There were girls then
who were pretty but wild.
Mothers feared for their sons
and said nothing, but worried.
There was Mary Ruth who kissed
with tongue, painted her nails red.
There was Patsy who fucked,
her black hair in a bun. All said
by the slow burning boys
of the hot girls, toys
of their imagination . . .
There was Mary Louise,
older than most, equestrienne
and seductress.
She could shuck her dress
and that was all, her tan body
a shiver of joy
warm under any sky.
We scaled the high fence
and shucked our clothes,
we swam in defiance
of the city law. Our woes
would never begin here. The city,
hardly a town, lacked money
to hire a night patrol.
the crickets lulled
people in houses already sleepy
from trying to make a baby,
what we'd do only when ready.
We learned to do it under water,
did it when the moon
was full. There was banter
and braggadocio.
There was Irene Castenada,
beloved of Floyce Alexander,
from whom he learned.
We knew nothing of love.
We were still coming to life.
The girls were women already
and creatures from far away
come here to make us happy
or so we thought
in our speed and brawn
shackled to the ignorant
ambience of our lonely town.
There was tawny Yvonne
whose pal was buxom Mary.
Yvonne got married,
left school, Mary
soon followed, tall girls
with stories to tell.
Wherever they are
is far from the ocean,
pearls abandoned by their shells.
(24 July 2011)
copyright 2011 by Floyce Alexander
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Saturday, July 23, 2011
The Et Cetera
It doesn’t make falling down fun,
this elixir. The road takes its turn
at the bridge. Saturday night dance
inside the Circle Inn.
Who plays in a trance?
Why pitch a body against an urn
waiting to be filled?
Being dead is no excuse
for living like this.
Hawaiian guitar, cowboy tunes
up the ass, go to the city for jazz.
Can’t wait? Get down,
like she says: Here, on top of me,
or wait, I'll straddle you.
The dope works. The booze levels out
a high. The river gurgles by.
O, she pleads, Get down low:
hard cock, hot cunt,
Hank Williams never had it so good
and couldn’t stop before he did.
(23 July 2011)
copyright 2011 by Floyce Alexander
this elixir. The road takes its turn
at the bridge. Saturday night dance
inside the Circle Inn.
Who plays in a trance?
Why pitch a body against an urn
waiting to be filled?
Being dead is no excuse
for living like this.
Hawaiian guitar, cowboy tunes
up the ass, go to the city for jazz.
Can’t wait? Get down,
like she says: Here, on top of me,
or wait, I'll straddle you.
The dope works. The booze levels out
a high. The river gurgles by.
O, she pleads, Get down low:
hard cock, hot cunt,
Hank Williams never had it so good
and couldn’t stop before he did.
(23 July 2011)
copyright 2011 by Floyce Alexander
Friday, July 22, 2011
Mabton Etc.
You go to the lower valley
and visit George Petty outside Mabton.
Your mother says he’s good to her,
maybe because his wife Rae died
in front of your mother’s eyes.
He was already seeing his girlfriend
and had what he always wanted,
a vineyard. George was retired from Hanford,
where he worked in security.
Laborers there come down with cancer
and their children follow in death;
your friend Witherup left home early,
but too late . . . radioactivity
more lethal than Los Alamos.
Someone called to learn you had no problems
from growing up not so far away.
George lives up to his name, Petty,
hating people whose language is not his,
you tell your mother you have to go home,
and on the way out
your dead father’s friend from down the road
drives you to the airport in Yakima;
your mother weeps through her Irish smile.
Rae was a big breasted German woman
who sat with you in Seattle
where she met George long before the vineyard.
Wall drove out once and you told him to go
back to Marge, who was always up to it . . .
So went three months in Seattle.
George left real estate
for his government job, security
clearances, hiding bombs in Montana . . .
All you want to remember of Mabton
was pitching against Mel Stottlemeyer
before he grew up and became a star
pitcher for the New York Yankees.
He wasn’t that good in high school.
Or you were too stupid to know a star
when you saw one.
All you knew, to see, was the morning star.
(22 July 2011)
copyright 2011 by Floyce Alexander
and visit George Petty outside Mabton.
Your mother says he’s good to her,
maybe because his wife Rae died
in front of your mother’s eyes.
He was already seeing his girlfriend
and had what he always wanted,
a vineyard. George was retired from Hanford,
where he worked in security.
Laborers there come down with cancer
and their children follow in death;
your friend Witherup left home early,
but too late . . . radioactivity
more lethal than Los Alamos.
