Slow Rag of the Yearbook

Frank Stanford

All she had to do was speak to you once a word in the lunchline
and you felt like it was Friday afternoon Her dress
was like a horse you would get a creak in your neck looking
for Her body was a plantation I had to tend myself
If she came past you in the halls with someone older Shit
hit the fan I'd stroll around the Library checking out books
like a silkshirted gambler from New Orleans tipping my cap
when I had none thinking the room was mine like Vic in Casablanca
The clock was an informer It let you down like a buddy
when he lets his Mamma order a shirt from Sears and Roebuck
with the same stripes as yours Even the jukebox is utter misery
To pass the time to kill it like a mosquito that won't leave you be
you walk across the gymfloor in your cleats in the middle of the night
She has her ugly friends slip you notes saying The end of the month
is just about here Everyone knows you're poor and a bastard besides
In bad weather the principal lets the girls wear boots and jeans
The days she didn't show up for school I might as well have
gotten Oughts in the morning I quit football twice
just so I could ride to the next town and back with her on the bus
when the games were away The English teacher got me back
on the team He's got pull The season ended We didntt do any good
I got a secret They thought I was cutting firewood and hunting down
Bee Trees I had them there I pulled it over their eyes like a sheet
I made us a little shack out of rough lumber Didn't take long
It had a kerosene lamp and all A stream passed not six feet
from under the porch She could make crawdads taste like Creole shrimp
She even left some of her clothes there It was a fine situation
Four o'clock sharp every afternoon she'd gallop up on her roan
We had a garden at least we planted one and nine Chinese roosters
We sent off for some laying hens but when we went to meet them
at the train they'd all suffocated in those cartons they ship them in
They say Houdini died from no air We buried them all around the little
grave In that place there was light to read by and write by
after she'd gone to sleep No one ever found out Not even our friends
Someone told me she was an Air Line Stewardess What a hell of a thing
for a woman to be walking up and down an aisle then thousand times
a day and about that far gone in the sky A bridesmaid of buckles
laps and gin She's in a different country every night No one
Ever found out Not to this day Hell she makes more than me
All I get is twelve bucks a day guiding the lost men
I take them into the waters they want to remember
When they didn't have shit for money when they didn't have guts
I give them one chance at the big one the legend no one tells
What they want doesn't swim doesn't sound like a man full of bull
What they want they're scared to land they're scared to death
Like co-pilots with blood in their goggles speaking of dogs
Call off the hounds looking for the shade of their voices at night
Scared shitless again of the moon and its dark slop
Mistaking it for a man from the past who could drink and talk
All night long and then swing the graveyard shift with the women
They're scared of losing their lures to shadows they're scared
Of waiting on the quick and the early and the dead years
That went by like a float made of toilet paper
Somebody has got to hunt down the dog locked in the Gym
Let the poor son-of-a-bitch out put him out of his misery
Some of them are still running laps some of them
Are finding out the hard way waiting in their own ass
Hole like an owl in the dark so far from their deaths dangerous sons
Some of them are so rich I've got a hunch they can fly
Anywhere they want anytime they please 0 I've seen them fly over
Shining like the deep-running spoons on the end of the line

Ginny Stanford