Dangerous Goods - Sean Hill

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another, but I

      know I doesn’t matter to you. You

      don’t know I or me for that matter.

      But you are appropriate—

      appropriately unfit like the not it

      we sang out in our childhood games.

      You’re like a confessional or, maybe,

      the restaurant suggestion box;

      you don’t care if I’m penitent

      or cynical. I could tell you about

      the side of paradise I hiked

      today with its flora and fauna—

      the birds! or the Sidle Parade,

      a subtle spectacle I saw yesterday,

      and it matters not. I could tell

      you how I really feel about my

      father or my shoe size, and they’d

      both have the same weight like

      the Weighing of the Heart—the soul

      needs to balance the feather to gain

      entry into heaven. Tomorrow

      I intend to go to the Dead Man’s

      Button Museum. They’re also

      called dead man’s throttles—installed

      in trains in case an engineer keels

      over. Without pressure, the brakes engage.

       for E. Corral

      Leaving Dickinson, ND, on 94W with the sun

      rising at our backs, a tractor trailer in front

      and from the height of my vision, from nowhere,

      or from heaven, a wine-soaked handkerchief, trailing

      its edges, falls as quiet as a bruise into the next

      lane over—a barn swallow caught in the truck’s wash.

      They once lived in caves, but now make their nests

      in man-made shelters, under bridges and barn eaves—

      barns where might be kept a horse’s harness,

      the parts of which you recited to me once—crupper,

      martingale, throatlatch—rolling your r’s, lashing those

      words lavishly for all they’re worth. I’ve since been told

      one should always keep the throatlatch nice and loose.

      I’ve heard a man would need a keel

      bone six feet long

      to cradle muscle enough to pull him

      up on his own, keep him in the air,

      or wind between a breeze and a gale,

      a bit more than enough water

      to drown in, and a sense

      of displacement to set sail.

      A keel bone is not a rudder, but

      either can get you here.

      I suppose I should say, it was warm

      and clear here today, or

      boats have keels and birds

      have keel bones.

      Was I the space between the ruffled

      feathers on a robin’s red breast

      —a wispy yen for warmth—before

      you knew me?

      A keel’s leading edge

      is called a cutwater,

      not to be confused with

      a shearwater—a seabird

      seldom seen from shore.

      This note could fit in a bottle; one’s

      being emptied; the last red drop rolls

      down its neck.

      Soon dregs will rest in the curve

      of the wineglass’s belly—a hammock’s

      sag here, where the day’s dregs sit on the sea

      at the far edge of everything.

      Here is me; I am here; I am desire; I

      am nothing when you come, I fear.

      I’ll miss you when you’re here. Stay

      home; keep me forever.

      Day 1

       Up the gangway of the Big Red Boat

       the SS Atlantic

       white, red, and blue

       banners and streamers

       A colorful crew croons along

       “The Star-Spangled Banner”

       Accents thick sing-songy high

       and guttural low as the boat

       leaves port out to sea traveling slow

      Day 2

       A cruise to the Bahamas

       on the 4th of July

       occasioned by a family reunion

       Below decks cramped in with

       my little brother and a complimentary

       bottle of champagne

       The champagne goes down

       The water on-board briny that of coastal cities

       port towns to which slave ships made their rounds

      Day 3

       On deck in the sun

       headphones on listening to

       Charles Mingus: Town Hall Concert

       Two songs “So Long Eric”

       and “Praying With Eric”

       After the first they clap

       and Mingus introduces:

       This next composition was written

       when Eric Dolphy explained to me

       that there’s something similar

       to the concentration camps once in Germany

       now down South.

       The only difference being

       they don’t have gas chambers

       and hot stoves to cook us in

       yet.

       He continues:

       So I wrote a piece called

       Meditations as to how to get some wirecutters

       before someone else gets some guns to us.

       Conflation and conflagration

      Day 4

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