
with its storied burn
like a snake bite, like
ten years
gone.
I began to beat
the ground, to scare up
that ticket, miles around
which was part of me
and the other part
ran.
I remembered
buying the thing, flush
as I was at a car wash,
singing Sinead O'Connor
half a block from the Metro
bus stop: that ticket so much
like a movie stub or new life,
a little hot tea leaf
in my grubby
hand.
"Indigo on the palm line!" I cried
happily to the sun, and dead calm,
"here we go," to the whirling
stars, shapes, or fates
that placed me
poor in stature,
candy wrapper
standing up to gusts
arriving, and who
could ever hope
to win?
It was like living forever
in the now,
and I began to understand
Pentecostals, the painting
of the face,
pale-veined wrists turned inside
wanton sex parts
a range of writhing,
and nothing—
every gash and grain
as Doubt doubly
stained by indigo, by hope:
some news print soaked
with black foam
in the grain.
It's only my poor
and slight stature, you see, to repeat
that which has held me so far
back in the world, and I've hated
the wind
for cheating me.
"Fucker," I cursed,
my leprechaun's face
nearer to ground,
a bloodhound gifted
with erudition, and I said
"a raffle ticket
is pale blue, like a movie stub
and I'll find it, too, no thanks
forever to you ..."
Because it's true, what we get
and what's lost,
some seagull's
in histrionics, overhead
far from home: a pickpocket
in Burbank, sirens yet
out of Philly, Brooklyn, hunting
for that ticket all the days
gone, snatched
and lifted—
my big winner, to spite
any spin of entropy
or what the wind
might say.
"Shorty, nobody's
gonna know now,
are they?"
My head nearer
to ground
and shaking at everything
that gets away, in a dream
I found it, minutes before
the deadline to redeem,
but there was some kind
of mistake, it was just another
loser, just another
loser.
"That's a chance you take," said
the wind, "standing around your
car in late March ..."
I simply must have another
word with him
come fall, still looking
for that ticket.
Sometimes
I feel inconsolably
small.
Dennis Mahagin's latest book of poems, entitled Longshot and Ghazal, is currently available from Mojave River Press. Follow Dennis on Tumblr: DennisMahaginAgain.tumblr.com.
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