Someone called to learn you had no problems
from growing up not so far away.
George lives up to his name, Petty,
hating people whose language is not his,
you tell your mother you have to go home,
and on the way out
your dead father’s friend from down the road
drives you to the airport in Yakima;
your mother weeps through her Irish smile.
Rae was a big breasted German woman
who sat with you in Seattle
where she met George long before the vineyard.
Wall drove out once and you told him to go
back to Marge, who was always up to it . . .
So went three months in Seattle.
George left real estate
for his government job, security
clearances, hiding bombs in Montana . . .
All you want to remember of Mabton
was pitching against Mel Stottlemeyer
before he grew up and became a star
pitcher for the New York Yankees.
He wasn’t that good in high school.
Or you were too stupid to know a star
when you saw one.
All you knew, to see, was the morning star.
(22 July 2011)
copyright 2011 by Floyce Alexander
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Wapato
Who could say the man she married did not love her as much as the young Floyce Alexander? They brought children into the world and by the time he saw her again, years, even worlds later, they were as much gone as he. What worlds? she laughed.
He rode in the pickup with Jess and his father. They went to Wapato to fight gamecocks. It was illegal, but who cared? They were all Mexicans with more Spanish names than Maltos. The blades attached to the chicken’s feet were the most frightening thing to him. The old man smiled. The cocks’ beaks were ready once their scent was shared, forcibly. Jess’s father lost as many fights as he won. It was the birds who lost, and no bird ever won. Yet there was always next time. They put the wooden cages back in the pickup bed and drove home, where they kept the cocks in the backyard, out of sight.
Don’t think she became less desirable to him, Juan admonished. Don’t think I didn’t want her too, that time in Mexico City when he left because he had to get back to the States before Jess had returned from Acapulco where he was with his friend all the while. She simply said No and she meant it. She was not only beautiful but stubborn. I told her I wished I were named Floyce Alexander.
He met Cathleen in Seattle and the years went by when he could conjure no one else in his harem of memory. Only Irene Castenada . . . But it was her world, the one she wanted, and besides, he had his chance, it hurt her, it was a wonder she could give birth after that . . .
Juan told Wall all this, in his fashion. He left out the parts he knew firsthand and may have embroidered those he had heard from one of the two of them, but he found the words and uttered what there was to say, from that perspective. Not long after, Wall was busted and sent up. Juan never regretted not telling him what Juan would write much later, much much later . . .
When it rained in northern California Juan missed New Orleans. God knows he never thought of Sunnyside, or White Swan or Brownstown, Toppenish or Wapato, not once he was elsewhere, with the Irish lass and if not by his side, by hers, and God knows, as they say, what to do when the shit hits and other evil enters the portals, even if Dante’s sign Abandon hope . . . is hard to read after so long and no one who will volunteer their time to come down off the hill this far and repaint it.
(21 July 2011)
copyright 2011 by Floyce Alexander
He rode in the pickup with Jess and his father. They went to Wapato to fight gamecocks. It was illegal, but who cared? They were all Mexicans with more Spanish names than Maltos. The blades attached to the chicken’s feet were the most frightening thing to him. The old man smiled. The cocks’ beaks were ready once their scent was shared, forcibly. Jess’s father lost as many fights as he won. It was the birds who lost, and no bird ever won. Yet there was always next time. They put the wooden cages back in the pickup bed and drove home, where they kept the cocks in the backyard, out of sight.
Don’t think she became less desirable to him, Juan admonished. Don’t think I didn’t want her too, that time in Mexico City when he left because he had to get back to the States before Jess had returned from Acapulco where he was with his friend all the while. She simply said No and she meant it. She was not only beautiful but stubborn. I told her I wished I were named Floyce Alexander.
He met Cathleen in Seattle and the years went by when he could conjure no one else in his harem of memory. Only Irene Castenada . . . But it was her world, the one she wanted, and besides, he had his chance, it hurt her, it was a wonder she could give birth after that . . .
Juan told Wall all this, in his fashion. He left out the parts he knew firsthand and may have embroidered those he had heard from one of the two of them, but he found the words and uttered what there was to say, from that perspective. Not long after, Wall was busted and sent up. Juan never regretted not telling him what Juan would write much later, much much later . . .
When it rained in northern California Juan missed New Orleans. God knows he never thought of Sunnyside, or White Swan or Brownstown, Toppenish or Wapato, not once he was elsewhere, with the Irish lass and if not by his side, by hers, and God knows, as they say, what to do when the shit hits and other evil enters the portals, even if Dante’s sign Abandon hope . . . is hard to read after so long and no one who will volunteer their time to come down off the hill this far and repaint it.
