Selected Poems - James Tate Wesleyan Poetry Series

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the sidewalk

      into your room, looks at

      the wallpaper, and laughs.

      So what do you do? What

      can you do? Kick him out?

      Hell, no. You charge him rent.

      Amnesic goatherds tromboning

      on the summit, the lazy

      necklaces of their own breath

      evanesce into the worst

      blizzard since Theodore

      Roosevelt and the Marquis

      de Mores blessed Medora, North

      Dakota with their rugged

      presence. Look! I implore, who’s

      sashaying across the Bad

      Lands now—it’s trepid riding

      Tate (gone loco in the

      cabeza) out of his little

      civilized element—Oh!

      It’s bound to end in tears.

      Aunt Edna of the hills

      comes down to give

      her sisters chills;

      she wears the same

      rags she wore

      seven years ago,

      she smells

      the same, she tells

      the same hell-

      is-here stories.

      She hates flowers,

      she hates the glory

      of the church she

      abandoned for the

      glory

      of her Ozark cave.

      She gave

      her sons to the wolves.

      For the first time the only

      thing you are likely to break

      is everything because

      it is a dangerous

      venture. Danger invites

      rescue—I call it loving.

      We’ve got a good thing

      going—I call it rescue.

      Nicest thing ever to come

      between steel cobwebs, we hope

      so. A few others should get

      around to it, I can’t understand

      it. There is plenty of room,

      clean windows, we start our best

      engines, a-rumm … everything is

      relevant. I call it loving.

      She tells me

      that I can

      see right through

      her, but I

      look and can

      see nothing:

      so we go

      ahead and

      kiss. She is

      fine glass, I

      say, throwing

      her to the

      floor….

      Poor God was always there,

      but He was something sinister,

      and we worshiped the fear

      we had of Him,

      we had of the church on Tenth,

      near the end

      of the whole dark city.

      The way the family

      gathered murmuring on a Sunday,

      surreptitious, solemn,

      down to the midwest harlem

      to give our worn

      and rusty souls an airing—

      grandmother swearing

      at Ruthanna’s hoop ear-rings,

      and Uncle Barrington,

      hesitant, knowing what would come,

      stealing his Sunday swill of rum

      invariably. Once there, it was not

      as bad as we had thought;

      it was not God at all, but

      Pentecostal

      joy. A man would wrestle

      with his soul, and all

      the other sinners cheered,

      and soon we heard

      the voices of another tongue—

      garbled, and far too

      inflated for us

      to understand who

      taught them how to sing such songs.

      I look up and see

      a white buffalo

      emerging from the

      enormous red gates

      of a cattle truck

      lumbering into

      the mouth of the sun.

      The prairie chickens

      do not seem to fear

      me; neither do the

      girls in cellophane

      fields, near me, hear me

      changing the flat tire

      on my black tractor.

      I consider screaming

      to them; then, night comes.

      A sodium pentothal landscape,

      a bud about to break open—

      I want to be there, ambassador

      to the visiting blossoms, first

      to breathe their smothered, secret

      odors. Today I am falling, falling,

      falling in love, and desire

      to leave this place forever.

      II

      from The Oblivion Ha-Ha

      (1970)

      High in Hollywood Hills a door opens:

      a man disguised as a man appears,

      sunglasses on his nose, a beard.

      He can smell the flowers—camellia,

      bougainvillea—the word,

      itself a dream; the reality of the scene

      was

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