Narcissus

Vignette for Spring

April shakes winter’s hollow limbs beyond the screen.
Poplar branches clatter and brittle in pieces
to lie shattered and sapless on the lane.

Shun the narcissus; its yellow coronas trumpet
the lie of resurrection. A lover you will never meet
passes by, his hair struck silver in the mounting sun.

His gaze points toward heaven. The red of his lips
goes forever unkissed. A mandolin laughs
from a window somewhere, a vibrating string
snaps to startle the ear.

©JP Reese 2010
First Published in Corium Magazine, December, 2010
http://www.coriummagazine.com/?page_id=1148

Self-Portrait

There is little risk in painting yourself invisible.
Stripped of old habits, there is talent in capturing
the image of no one.

Another day waits
to be endured, balanced loosely
like a brush held by unremarkable fingers.

Ignore the colors that tempt from the palate.
They eventually assume the deadly brown
of footprints struck in the muck of rain-pelted clay.

Do not count on mirrors, they offer no reflection.
Danger rests in believing the honest blue of the sky.
It will break your heart to presume to see.

©JP Reese 2010
First Published in Corium Magazine, December, 2010
http://www.coriummagazine.com/?page_id=1148

Oh, Hell

First you die in August or some other month
or someone kills you in Detroit; the Galapagos.
your driveway; your dreams, or you drown. But
you don’t rack up points for how it happens.
Or when. Or why. Even if you suffered.
No points. No one cares. No donut.

Then you see this woman. Funky red horns
look phalically familiar—Some kind of tail.
She waves a flowered bow tie.
A searchlight extends from her forehead.
A can of spray paint clutched between her thighs,
she points a jeweled fingernail at the wall.
You stroll, read tags from the Koran, Tora! Tora! Tora!
Mein Kampf, Lassie, The Gnostic Gospels and
Tender Buttons in Day-Glo orange and pink.
There is a tunnel. A sign reads,
“Gemillut Chassadim, Do Not Go This Way,”
so you don’t.

A bald Hindu lawyer wearing Pampers
imprinted with wireless spectacles
spreads his arms to block a smoked glass door
behind which you glimpse a party going on.
He smiles. His mouth swallows his head.
You eye the submarines, want to crawl inside,
become one with shredded lettuce, mayo, Swiss cheese.
No nukes here, no triage, no wounded to nurse, or shoot.
You lick your finger, taste day-old codfish.

A stroll to the gift shop bends each minute
like a Dali watch as you wait to get this trip straight
with the ticket machine. There are pens
with red laser lights, Betty Crocker Devil’s Food
cake mix, pickled jalapenos, golden nipple rings
and Ball jars filled with Ass-Kickin’ Chili.
Bob Marley stands too close to you,
a red-eared slider perches like a yarmulke on his head.
He speaks through lips dangling a massive spliff,
“Do not lose your head, you are not really here.”

Spike Lee, caped like Zorro, struts over the threshold,
his left arm draped around Lina Wertmuller.
Lina feeds a dog-eared copy of Swept Away
By An Unusual Destiny in the Blue Sea of August
into his mouth. She tugs Spike’s mustache
because Giancarlo Gianini is not here to make her laugh.
She has strung blue eyes and rabbit’s feet
from a chain around her neck

Spike hands you these things—
A metal pail with sides that rainbow
like trout flanks under water, overflowing
with stone crabs from Joe’s and spiked hands,
a black leather Laker’s cap,
and a rather curt note —from God.
The postscript scrawled across the bottom
in number two pencil reads,
“Must have missed your connection, dude.
Have a nice stay.”

©JP Reese 2011
First published at Precious Metals
http://preciousmetalspoetry.blogspot.com/

New Friends

John Doew (Writer) – x

clear chat history

Me 4:02am
Can’t sleep either? ; )

John 4:03am
Hi. How are you?

Me 4:03
Fine. What are you doing up so late? or is it early? ; ) You must be writing. I friended Amy Tan yesterday. I love being friends with writers. It’s so inspiring.

Me 4:05
—You still there?

John 4:06
Sorry. I was writing—an early piece of my memoirs. I have to get it all down while I have time or I’ll forget. I like to multi-task.

Me 4:06
Your memors?
Coll.

