The Unbelievable Nightgown

Frank Stanford

Of my sister I can only say
she was like a long feather
who could breathe under the water
and snarl without lipstick
or meaning it
Her hair was like a wildcat
caught in some fisherman's nets
She wore it like a Cajun whore
The moon burned up
A wandering guitar player carved a song
just a few lines of it
on the gunnels of his skiff
He tied an anvil to his good foot
and hoisted it up like a baby
He screamed
Regret des yeux de la putain
Et belle comme une panthere
And heaved it over the side
The rope wrung itself out
growling like squashed cocoons
She would take a comb and scissors to my sideburns
and say Are you done with your dreaming
She would come in anytime of night she wanted
She would pull feathers out of the peahens
and wear white shoes
How can it be A pony and a rider
both can drown in a slew of wildflowers without a sound
I gave my dark heart to one stone
I drank all the water I could
Those days were black cariages
it cost so much to polish
Those days drawn by a team of horses
sunning themselves with shade
surviving the thirst of the sawgrass
and believe it
I was crouched down like a groom
hunting for a thrown shoe
I was sniffing out the shape of the air
like bored out and stooping wood
Goddamn it was terrible
In the tops of the cypresses where the moccasins sun
I wrote these poems to the Sister
A fair wind
got away with most of them So I
start a new one Sometimes I believe
I let her have them
What's finished is finished Salamanca says
His crooning is a darted hem
And she went down shade to the bayou
travelled there herself
Now she molts under the mud
There are still traces of her
Around where they've searched

Grounds

If you could do anything
You would dream
Put the slop bucket
Of twilight under the bed
Learn the blue lingo of the wolf
On a river smelling like a woman
Without opening your eyes
You'd turn up half-pints
She'd take care of the juke box
Love you'd let your eyes
Pick out the dust of your fingers
All your children
Would send five bucks
For the flowers for the grave
Lots of love
And a saucer with Jesus in the middle
You could use it
In the mornings
Cool your brew in his eyes
In Scotland there is a monastery
Where the monks eat swans
I read that once in the prison of dogs
Strays wandered through the ruins
Pure-blooded hell feathers
Stuck and hanging from the mouths with yolk
Slick as whorehouse talcum
And pale as the bowhunter's resin
Death in four suites
Stuttering gamblers shivering in a rock barn
With some smart anchoress sewing over a bullet hole
The fishermen put out
Branches of desire and solemnity on their lips
And the locomotive of darkness
Blows cold steam through the delta
A drunk hawk in a dead tree
Night doesn't wear any of these fine clothes
And the moon is odd
Like a drifter who can't take his eyes
Off blood in a country egg
All white like an albino digging a mule's grave
While at the same time the baker
Is making his rendezvous with the beekeeper
Pulling up her black dress from behind
Touch and go
Like paying last respects to a blind guitar player
Raining on the tin roof without stopping
Faraway blisters of blackstrap in my ear
Oh yes the moon has a beautiful bootie
And the sneak she loves combs his hair like Jacques Prevert
The past is slack
Like the shadow of those in a chain gang
Men among men sodding a levee
My ice tea is warm and there are no lemons
My supper is desolate and spare with regret
If the guard that queer angel brings me soup
He goes by the river first
And dips up tadpoles
With a piece of screen from my old door
Allusion to the twenty-six letters of my sentence

Sold animals

Bring enough to buy a new dress
Enough to cut nuts at a nightclub

We used to drink ice water
And listen to music
Look at the same hawk
In the same dead tree
We used to keep an ax like the moon
And a lunch bucket full of coins
Buried twelve paces from the coop
My sister's dress was torn
Like a clump of smellgoods from the stream
She stitched her days
With an eyeless needle in the morning
In the evening
The bus full of children
Goes by like a swollen man
With underwear burning on the end of a stick
Heading for the beautiful nests
In the barn where she undressed

Ginny Stanford