Allison Adair

Local History

The earth says have a place, be what that place

Requires; hear the sound the birds imply

And see as deep as ridges go behind

Each other.

                                                               —William Stafford

No one thought about a mountain beyond

the yard, thought to stare past the lusterless

wire pen steaming with yellowjackets, no

one said disappointment or that wheelbarrows

rust once glazed. We waited for the truck

to deliver the mail or load the calves, fathers

to arrive at night or not to arrive, the rising

moon indifferent. Fireflies zagged lambent

down in the tavern’s gravel lot, past the S-curve,

where generational drunks loitered heat-bellied:

arguing seed or battle strategies (so much depends

upon history), which route to the lake, hesitant to go

home when the dark’s so rich, damp. Where I am

today, island of gawky seagrass and lavender stalks,

a mystifying brine hangs in the air: What could grow

here? This salt must scorch, or does it preserve?

If I could go back, ask the knot of guts gathered

down the road, would they hear me calling from

behind the ridge’s tailbone? Not knowing them,

you’ll question, despise them for their stained-

pine rifle cabinets, knobby as spines, their thick

thumbnails used to screw and to plane, to halve

the licorice rind of dog ticks. Carl and Ed, Jesse, Ab.

Even half-cocked they knew the silo was leaning.

Could tell if the stale, bruised sky would wring out

its hurt or hold it, predict the hour a kettle of hawks

would spiral, ready to blow, would burst into boil.

Physics

When at last you consent to sleep

the train retiring from day soughs

to a sag on the track just beyond

your window, earth’s baggy wiring

stretched, vast. Days ago, the last gasp

of an animal you held rasped your skin,

the breath of unmaking, its whisper stale,

a soda can left in the sun, then cracked.

The process was long. Your palm

hammocked the hardening purple meat

of her worn organs. Flocking oak boats

knocked, crowding each canal. Heavy

death’s heft—heavier the air

rushing in to fill its wake.

Phones ring in an empty room,

Ziploc bags film the counter, waiting

to be filled. A man shuttles objects

from building to van. If given time

even fingernails curl into the impractical

spiral of the cosmos. Miracles fall

from the sky like cinders—but tonight

you want no testimony.

Let the fan drone in low Doppler.

Let the nightjar click its roulette.

RD 8, Box 16A (Rural Route) 

I miss the ugly things: sallow

flypaper crusting in porch sun,

bootlines across shit-caked denim.

The dog’s staph-eaten paw

soaking in a Cool Whip bowl.

No lemonade sweating on a sill:

I want the penny loafer testing

a rumble strip of rusty nails,

Betadine’s kidney-smear stain.

I want the sour ferment of rotting

hay and the funk of whatever it is

that’s died between the walls. I’m

ready now, made to scrape grease

from the brick hearth, to sweep

attic bats, to drown the raccoon.

Outside, a kind of rainy season:

yew bushes shedding their coal-

colored seeds as if to hide all

evidence. When you’re young

what you don’t know can kill you

can flush your lips with berrywine.

Tasha’s up the road, laying heavy

from the busdriver. The boy I won’t

name aims a rifle at his cousin. There

they stand, smiling, breathing hard.

Let me keep them here, with us,

relax the finger’s pulley, coil this film,

stack it in a glossy gray tin. Praise the dirt

breeding in a cut, how easy methane-drunk

air parts for buckshot’s meteor shower.

What ache is this, that mimics a wireworm’s

slim boreholes? I wash a dish, feel nothing

but phantom cornstalk, kernels swelling

as my hand smothers silk grubs with oil.

So much gold, everywhere, gold—how

did I not see it? Gas lowered, the skillet still

spits. The pond, untroubled, swallows any

splash. This raccoon’s not thrashing, it’s just

a dance, his eyes’ yellow glare nothing more

than a reflection, of some old rising sun.

[Wilderness]