Me 4:06
I mean “cool”

Me 4:07
..and “memoirs,” of course. Sorry it’s early. : )

John 4:08
How’s your daughter doing? Was it Stacey? At least she’s sleeping, I trust. LOL

Me 4:09
Yes—Stacey can sleep through a hurricane. She’s fine. When I was twelve, I slept like the dead too ; )

Me 4:10
What are you “getting down” at this hour?

John 4:10
Glad to hear she’s fine. Actually, I have to capture the image of a little girl I once knew on paper before I move on to the next chapter.

Me 4:11
Little girl?

John 4:11
Yes. Adjectives are sometimes difficult for me
I’m trying to think of a word for a strange shade of blue
—Can you think of any adjectives for bluish?

Me 4:11
Cerulean? (sp? ; ) Sky? Navy? Bruise?

John 4:11
Buised blue. Sounds right.

John 4:11
Bruised.

Me 4:11
This giurl is in your memoirs?

John 4:11
Right. I have to remember how her skin felt. I can’t recall if it was damp or dry, and I can’t capture the color of her face in words. I knew her a while ago, so it’s hard to capture the first moment perfectly.

Me 4:15
The first moment of what? : )

Me 4:18
—you still there?

John 4:18
Too bad you’re in Akron. Isn’t it Firestone Park? If we lived closer, we could get together when I have these writer’s blocks at four am and you can’t sleep. It’s always nice to meet “friends” in person. Maybe we could go to Starbucks. LOL.

Me 4:19
John? Are you writting a short story?

Me 4:19
writing ; ) The first moment of what?

John 4:19
Is your daughter in middle-school? They’re so sweet at that age, but it must be hard raising her when you have to work full time and you’re alone. Does she spend a lot of time at your house by herself?

Me 4:20
How do you know I’m raising her alone?

John 4:21
I always like to scroll back through a new friend’s old posts to get a feel for them and their lives. People post such interesting things about themselves on Facebook. Sometimes I can get ideas for stories from them. I noticed your post a few months back about your ex and how he doesn’t pay support or come to visit. So sad. I get to Akron occasionally. Maybe we can have dinner. Celebrate that birthday you’ve been dreading : ) You can bring Stacey. I love kids an…

(SEE MORE)

John 4:24
You there?

John 4:27
Oh, well. I suppose you’ve finally popped off to sleep or maybe that Boston Terrier of yours is howling in the backyard again. Anyway, thanks for the “friending.” Enjoy your Saturday gardening, and I hope we’ll be able to meet in person soon. Sweet dreams…

©JP Reese 2010

First published in the September, 2010 issue of Eclectic Flash
http://issuu.com/eclecticflash/docs/vol_1_sep_2010?mode=embed&layout=http%3A%2F%2Fskin.issuu.com%2Fv%2Flight%2Flayout.xml&showFlipBtn=true

A Letter From Your Sisters

Dear Sylvia and Anne:
We are stuck in your confessional.
We can’t get out. The marriage
of outhouse noise with barnyard pig-grunts
stuffs our ears with ugliness.
You sculpted your pain onto each page,
gaining speed and direction
like the terminal thrusts of a rejected lover.
You knew time was short, the long night
creeping inside your heads. Yet you sought
no creaking door, no key, no light
to seep through cracks and direct your retreat
from the edge. The air crackles,
alive with electro-shock. We turn
and we turn our feet, retrace each step
believed to have led us here
where everything known vanishes.
We smell carbon monoxide and cooking gas
as a bloody sun slips slowly
into a mulberry sea.

© JP Reese
Second Place Winner, IBPC 2000
http://www.webdelsol.com/IBPC/archive2000.htm

Postmodern Peanut Butter Sandwich

Expose him, the first thief
who culled the strange fruit,
plundered heartwood
from another man’s tree.
Blue hues, strained through blank,
brittle pages of Southern Baptist bibles
poured over an ivory palate
to pack the cotton panties
of pubescent girls—with a bullet.

Cunning Iago with pompador’d fin,
a hillbilly hipster humping heartbreak
in roadhouse finery. Nothing intrinsic
ever flowed to the North,
save a white boy whose mouth dripped
of sweat-leather sex steeped
in Tupelo breast milk and honey.

Memphis’ man. Androgy’s scam.
Colonel Tom’s Cadillac King.
The slick highway man
polished That’s All Right Mama,
rubbed her clean,
and drove her to Levittown, steamroll’d
over Hoboken, sang gospel ‘til dawn,

whitewashed Vegas
with feather brushes plucked
from a black man’s swansong.
Blind Willie’s voice lies intestate,
while his tunes transcend solid gold.

