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Quentin Clingerman Has Died

The winds are picking up
blowing trash into my yard
and announcing a storm that will
fall apart before it arrives.
The worn out flags and crosses
still look as majestic as they did,
but I’m opening by insides
and filling my pages with secrets.
I’m waiting for critiques
by entrenched folks who think
too much about the sex lives
of other people, of my sex life.
I want to reveal myself again,
try to make people see my words
and my techniques and stop worrying
about who I’ve kissed or
who I haven’t, but wanted to.
I want to edit volumes of poetry
about God and America and guns,
poems filled with the lies we tell ourselves
and enjoy them because the author
knew how to write the words beautifully.
I don’t want to read the judgement.
It starts to rain and I’m surprised;
I thought the rain would miss us.

Notes

Written 21 September 2019 in Payne County, Oklahoma.

Brian Fuchs, “Quentin Clingerman Has Died” from Okie Dokie (Scissortail Press, 2019)Continue Reading

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Triticum aestivum

for Brent

Soon enough we’ll be old and nostalgic.
You’ll talk about the prices of wheat and corn
like you grew up on a farm
instead of being a spectator at the rodeo.
I won’t understand the language of agriculture,
but I won’t care because you’ll remind me of mom.

Notes

Written 20 September 2019 in Payne County, Oklahoma

Brian Fuchs, “Triticum aestivum” from Okie Dokie (Scissortail Press, 2019)

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Gleditsia triacanthos

for a friend

You were beautiful once, and maybe you still are.
I rarely revisit those moments when we became adults
on Sunday mornings, skipping church for each other.
I don’t think about the length of your neck
and I don’t dwell on the smell of you skin.
I’ve turned you upside down, exposed the roots
and tried to understand how they worked,
rubbing the soil into the grooves of my skin.
I don’t want to return to your kindness or cruelty,
and I don’t want to put you back how I found you;
Your branches are thorny and I’d end up hurt again.
So, I’ll repaint the photos I have of you in new colors
and we can pretend that there were no feelings.
And I’ll send you copies of the new versions
and you can pretend that you don’t remember.

Notes

Written 18 September 2019 in Payne County, Oklahoma.

Brian Fuchs, “Gleditsia triacanthos” from Okie Dokie (Scissortail Press, 2019)

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Unpolished

for Skylar

I had found the stone in the snow,
in the space between mountains and ocean,
between rabbits and sandpipers,
between past and future.
I collected her because she is beautiful;
rough hewn and cold,
delicate dusty green nestled in white,
a homogeneous frozen expanse.
I picked her up, rolled her around in my hand,
snow melting through my fingers,
dripping holes into the snow below.
Her texture was porous and it transported me
to the hand of my father’s grandmother.
I’d hold the old woman’s hand as she
told me about her youth, about boys.
Her hands were forged through decades,
shaped and textured in iron-rich soils
and in the kneading of bread.
I recalled boulders along the Red River
where I had not yet learned to be ashamed
of my flamboyance and the swish of my hips.
I remembered running my hands along the surface
of a stone I sat on, my red shoes dangling
above the water streaming by,
wishing I could meld with the river and the trees
and become a part of the mountains of New Mexico.
I looked back at my new treasure, perfectly natural.
I could tumble her as I had tumbled the stones
collected in my youth, from New Mexico
or from my grandmothers garden,
or else purchased at a store especially to polish.
She would shine in the sun, glossy and brilliant,
and her colors would become intense and rich.
I had found the stone in the snow,
in the space between rough and smooth,
between male and female,
between sadness and joy.
I collected her because she is perfect.
I took the rock with me, displayed her
among the treasured glossy specimens,
those enchanting pieces that I admire daily,
somehow now so ordinary.

Notes

Written 17 September 2019 in Payne County, Oklahoma.

Brian Fuchs, “Unpolished” from Okie Dokie (Scissortail Press, 2019)