(21 July 2011)
copyright 2011 by Floyce Alexander
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Toppenish: II
Wall drove his Caddy convertible across Snoqualmie Pass
after a few drinks in the Viceroy in downtown Seattle.
He stayed in a motel not far from the rodeo grounds
next to the highway going north and south,
where he’d come from and where he'd never go,
the crossroads west to the Columbia River
opposite a dogleg jog into town.
Juan hung around the Fourth of July tent, some humor
thought up by Yakamas who couldn’t help but wonder
what the Founding Fathers would have done
without slaves, or Indians to steal from..
Inside the door flap the gambling ensued,
men smoking kinnikinnick,
drinking wine in a brown paper sack.
Night and day, day and night, the elders never lost track.
Next day Wall bragged about the woman he picked up
in a roadside café to bust his nut..
Filling up with gas he used the restroom
where a hungover man was washing with running water
his bloody wound behind one ear.
At the red light in front of the Pastime, Juan told Wall
about the time this guy he knew took a driver’s test,
and the patrolman said, Take a right here and go back
to the office, and Juan's friend didn’t bother
stopping before turning and had to come back in a week.
On the way north they drove through Wapato,
where Irene Castenada lived, the first love
of Floyce Alexander when they both were growing up
south of here. Irene was a mother now,
unlike the girl who once loved and was loved, nothing more.
(20 July 2011)
copyright 2011 by Floyce Alexander
after a few drinks in the Viceroy in downtown Seattle.
He stayed in a motel not far from the rodeo grounds
next to the highway going north and south,
where he’d come from and where he'd never go,
the crossroads west to the Columbia River
opposite a dogleg jog into town.
Juan hung around the Fourth of July tent, some humor
thought up by Yakamas who couldn’t help but wonder
what the Founding Fathers would have done
without slaves, or Indians to steal from..
Inside the door flap the gambling ensued,
men smoking kinnikinnick,
drinking wine in a brown paper sack.
Night and day, day and night, the elders never lost track.
Next day Wall bragged about the woman he picked up
in a roadside café to bust his nut..
Filling up with gas he used the restroom
where a hungover man was washing with running water
his bloody wound behind one ear.
At the red light in front of the Pastime, Juan told Wall
about the time this guy he knew took a driver’s test,
and the patrolman said, Take a right here and go back
to the office, and Juan's friend didn’t bother
stopping before turning and had to come back in a week.
On the way north they drove through Wapato,
where Irene Castenada lived, the first love
of Floyce Alexander when they both were growing up
south of here. Irene was a mother now,
unlike the girl who once loved and was loved, nothing more.
(20 July 2011)
copyright 2011 by Floyce Alexander
Toppenish: I
There is a row of bars on Main Street,
Toppenish,
dedicated to the demise
of the Yakama tribe.
You go in one of those places
and come out empty,
America dead
in its tracks.
Vivian Benz would say "one way sleep"
with her Anglo beauty
reflected in the way she spoke Indian
without irony.
I took the claims at the window,
Juan said: She adjudicated at her desk
on the back wall of Kafka’s office.
She pulled a cousin off the street
and took him home.
Her husband, who was all Anglo, left.
She loved him dearly.
What people do comes straight
from the heart
or stays where it eats you up,
admittedly slowly.
Juan went in the Pastime and started out
without a drink. The barfly
near the door asked for a favor.
The guy two stools from her
came over and nuzzled her neck,
cozying up,
a husband drunk with greed.
(20 July 2011)
copyright 2011 by Floyce Alexander
Toppenish,
dedicated to the demise
of the Yakama tribe.
You go in one of those places
and come out empty,
America dead
in its tracks.
Vivian Benz would say "one way sleep"
with her Anglo beauty
reflected in the way she spoke Indian
without irony.
I took the claims at the window,
Juan said: She adjudicated at her desk
on the back wall of Kafka’s office.
She pulled a cousin off the street
and took him home.
Her husband, who was all Anglo, left.
She loved him dearly.
What people do comes straight
from the heart
or stays where it eats you up,
admittedly slowly.
Juan went in the Pastime and started out
without a drink. The barfly
near the door asked for a favor.
The guy two stools from her
came over and nuzzled her neck,
cozying up,
a husband drunk with greed.
(20 July 2011)
copyright 2011 by Floyce Alexander
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