©JP Reese

First published 2001, The Pinch
http://www.thepinchjournal.com/

June, Texas, 1993

My father kneels on the St. Augustine,
hands braiding in green and white repair of a torn lawn chair.
His fingers thick, right thumbnail puddled with a blue bruise.
Head tilted, his eyes focus on this morning’s work.
A wasp swings its glassy wings beneath the eave
to daub more mud on the coned dome it fashions
which we do not destroy. Its brown husk will remain,
dry and solid, long after my father’s return to clay.
And still he kneels, fearless, and weaves.

©JP Reese 2010

First published at Connotation Press, June, 2010
http://connotationpress.com/poetry/482-jp-reese-poetry

For the Women

Once more, rocks wait in stadiums of dust.
Hands press to wounded heads or claw the dust.

The people silence singing, shutter shops.
Razors all stilled, beards draw the Afghan dust;

Red poppies are destroyed and laughter ends.
The fields lie fallow, raw, returned to dust.

Bearded Pashtuns eye every shadowed street,
Salvage the holy law from boot-stomped dust.

Young soldiers marched away, taking their bombs.
The female teachers’ graves merge straw with dust.

The rivers freeze below the Khyber pass.
Come summer, flesh will thaw to mix with dust

Near Peshawar, a sister has transgressed.
Her purple thumb, whipsawn, collects the dust.

An unveiled face once more courts suicide.
And girls, forbidden books, withdraw to dust.

The women all retreat behind burkas.
Each temptress hidden from flawed men of dust.

A man exits a cave above the plains.
His followers, in awe, kneel in the dust.

First published at Writers for Human Rights
http://protestpoemsdotorg.blogspot.com/2011/01/jp-reese.html

©2011 JP Reese

For Captain Paul

It was a tropical morning, 3AM. The four of us slumped at the scarred kitchen table, empty Budweiser’s full of Salem butts, Jimmy Buffett wondering why we ever go home. The jug of Gallo callled to us: “One for the road!”

After closing up Dalt’s in Kendall, we’d driven south to Paul and Kathy’s apartment and worked hard to catch up to all the drunks we’d served earlier. When he worked, Paul kept his female fans mesmerized. He made up silly songs, gazed at them with his blue eyes, singing—

“I’m just too good to be true, God made me better than you, I’d be like heaven to touch…,”

—the bar a barrier that kept the adoring separated from this handsome, newly married young man. We all appreciated the extra tips.

As the jug emptied, Paul explained his hemophilia, his brother’s early death from complications, said the clotting factor kept him alive. Italian to the core, he was ashamed to share this weakness of the blood with Russian Queens.

“Hey Kathy,” he said, “they aren’t even sick watching this!” He stuck the needle in his arm, aim smooth from practice.

The clotting factor, this batch and those to follow, was culled from blood sold by desperate Haitians to escape Miami’s poverty. How could we know every drop was tainted, coated in the new pestilence of the 80’s, the clock ticking, and Miami ground zero?

AIDS was then only an article at the bottom of page six, just gaining a foothold in the ideology of the Christian right, the scourge of the deserving. AIDS sailed over on leaky boats from Haiti, emerged from Fidel’s prisons, took its place at Chrome Avenue detention camp. Later, we’d read about a steward on Pan-Am offering it up like Christmas candy to everyone he could fuck, but at the time, if we thought of AIDS at all, it only affected gay guys, and none of our gay friends seemed worried. How could it ever touch us?

Paul dug out pictures of himself grinning, holding up prize bonefish. He and Kathy dreamed aloud of the restaurant they would buy, the charter boat. Someday.

When we left that morning, the light draped a golden shroud over Paul’s face. He leaned in the doorway, waving goodbye.

We moved to Dallas in July. They bought the restaurant, the charter boat. Paul was our best man in September.

Then came the first illness, then Hurricane Andrew, then the second , the third…

Telephones that ring at 4 A.M. never bring good news.

“It’s Paul.” Kathy said.

First published in the June, 2010 issue of Connotation Press
http://connotationpress.com/creative-nonfiction/486-jp-reese-creative-nonfiction
©JPReese 1999
revised 2010