Greg Glazner
Burning Man
1.
I swipe my blistered head one eye on
thunderheads coming for the sun.
Not a breath without the smoke smell. Not one
rumbling without the trouble in it.
Feelingly I reach my oak stick out. And by
wince or pull
by a nerveworks of fractures
I get what passes. A ghosted semi
rattles by the pickup in a film of grime.
A half-mile off one high crow floats
a sedan
changing lanes below all the chromes flashing—
an ache like foil on a filled tooth.
In no time it arrives for me a silver
Chrysler. I feel the heat of it idling
a door gleams open
and I know—
smoke rolling out in the slant sun.
2.
Heat-blind I lean in. A woman’s voice. You can ride with me if you don’t mind some smoke.
The seat’s plush. It’s cool and dim. I can just make out the cigarette her manicured hand. Considering how I have to smell the smoke’s a godsend.
She says Your head looked like it was on fire and I begin to see her dark-complected her hair straightened red-streaked.
I say I’m widening my mind. She looks me up and down studies the oak stick at my side her face gone weary breathes out a scalding sound.
A man of your years she says reaching back to the cooler for a water should not be burning up out in the sun.
With all that smoke I knew for sure I say and drink grateful ready for her messages.
She shakes her head mouths something. Sets her forward stare. Puts in ear buds and accelerates smoke blowing out as we go.
3.
When the head-throb’s gone I can
hear a rumbling under the AC that’s
all there is suspending us at seventy.
Just some silence would drop us
to the rushing pavement the driver’s
contempt seems absolute and by
no means am I true enough
to be braving the wakened world
again peering out of my sockets
like a fugitive through a slot. Not so
long ago I was a boy who’d love
a thistle weed if it had a miller on it.
The storm’s green light and far-off
flashes have reached the oaks
and pump jacks you can feel
the pressure dropping and it isn’t
so much that you understand
what’s coming as that you’ve already
known it to strip man and tree
to their skin and leave them standing….
4.
In the dark now brother I have
you close and what a frightful
witness squad we are with no
legs down in the door well no torso
to speak of and all this storm-
bashed ruin this abandonment
of dogs to haunt us. You’d think
dialing in some radio might help—
the driver in her ear buds
never flinches—but it’s Christian
Christian country Christian
country Christian classic rock.
So with used-up music going rolling on
under a front that towers flashing
and doesn’t rain kinsman we’re worn
so bare the dark shows through.
And a voice that half-passes for
what we are whispers Used to be.
The mind’s-eye white of a sky-lit room
the backs of her olive-soft legs the high
almost yodeled tones of hounds that
aren’t here howling guilts and grievances
harms floating with no body just semblances
and words as speed propels us
eastward suspended by the grace
of a few feet over the blacktop ceaselessly
whispered to. A lost home a cellar—
injury what are you that you tell yourself
relentlessly as if against some
doubt you’re real? Kinsman brother
only you seem genuine close enough
I barely know your pulse from mine. Ruin
what’s left of you but what you gave me—
wince shudder dream? The disposition
of a shallow-nerved tooth fine-tuned
to the weather. Maybe it never
comes to nothing after all. A flash
our heads and shoulders those suspended
in the other lane all up and down the road
shine manifestly and are lost again
even before the noise arrives levitators
all of us thinking of our quick bright
confines ignoring the massive
shadow we’re dissolved in. No more.
In the blackout I can sense how
all this breathing feeds weather that keeps
funneling and coming for us how all
the driving is unsettling hills that weren’t
quite finished anyway with being an ocean.
The lightless droning floats us and yet this late
there’s so much sinking. How heavy
can a body can get as the pull takes hold—
brother are you with me? The undertow’s
in earnest and we’re going where it goes.
5.
Hey Radio she says. Hey Burning Man and I’m awake. We’re parked a windshield full of hotel lights.
She says You’ll need a bed watching me without blinking. My salty clothes my red hands in my lap. My kinsman nowhere visible.
Not at my house she says. I have people to think about. Her bracelets shine and her jogging suit.
I open my door all that light and stand. Saying I think I know you not to her outfit or skin but to where she’s in behind her eyes.
She considers this my clothes and oak stick eventually my eyes. She takes her card from the dash and offers it still considering.
I slide it in a pocket sense its messages coming through by touch thank her for the ride
and limp on into the lobby where Amanda with the nametag with chalk skin and drifting lipstick types me in for the night eying my branch familiarly
mentioning her felon brother the water witcher her husband studying the prophesies doing time in Talladega her nightly Ativan that’s like swallowing a miracle.
Upstairs dry flashes at the window her angled smile still with me if I blink I rinse my shirt out hang it on a lamp
and listening to the far-off shuddering I flip the lights off let my mind go into all the darkness over Tulsa and blank out on the clean bed on my back.
Burning Man
1.
I swipe my blistered head one eye on
thunderheads coming for the sun.
Not a breath without the smoke smell. Not one
rumbling without the trouble in it.
