1992

David Sheppard

Poems 1992

(The following poems were published in the
The Live Poets Society 1992 Anthology.)

Ambush

Their fights endured for days. Sometimes
months. Not a kind word passed between them.
Even her footsteps in the kitchen were a threat.
When their bed became a battlefield, he would
wake in the night and cower in a corner, maybe
hide under a table. Sometimes he would slink
outside and hunker down under the porch. Wait
in ambush. Anything to breed darkness between
them. But then one night, they would wake to
find their bodies intertwined. Her lips would feel
hot and fat, like she had just come from another
man with his smell lying deep within her. Like
committed strangers, they would try to win back
their friendship. Even so, there was his childhood,
the war zone of flying shouts, curses and screams,
and hers, overrun with memories of what she had
enjoyed her daddy doing to her most, molest her.
So night after night she had carried a butcher
knife to bed, planning to kill him in his sleep.

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Betrayal

When he was a calf, I fed him from a bucket with a rubber teat
that stuck out long and hard just near the bottom which he sucked
and butted like it was his mother's udder. I fed him a mixture
of her fresh foamy milk and tan licorice-smelling powder.

And now that he was near grown and had stubby horns out each
side of his board-flat head, the adults swung aside the old wood
gate and drove him out of the pasture into the large dirt yard in
front of our home where my dad shot him in the forehead with

a shiny silver pistol that his cousin had taken from a German
during the war. The dust flew when the bullet popped just between
his horns and he shook his head as if to ward off a pesky horsefly,
as if the sting had nothing to do with us at all. I stood with my

elbows out a little from my sides, marking the calmness of the day,
the angle of the sun and the methodical arrangement of the killing
by the adults. My mother stood outside the kitchen door, still in
her apron. My uncle closed the wood gate, shutting off the young

bull's retreat, and my older brother stood to the left, should he
break for the corrals. My dad, standing directly in front, completed
the silent box and stopping the young bull with his head held high,
nostrils flaring and snorting. And me, standing beside my dad,

edging closer, as he raised that pistol one more time and shot
him right between the eyes, as if it didn't even matter. The young
bull turned his head to correct the terrible thought that raged inside
and a front leg betrayed him so that he stumbled momentarily, then

the other followed and he kneeled, then went limp all over. And so,
the box we had formed about him collapsed as the adults went
about their business. My dad slit the hide between the bull's leg
bone and tendon with a pocket knife, inserted a small white cotton

rope and my uncle hoisted him by the back ankles to the rafters of the
old shed so that he hung head-down with large dull eyes. Then my
dad made a small slit at each jugular so the bull's fresh blood poured
in two small streams off his chin and puddled in the soft powdery dirt.

I became lethargic. In school, the teacher had to call my name
twice, and I got lost in the fields. In the evenings my brother
called me, then my uncle, then my mother. When darkness
came, my dad called as if from a great distance.

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Judd

He is an old man now with tallness stooped and lean.
Scared me many a time with his swing-arm drunk stagger.
Younger, his curly black hair set off a shiny knucked
face, replaced now with a sharp whiskey breath, strong
with garlic, wrinkles and wild staring eyes. The corners
drew me away when the door stood around him, naked
to the waist, tattoos swinging in his arms, growling.

Com'on over here.
Got sumpin to show ya.
But don't tell no body! Ya hear? Ya hear?
Have a drink. It won't hurt ya.

Strangling the whiskey bottle by the neck, holding the
stink of slick stiff fish with loose scales, loose heads,
reddish black guts caught in tulle waters tall with cattails,
full of rocks dredged for gold and stars late at night,
haunted by loneliness from a love-shattered childhood, is
a wine-bottled son with bailing wire shoes, a freight train
in his eyes and a fight in his fists.

Can ya spare justa ...
You know I'll give it back.
But, goddamnit!
I just gotta have a drink.

With a fidget of his hands and a mumble of half-forgotten
loves, he scavenges nephews for loose coins, cooking in
the kitchen with fire in his withered eyes, tears on his leather
skin, a wild knife in his hand, burning onion-potatoes on the
stove. he laid his heart on the table with the fried fish and
sourdough biscuits until his family ate a hole in his mind and
threw his heart away with the chicken bones and corncobs.

Ya know what I mean about God?
Ya hear me, don't ya? Huh?
Ya gotta know what I mean.
Ya hear me?

