Thursday, September 11, 1986
Page 14
Daily Nebraskan
Dragging the River
Sin' was at the door one moment, stariugsu m mcr
in the eye
beaten hack In its briilit sctvritu. She clings to
the
doorframe likccarltfruit, green and cautious,
while her father
nia u inters on about Ihc dry fields, the new man
in the soil
nmservatiott office, the new methoiUsl hymnal,
si ns of omission. . .
At 12, she knows two irrefutable facts:
Slii' knows the president's name and she knows
he is a son of a goddamn bitch, she has known this
for four years and is ready to learn it all over again.
Thenext moment, she was just a sound in their
cars,
bjtzziiHj a h He theij sea rched for her hod if in the
black
coils of waU-r, clouding and balling up with
the plunge of rubber hip waders, scan-hint for
one IhhI y
in something that had been a mass grnw for
cattle
for 2't years.
Searching for a little ophelia with origami hands
among the fu manchu fingers of the willows and the
exposed
bed of nerves, bruised by the river
that made up the quickly receding early summer shore.
The father's face looks as if it has been
Kcrimshaaed into an ivory while's tooth
and t!.e v '!.!-,!v's s; it rfjrk wiih chewing tobacco
!is eye is ''. r?w picture window the white tail deer
j;i;r ;s'.! f ' . "tin iV.e autumn, t-miMifig hoof over hoof
i!'o tV' : ' T " Liif r;rr v-'..: h orre s!;otk at her
'wnm r: " ' f fee h:'.V t f .attW'?J her ' -' t
mS lit'.. . - .'.:.!,;-,', v.-"
I'Ls I" '.' . i i t' ? i v 1 in !".? '',' 3
wl rt !. -y i i 1 -r ri..i':..'r, t!-.e a., ! i- '. '.-J
:iu.l';-:-:'";5 . s cftr? f n9" J i ;
: ct!"2s ;;;: . jv-;':
At tie c . v. ;:-.rr ; -": :, s'.e'd v. ' -U .
sn-i feer e;; . : tu foiis Lii :i Mo tare v. L'r.? jc:
tiul fra k 1 J it t e ttrn-iv. nrii, ifito ! .
tossed into an updraft and eventual fall, into a snake
and four worms that made nests in the warm pocket
of her father's hand. A pony stretches herself out
across a gorge, that once housed u river, one of those
vestigial extensions of the Platte that live short
but virile sentences, only to be plundered away
in the final revision. The ground breathes in a death of
promise,
The water too,
The latch falls into its cradle and the storm
outside is reduced to the sound of swallowed thunder
barely bucking the heavy handmade furniture.
In the morning the leaves of ash trees and lesser fauna
sag or have been lifted away in the sharp wind
of grey thorns, nails, some as hard as railroad spikes
shattered some windshields in Garden County, A bam
in the distance decapitated by lightning
threatens to split its dark oaken seams
and the fields, where jagged bone husks jut like
the stripped bodies of half buried soldiers
dust kicked over grey uniforms as the living
hurried on to the next battle ...
Something else has been lifted away
he is crying for her in a mice
lie hojH's will reach the horns of god
and still it sounds like he's shouting
into a bucket.
Suddenly there are many dark rooms that seem
underwater, furniture floats past his eyes,
pictures nod on their way to the aphotie
depths. There are dark rooms full of clocks
stricken and quiet, their throats torn out,
ghosts claw at the door of his apostasy,
ossifying all life therein and the dark clouds
outside flesh and dress the hard bone and
fossil marrow, preparing for the archeozoic.
The wind sets o.Tto shave the land, toussle
the old woman hair of tumbleweeds and pat
.hent'oSf to 'vtedp ja. ttie.rti st r:i vipers f
. 'A'.v i . r ) r. ; t'ia zrcuyi
- :.;! p : i ti to ich tl.e f :!Js
,. -1 r 1 1 - a v "n s ',-ice olJ and
: t-f sc jtt r' v.;:tw. i&i slack Wml'iM
!!.;; v, J f ''$ 4 tw rt 4c t, 6:3.;.'.'s it -
s.rA C 8 Ly.? it green wood Lkc tunbg fcrks.
T;.e tV is tacked so for inio a cdrner -it
is not even the sky anymore
The river pulls at one strand of hair
lifts a hand above the head, st niggles
to make her sleek with the flow.
He is a bag of memories on the second day or her loss,
remembering the first dance at the now hollow barn.
sitting , ., .. ...
like a skull on a narrow throat of pecked broodii.fi silt
the cigarette butts launched off the thumb and furcfingci
toward the animal stalls
where the cows pressed firmly against a far wall,
eyes big and sliding up and down in a bed of mucous
like agate marbles spun on a sidewalk in the rain.