Feelingly I reach my oak stick out. And by
wince or pull
by a nerveworks of fractures
I get what passes. A ghosted semi
rattles by the pickup in a film of grime.
A half-mile off one high crow floats
a sedan
changing lanes below all the chromes flashing—
an ache like foil on a filled tooth.
In no time it arrives for me a silver
Chrysler. I feel the heat of it idling
a door gleams open
and I know—
smoke rolling out in the slant sun.
2.
Heat-blind I lean in. A woman’s voice. You can ride with me if you don’t mind some smoke.
The seat’s plush. It’s cool and dim. I can just make out the cigarette her manicured hand. Considering how I have to smell the smoke’s a godsend.
She says Your head looked like it was on fire and I begin to see her dark-complected her hair straightened red-streaked.
I say I’m widening my mind. She looks me up and down studies the oak stick at my side her face gone weary breathes out a scalding sound.
A man of your years she says reaching back to the cooler for a water should not be burning up out in the sun.
With all that smoke I knew for sure I say and drink grateful ready for her messages.
She shakes her head mouths something. Sets her forward stare. Puts in ear buds and accelerates smoke blowing out as we go.
3.
When the head-throb’s gone I can
hear a rumbling under the AC that’s
all there is suspending us at seventy.
Just some silence would drop us
to the rushing pavement the driver’s
contempt seems absolute and by
no means am I true enough
to be braving the wakened world
again peering out of my sockets
like a fugitive through a slot. Not so
long ago I was a boy who’d love
a thistle weed if it had a miller on it.
The storm’s green light and far-off
flashes have reached the oaks
and pump jacks you can feel
the pressure dropping and it isn’t
so much that you understand
what’s coming as that you’ve already
known it to strip man and tree
to their skin and leave them standing….
4.
In the dark now brother I have
you close and what a frightful
witness squad we are with no
legs down in the door well no torso
to speak of and all this storm-
bashed ruin this abandonment
of dogs to haunt us. You’d think
dialing in some radio might help—
the driver in her ear buds
never flinches—but it’s Christian
Christian country Christian
country Christian classic rock.
So with used-up music going rolling on
under a front that towers flashing
and doesn’t rain kinsman we’re worn
so bare the dark shows through.
And a voice that half-passes for
what we are whispers Used to be.
The mind’s-eye white of a sky-lit room
the backs of her olive-soft legs the high
almost yodeled tones of hounds that
aren’t here howling guilts and grievances
harms floating with no body just semblances
and words as speed propels us
eastward suspended by the grace
of a few feet over the blacktop ceaselessly
whispered to. A lost home a cellar—
injury what are you that you tell yourself
relentlessly as if against some
doubt you’re real? Kinsman brother
only you seem genuine close enough
I barely know your pulse from mine. Ruin
what’s left of you but what you gave me—
wince shudder dream? The disposition
of a shallow-nerved tooth fine-tuned
to the weather. Maybe it never
comes to nothing after all. A flash
our heads and shoulders those suspended
in the other lane all up and down the road
shine manifestly and are lost again
even before the noise arrives levitators
all of us thinking of our quick bright
confines ignoring the massive
shadow we’re dissolved in. No more.
In the blackout I can sense how
all this breathing feeds weather that keeps
funneling and coming for us how all
the driving is unsettling hills that weren’t
quite finished anyway with being an ocean.
The lightless droning floats us and yet this late
there’s so much sinking. How heavy
can a body can get as the pull takes hold—
brother are you with me? The undertow’s
in earnest and we’re going where it goes.
5.
Hey Radio she says. Hey Burning Man and I’m awake. We’re parked a windshield full of hotel lights.
She says You’ll need a bed watching me without blinking. My salty clothes my red hands in my lap. My kinsman nowhere visible.
Not at my house she says. I have people to think about. Her bracelets shine and her jogging suit.
I open my door all that light and stand. Saying I think I know you not to her outfit or skin but to where she’s in behind her eyes.
She considers this my clothes and oak stick eventually my eyes. She takes her card from the dash and offers it still considering.
I slide it in a pocket sense its messages coming through by touch thank her for the ride
and limp on into the lobby where Amanda with the nametag with chalk skin and drifting lipstick types me in for the night eying my branch familiarly
mentioning her felon brother the water witcher her husband studying the prophesies doing time in Talladega her nightly Ativan that’s like swallowing a miracle.
Upstairs dry flashes at the window her angled smile still with me if I blink I rinse my shirt out hang it on a lamp
and listening to the far-off shuddering I flip the lights off let my mind go into all the darkness over Tulsa and blank out on the clean bed on my back.
Copyright © April 2019 Greg Glazner
Greg Glazner's books of poetry are From the Iron Chair and Singularity, both published by W.W. Norton. His awards include The Walt Whitman Award, The Bess Hokin Award from Poetry, and an NEA Fellowship. His recent manuscript, Cellar Testament, won the 2018 Rachel Wetzsteon Chapbook Award. He teaches at UC Davis and in the low-residency MFA program at Pacific Lutheran University.