His was a life of sloughs, ditches and one-way gutters
with a built-in sound of iron wheels whistling across a
bridge. He slept with a loner one-step away and a rat
in the next hole down. His buddies busted up his face
and kicked in his teeth, broke up his ribs for the cold
while the ringing of metal milk cans from a creamery
close by shot through the foggy night sky.

I'm a gonna sleep ta night
Wita wine soakin in
An the shit floatin by
Gonna take a look at the sky.

The withered wood floor splintered skin through crusty Levis
as they whispered wild through the heavy night air, the rhythmic
rattle of the boxcar beating his heart. He followed the fruit
of lost minds, carried the stink of his pack around the world's
shoulders, looked out at the foreman with blood eyes
and a grase stubble beard, lived a life of ladders for family,
peach fuzz loved his neck, slept a whore with smelly skin.

You happy? Huh?
You tell me that. The truth ow.
That wife of yours sure pretty.
Those kids, they happy?

He is hanging closer to home now, pissed out his
liver and kidneys with red wine, and he is never sober,
never swings the hoe through the cotton row leaving
three to a hill and taking all weeds. he is not up to it.
Heard he got a nose bleed the other day, squirted
out instead of running down. Say his liver won't
take it anymore, but he is drink again anyway.

Gimme a quarter.
Nuff for a lil whiskey.
Come on, ya chickenshit?
I know you got a dime.

He is still talking of places far off and the washtub moon
too big to hang in the sky, but then he stands there staring.
The look of death in his legs.

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Lights From a Ship

There is a place on this planet where all
must gone alone, a scene where ocean meets
land, where civilization ceases and the
gathering of destruction never ends.

The air there fills with a wet fog
familiar to even Homer and the cry
of water fowl, like that of pterodactyls,
clashes and rolls with the concussion

of waves on shore. Sand sips a broth-like
sea, made of times quarry, that dips and
rushes among dunes, then marches through
inland marshes, dissolving and decaying.

Fresh gusts of sea wind bring soft salt drops
and the smell of life's renewed debris, and
the sun rests permanently below the horizon,
providing just the absence of darkness, perhaps

for the staging of a Sophoclean play. I walk
into waves, smelling ruin and stare out to sea,
into darkness, searching for lights from
a ship that sails beyond these marsh lands,

a ship that sails to a shore where all is
forgiven and life does not decay giving
life, where life follows life, not by
consequence but my choice.

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The Palfrey

But then it was gone again, and as
quickly, leaving behind a wake with
hearts full of hallowed questions.
Gently though it came as the descent
of time seasons the baking earth,
leaving remnants of civilizations,
ruins, so it left them, alive but
decaying or possibly decayed and
advancing, a carcass writhing in hurt
unknowing of the palfrey that had
borne them to that strange land, full
of passion and pale contusion. The
couple's footsteps no longer gathered
in the distance and though their waterfalls
of language poured forth in search
of innocence and perhaps purification,
the words were acid in taste and
bitterness spread between them. So
it reappeared as a different context,
entering through a distant window
among the flies and mosquitoes of
spring, and when he saw it in the
eyes of elder women, it was accusing
and disrespectful. But she never
forgot the rampaging flow through
her body and felt it hovering just ahead,
cantering the crowded streets.
Though it gained on her eternally she
stalked it, coveting a likeness. In the
winter through the deserted towns and
villages it blew, and in the early mornings
it was preserved by the lingering cold of the
blowing snow. It was at ease on the
plains for that was home ground,
and this other business, land clearing.

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Recovery

I woke when the screen door slammed,
heard panic in the kitchen, the house empty,
heard my mother shouting in the front yard.
I lay in bed listening to voices say my father
was hurt. Then a car drove off into the night.
I called and called and finally, my mother
came, tightened the covers on my bunk bed
and assured me that he was alright,
alright but not here just now, not here even
though he was always here this late at night.

The next morning she told me he had been
stabbed in the abdomen by my knife-toting
Uncle Elmer during a fight, a fight my father
won by knocking Uncle Elmer out. A fight
he won except for an inch-long cut in his abdomen
that went all the way to his stomach. To and
not through, the doctor said, and thus he lived.

And my father recovered from the small
blood-leaking cut to appear at the trial where
my uncle was acquitted of attempted murder,
acquitted because he was better at lying than
my father was at telling the truth. So the jury
acquitted Uncle Elmer and then he told my father
that one day he would return, return and kill him.