Boulder hipped women sulked behind tables
set with their best pies and casseroles, whispered
into each other's big ears about the daughter floozies
and the weak kneed sons who line opposite walls
latching on to the (hick barn beams with dirty hog
smelling
fists and pasting scrubed soft chins to the bare
shoulders of big sisters. Til one calloused sore hand
stretches into the narrow reach of torchlight for a hesitant
clump of lingers, one brilliant face half smudged by
shadow
lifts from a departing shoulder and confronts
a pair of blue jeans and flannel shirt hung like the blind
widow's laundry on a line as knotty as barbed wire.
And her hair in the branches
her fingers along the rocks
the water and her breathless checks
she used to puff to be sjioiled
and hold it in, dear god, just to besjxrilcd.
In the end, he remembers, the dance to be had
was the dance of his daughter's hair
as she twirled around and around alone under
a dagger of clean light
in a barn now picked as fleshless
as her mother's buried (if still heaving) ribs.
He wati hed her through the pping seams
and took his hand, the bullet, and his mouth, -
the T:e, ar.d his eye of implodirg glass "
b&ck ta the house here the sun dissolved
his recollections tike lemon juice on a counter.
Her hair dancing around her finest smile ' , f
until tfcs dagger tvs to smoke and recedes
Irt'of-iil-'eiliofOvilisM.. ; - '- ' '
V- o.t e t imed up to the sky, afloat ,
? t h . K i ? fl'tatin., she asks herself,
Vat ", y t r r?v body the nier, she thifiks,
i$ still I vt rip Unjtes uith Vie lay ,
ofwy body, bu t the sky rushes on, torn ra'js
cf n i":St clouds prod Vis najping moon.
Wake ii p, moon, there is some moving to be done,
soon the moon is drowned, and the clouds hace
knitted into a flag which weeps and shakes
with chrlricity.
On the moon, not a brealh is taken
Hie holes float on, dim and airless
there is no resistance to the orbit
to this slow drifting.
() moon, faceless your father is crying
for this flaw in your imaginings, you
watched a child and thought her merely floating,
you watched her as if she were part
of another sky, now she's bone
and shaking unhinged in a bag
making the sound of sand, now she's
a slow trapse o) booted feet
down and up the mud slides for more of her
for more of the moon's work,
curled in the center of the dripping
hammock raised and tied in grim success
the little cheetah
the little leopard
the little panther
m tted uiiivsisting.
Faceless your father is crying ' a room underwater
in another room of solid bone he is crying
like every tear is a city and a crowd
and a bus to Omaha, like every tear were the core
of a big black fruit
picked from every tree bending with age at one
gnarled joint to touch that river.
Water, you fool no one
not the fish that swim in you
or the shore crumbling into
your mouth like loaves of black bread
surely not this father '
nor the dead in your graveyard
the rising water's pillaged,
the thousands of eager skulls that bit st
the net before your daughter and her log, sefcty.
You fool not the dancers, who dance despite you
but not unaware, you fool not the fanner, who knows ,
your love of rice instead of wheat and com,
you fool not the merchant or the schoolboy
leaking into you on his way home from school
because you've earned his spleenful of piss
not because he cannot wait. .
CHECK THE
COMPETITON
GET THEIR
BEST PRICE
ON KEGS
WITH OR
WITHOUT
CUPS & ICE
WE'LL
BEAT IT!
Largest
Selection
of
CHILLED
WINES
in
Lincoln
lit? QfeEpo iian& rp fin miijffl
P ) Super
i ) I I Lzr Selection
a
Of
IMPORTED
BEER
ALL WARM
CASE BEER
COST PLUS
10
Absolutely "THE COLDESTBEER" in Town!
SUPER
SELECTION
OF CHILLED
WINE
COOLERS AT
EVERYDAY
LOW
PRICES!
NO GAME THIS WEEK -WHY NOT HAVE AN
NCAA PARTY!
BLOOD RELATIVES ONLY
NO CLOSE FRIENDS' ALLOWED!
WE WILL BEAT ANY AND ALL
KEG PRICES IN TOWN!
NOBODY UNDERSELLS MIKE!
Keg Discount If Reserved 24 Hours In Advance.
Volume
Discount
Cost Plus
5
ALL 2 LT.
AND
6 PK. OF POP
ON SPECIAL!
2Lt. $1.29
6Pk $1.99
MANY
SELECTIONS!
-..a, destroyer. Brahni
. red figure with four head.
unu