The Boathouse

Frank Stanford

His raincoat. His soup. His bullets. His calendars
With women without clothes, spark plugs and u-joints for sale.
There was a wire in his jaw, a muscle gone in the thigh,
Mildew in his tarps. The corks walked out of the empty pints
Like crawdads in a dead man's pot.

A dead child, too, under the house the mouth
Full of trebles, glass under the nails. He sleeps
In a gunny sack near the same place I died.

I wanted his legs.

Some other things I know, I am dreaming
I am still alive, setting skunk traps around the cove.
Warm water drips out of my ear,
Dark water that's been there a long time.

I've carried it for years, like a relic from a holy swim.
I ache in my neck, red as watermelon meat.

In the village of the past there is a cat house sinking with mystery.
My neck is full of places
Where the river rats bit and left their fever.
Guitars turn towards the corners
Of the uneven rooms, my Arkansas homes, like empty lamps
With long wicks.

Hum with the dumb and hope nobody has your number.

Caffish wade themselves in the shallows, men in hipboots
With flashlights looking for me, stroking my hair with their blunt hoes
When the others aren't looking, turning the topsoil
Of their own land and dead, their dreams like screwdrivers.

Groundcover grows over and from the boards and ropes,
And there is no menu to eat after a rain. The banks don't want you
To build your little raft for death.

Those lag bolts once sunken deep come out now like tree frogs
And will no longer slip in and hold. Lick
The side of the boathouse, it tastes like a snapshot, spilled blood.

Come now and take the back way, the lost road
To the fine old water where the boathouse is kept
By her dead men.

Ginny Stanford