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Daucus carota

for Angela

We came together
to write new chapters
and to tell stories,
if only to ourselves.
Some were writing voluminous sagas,
spending time in cabins
they hoped to translate
like a Boris Pasternak
of Alaska’s near-wilderness.
Others wrote their memoirs,
revealing to us all
just how cold snow can feel
to a Samoan family.
We’d laugh at how ridiculous it all seemed,
and at ourselves because we
are all ridiculous and cold.
I worked on new lines of verse,
wrapped up in myself,
observing and reserved.
We were all doing our part,
all trying to be interesting.
Angela would arrive with carrots,
small globes pulled from her own garden,
and some tea from her travels.
Or beets,
pomelos.
The pomelos she’d purchased
at a grocery store because oranges
and grapefuit
are too ordinary.
They invite no questions.
Her story would transport us
to the places in other states and countries
where she had enjoyed a meal,
or to the soil of her garden,
bursting with vegetables.
And we’d talk about gardening
and the carrots
and hunting.
I would watch her face,
framed with a desire
to be accepted,
to be loved,
appreciated for her carrots and pomelos.
My life would hang there,
uninteresting
and I wouldn’t talk about that with her.
I thought about other Angelas
of my past.
They didn’t share beets with me,
and their offices didn’t have
the sweet aroma of a teahouse,
cinnamon, clove, raspberry,
vanilla, soil.
I wonder about the bonfires
I never attended.
The discarded wood,
the friends and beer.
Was Angela there,
bunch of carrots in hand?
I can see her with the glow on her face
from the brilliant fire,
reflections of children or dogs in her eyes,
smiling because she is happy,
always happy.
What about Faydra?
She has surely lit a few fires
in her solitude.
I wonder how brilliant
the fires used to be for her,
I wonder how dull the fires seem now.
Oh, Faydra!
Faydra
Faydra
I wonder if the carrots help
on the days when things
start to collapse.
I worry about the darkness,
understand it.
When our stories are all written,
will we understand the languages
in which they’ve been written?
I find my own language so difficult,
and I worry about understanding
the bonfires we all set for ourselves,
the interest we take in pomelos,
carrots, cabins, the sun, or
which tea goes best
with happiness.

Written 17 September 2019 in Payne County, Oklahoma

Brian Fuchs, “Daucus carota” from Okie Dokie (Scissortail Press, 2019)

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A Boy from Albuquerque

for Kami

Write me letters on that old Olivetti
and we’ll pretend things are the same as the used to be.
I’m listening to those bands again,
Caroline’s Spine and Alice in Chains.
They are pretending too, and I feel young again.
You’ve been in Idaho for too long, or is it Italy?
I can never remember, but I knew it is far from me.
I’m carrying you with me, folded up and tucked away.
So, tell me about your family and about the boys you’ve kissed.
And I’ll send you a sketch of a flower I found growing in my yard.
We’ll feel carefree and lovely,
and for a moment we will be together again.

Written 12 September 2019 in Payne County, Oklahoma.

Brian Fuchs, “A Boy from Albuquerque” from Okie Dokie (Scissortail Press, 2019)

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Pieces of Dissected Butterflies

I left Tulsa when my friends had died
and we were all set adrift, angry and lost,
wondering if staying meant more of us would die.
I tried to go to Dallas, to a life I wanted.
They boys swarm thickly there,
and I still wonder if my days would have been
spent in the beds of strangers if I’d gone there.
I’ve always longed for the beds of strangers,
to feel taken for granted and awkward.

In moving, I detoured, finding myself in Anchorage,
near the place where my dad spent his youth,
carried on winds I rode for too long, or just long enough.
I was not qualified for life in Alaska,
not qualified for the men who had gone there.
But I was determined to find myself,
or to find Dad in the places where his friends still lived.
His youth was left in an Alaska that no longer exists,
so my mind found new reasons to keep me there.

I found the spaces I understood,
the pockets of the city that seemed familiar,
bookstores filled with other refugees,
of lives that had started to drift.
My mind invented the things I didn’t know
and the people around me became gods.
I didn’t question that, and I formed a religion.
Their lives were spent being perfect
in ways I could never spend my own life.
They are still gods; I pray to them in darkness,
my soul crying out to be acknowledged.

On cold mornings, I liked to price books,
scanning their barcodes and attaching a sticker.
I would think about my friends,
wonder about the shapes of their bodies,
and worry that they could hear my thoughts.
I’d worry that I was saying the thoughts aloud,
and I’d wait for Kevin to go upstairs to inject his insulin
so I could stop thinking about his waist.
I’m still thinking about his waist.
The decade I’ve had to reflect has made me more curious
and sometimes I worry that he can still hear my thoughts.

I have been dissecting butterflies,
stained glass wings pulled apart
by unwieldy spinning steel fingers
as I think about beauty and conformity,
praying to my gods, mindlessly offering
the insects as a tribute.
I didn’t intend this massacre
and in the lawn lie the tiny lifeless parts.
In the hot sun of the places of my youth,
I don’t have new shapes to fill my mind,
new boys to think about.
I dwell on the boys of my past.

I’m reaching back, feeling myself grasping
for people I can’t always recognize,
the names apparitions in my mind.
Some of the gods’ faces have merged & morphed.
I’m taking the ones I wanted the most,
or the ones I wanted to be the most,
and placing their pieces where I can sort them
and try to hold onto them in my mind.
I’m still thinking about waists and hips and shoulders,
still wondering about the firmness of skin.

They haven’t seen me wondering,
their lives have pulled them toward much happier places,
some growing beautifully in Alaska,
others found scattered by the winds
that had first deposited them near me.
The butterflies are whispering secrets,
understandably warning each other about me.
In new cities and states, in their new lives,
they think about the times we spent together
and I go on thinking about their bodies.

Notes

Written 12 September 2019 in Payne County, Oklahoma.

Brian Fuchs, “Pieces of Dissected Butterflies” from Okie Dokie (Scissortail Press, 2019)Continue Reading