And I recovered too, recovered from that night when
I knew my father was hurt and they wouldn't tell me,
so I thought that he had drowned in the cement
standpipe, thought all through the night that he
had fallen in and lodged somewhere in the pipeline
buried under the cotton field, drowned in the cold
water late that night like the baby that the radio said
had fallen in a deep well and lodged so that the
crews worked through the night to save him.

My father recovered to keep a pistol under his pillow
until he almost shot my mother in his sleep and then
to keep a baseball bat, my little bat that I played
with during the day, standing by the front
door at night in case Uncle Elmer returned.
And I recovered too, recovered to dream
of bears roaming the cotton field, dream
of me with two kids and a wife, dream
of him, dream of me at the open front
door, bat in hand, peering into the night.

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Stick Family

Once there was a family made of sticks with two brothers born very close. Other children came later, but we will not mention them because they were cut from another tree. Stand them all outside their shack with a small cottonwood, a leaved living stake, just to the left of the screen door. The younger brother is weak and lost in dreams. Place him facing the front of the house, in neither sunlight nor shade with his older brother just to his right, close and perhaps even slightly inside him like they are congenitally joined or boxers engaged in combat, perhaps even lovers. It is hard to say. Shadow the older brother a little. Then position the mother almost at the door, turned slightly as if she is about to run inside so she can hide. Give her a religion so that she may protect herself, and since she has a compulsion to run, light fire to her. The younger brother will have visions of horror and wish to follow her but will not desert his brother. To his left will be a wooden corral and beyond, a private junkyard, a pyre of used lumber. All in dazzling sunlight. Position the father further to the right, on the other side of the older brother, and blanket the father with the darkness of midnight, and beyond him will be the glow of moonlight and the deepening shadows of trees which fill the plowed fields. His one hand will make a tight fist, and the other he will grip a pistol. We will not know if he plans to protect or kill them, and his face? We will not look at it, so we will not know if he is mad or just crying. But make him a giant and face him in their direction, turned slightly toward the mother, and make him come, toward them so they are infected with a disease and a fever that binds them one to another, and make it a contagion among them that ebbs and flows like a tide from a huge erratic moon. The younger brother will then have feelings like that of a sister and will play and fight in the fields, pastures and barns like a tomboy. He will act like a daughter toward his mother and retreat from his father but stalk him constantly. Then make him grown and terrible, and transplant him in a city in some state like another country and he will be hollow and have an afflicted wife and she will also be infected and they will fight and hide like lesbian lovers carved from cottonwood destined to churn and burn at the stake among a flaming pyre like a forest fire whipped wild by wind. Then their children will come, and their children's children. The first will be a dark-haired boy and the second, a girl with cotton colored hair.

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Driftwood

Oceans chew and rake at the shore, maladjusted
to the moment of quietness, but suggesting
some form of relief. Another survivor, a sailor
from a far shore, rattles and bangs at the door.
Here is an act with nothing but precedence.
Never have I afforded so much reluctance.
Questions of him and her enter through the
kitchen window to lie on the floor like small
hard snakes. Upstairs, the bedroom pulses.
A white rain comes from great glistening
surfaces reminding me of damp places and
the ruin of lives. Quiet voices stand in the
hallway. All accompanied by wind, waves.
I wander the shoreline, crossing cadavers
of ships which have sailed these foamy seas.
They reshape easily as driftwood, looking
acquitted in their newfound forms. I will
wade only to my knees. A good drink
is sometimes a medicine. At the point
is a reef. With the moon, a tide.

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Sounding

The moment
I touched the leviathan
and stroked his inverted
curved lip,
I realized the permanence
of thought

and retrieved
as proof of its existence
a familiar,
if peculiar,
art: I too can sound.
Dreaming,

I probed
a new depth of consciousness,
the lung
of a people.

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Forever

If you will lie silent and watch
the snow settle while I mark
the lines of shadow in your face,
we can love and dream of spring.

Green sprouts of past memories
will flower in your eyes and
my smile will resurrect
a congregation of past loves.

A swarm of mosquito wings
caught at the edge of your ear
will bring a whisper of your
mother's fading voice, and

then you will not know me,
after the armies of ants
trample your thoughts and
harvest the golden grains.

But someday you will bend
to smell a flower, stop
for a moment sifting thoughts,
then forever forget you heard

my name or that I ever laced
the fringe of your body.

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