Cameron McHenry

Like, totally…
the speech, at first take
like some superficially
dizzy dialogue
from some mid-eighties
drive-in movie…
From whence
this Encino phrasing?..
this fractured
girl talk of privilege
and swimming pools
and lacquered toe-nails
and cavernous
closets and armoires?
I mean, like, totally.

Like, where
is the nearest mall?
And then a door
opens up just a crack
in the same speech,
and the white hot innards
of the fiery,
clay hardening kiln
deep within
her narrow,
titanium ribbed chest
are glimpsed
if only briefly,
but briefly
is enough
to be blinded
by their jumping,
dancing flames
and scorched
by their merciless,
unsentimental heat,
and you realize instantly

that
you’ll burn yourself up
completely
if you’re not careful,
that this one
has to be approached
with some sort of
protective mask,
and handled
with irons and tongs
and the asbestos
of absolute respect
and healthy fear.
Totally.

The eyes,
the pale, pale
predator eyes
that can pin you
to the wall
for her intuitive
inspection
are pure
Arkansas moonshine,
transparent
and volatile,
eyes meant to look
down the barrel
of a rifle,
pointin’
at some damm
gummint revenoor
fixin to bust up
the still.
Totally.

And then she reads,
and the flames escape
through her mouth
flare through the nostrils
of that nose
that yearns
to be prominent
but fails,
at least for now,
and the flames
stoking the images
in her Dresden china skull
make her eyes glow
until they lose all color
and she is forced
to look down
for fear of igniting
the entire vicinity
in holocaust…
She reads quickly
thinking that,
with the transitory flash,
we’ll forget,
in time,
what she looks like
naked,
but we don’t,
not on your life.
Her poetry
of skin and hair
and mucous membranes
lingers,
is burned
into the inner eyes
of those assaulted
like permanent,
radioactive shadows
at ground zero.
Totally.

She is old, very old
with no ambitions
save for the accumulation
of years of adventure,
of the happenstance
of windblown
loves and passions,
and she herself
is blown about
by the wind
of adventure
not as some detached,
harmless leaf
but rather
like a knife blade
spun and flung
by tornado blasts ,
a blade
penetrating oak trees
through and through,
penetrating you,
her whole
razor sharp being
slices
through the thick plenum
of human tedium…
Rapier arms
swing dangerously
to the beat set down
by the long scythes
and sickles
of her loping,
lopping legs
and feet,
as she slices
and pierces
her way along.
Totally.

She is very old
and very wise,
wisely generous
and even more
wisely stern…
And she makes
this man of 53 years
feel like a trivial,
young boy
with trivial,
juvenile obsessions,
and in her company,
I expect her,
at any moment,
to reach down
from her heights
and pat me on the head
and ask me,
"Would you like
a cup of hot cocoa,
little boy?"
And of course,
I would say,
"Yes,
I would like a cup
of hot cocoa,
and could you put
some of those
nice little marshmallows
in it for me, please?"
Totally.

Ma e persona diversa
cuando parla
nella lingua
della sua nonna,
Flora Lincioni…
In quelle occasioni
parla lentamente
con una sensualità
nata
della luna piena,
quella luna amabile
che le tira baci argentini
sulla sua
liscia fronte pallida…
Lei anticipa con piacere
la vecchiezza,
e desidera essere
una vecchia sdentata,
una donna anziana
chi ride con la gioia
della gioventù eterna.

Totalmente,
Cameron McHenry