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Stillwater, Oklahoma

3. THROWING SPHERES: A MIRRORED CLOGYRNACH

My boyhood never depended
on throwing spheres like all men did.
I so often mused
if I had confused
dead with bruised
God forbid

Days in parks,
I’d explore
searching woodland floors
for seed pods and more.
Imagined tree friends, their rough bark
I’d so much missed since our last lark.

“that scattered belt of forest land, about forty miles in width, which stretches across the country from north to south, from the Arkansas to the Red River, separating the upper from the lower prairies, and commonly called the “Cross Timber.” — Washington Irving

Notes

Written 19 February 2020

Brian Fuchs, “Stillwater, Oklahoma” from Scissor-tailed Flycatcher (Scissortail Press, 2020)

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Stillwater, Oklahoma

2. THE WEATHER

I have stood under skies full of rain.
I have been a scared child, comforted
by the clouds which might burst into storms,
and by hail, the chaos of thunder.
I have seen the bright sun in the sky,
oddly close, maybe more than before,
close enough to reach up, touch its rays
if not for exhaustion from the heat.
Everything start to wilt on those days,
our spirits, slumped lilies still standing,
thinking back on Easter’s soft beauty.

Notes

Written 19 February 2020

Brian Fuchs, “Stillwater, Oklahoma” from Scissor-tailed Flycatcher (Scissortail Press, 2020)

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Stillwater, Oklahoma

1. HEARTBEAT

“a vast and magnificent landscape. The prairies bordering on the rivers are always varied in this way with woodland, so beautifully interspersed as to appear to have been laid out by the hand of taste… to rival the most ornamented scenery of Europe.” — Washington Irving

I’ve felt your beating heart;
thump thump… thump thump… thump thump…
thump thump… thump thump… thump thump…
Old folks still make weekly
pilgrimages to pray,
to seek God and solace.
Many hours of my youth
I spent rubbing the hands
of my grandma, wrinkled
and loose-skinned like mine now,
while the congregation
sang hymns from “the blue book,”
while old family friends
talked about love, dryly
reciting the red words.
Three times or more a week,
we’d gather to worship.
Thump thump… thump thump… thump thump…
I have felt the comfort
of belonging there, fell
for empty dogma long
before my welcome stopped.

Notes

Written 19 February 2020

Brian Fuchs, “Stillwater, Oklahoma” from Scissor-tailed Flycatcher (Scissortail Press, 2020)

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Skyline & McElroy

These spaces were once open wide;
we explored the details for hours.
They seem to darken and cower;
now they shrink, wither, and divide.

Free, we stretched our wings fearlessly.
We never thought we’d have bad luck
even after Christine was struck
and Rusty was rushed urgently,

tire and concrete in his face,
to the E.R. for doctors’ care.
We’d still head on bikes anywhere
while those two recovered en brace.

Oh joy! to feel that wind rushing,
to ride down hills foolheartedly,
to find the paths left secretly,
to forget near tragic crushing.

Now, Gayane’s final act is all
the excitement I dare to take.
The shrinking neighborhoods forsake
my inner child — they’ve turned small.

Notes

Written 15 February 2020 in Payne County, Oklahoma.

Brian Fuchs, “Skyline & McElroy” from Scissor-tailed Flycatcher (Scissortail Press, 2020)

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My Native Valley

Lacosha! you kept passing by.
We never picked bright yellow
flowers in the fields on Spring mornings,
and we never chased rabbits
through people’s backyards on
Autumn afternoons.
I’m still looking for words,
my voice muffled by fear,
to invite you to my birthday party.

Notes

Written 15 February 2020 in Payne County, Oklahoma.

Brian Fuchs, “My Native Valley” from Scissor-tailed Flycatcher (Scissortail Press, 2020)

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New Kids on the Block

If the spaces under the highway
had been a passage to a great
underground city, I’d still be there
living among the mole people,
still listening to your sister’s cassettes.

It was always over as soon as it started,
and I longed for you for years after.
The gas station stopped selling gas;
it’s just as well. I don’t drive that way
anymore and I don’t want the salty chips
we used to get before spending afternoons
listening to music at your house.

You’ve grown too great for me to see
and I’ve started shrinking into the cracks,
barely leaving a mark behind to find.
I’ll see you at the next protest
on the steps of the state capital.
I wonder if I’ll still be visible by then.

Notes

Written 15 February 2020 in Payne County, Oklahoma.

Brian Fuchs, “New Kids on the Block” from Scissor-tailed Flycatcher (Scissortail Press, 2020)

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Cakewalk

The mint’s taken over
and we just watched it,
eating sandwiches, piled
with fresh tomatoes picked
from the garden.
Love is letting a plant take
over a meticulously tended
bed for a child’s whim.
The tomatoes are gone,
and the mint reminds me
that things used to be
full of everything good.

Notes

Written 15 February 2020

Brian Fuchs, “Cakewalk” from Scissor-tailed Flycatcher (Scissortail Press, 2020)

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Legg-Calvé-Perthes Cocoon

I’m more reptilian than Russian.
My parts have grown back,
and I’ve shed myself so many times,
expecting somehow to find smaller
versions of myself.

I haven’t grown smaller.

I test my legs often,
waiting for cracks to form
and for the new leg beneath
to emerge, emaciated and pale,
like it was the last time.

I thought I was a butterfly once,
and I fantasized about emerging
beautiful like the people I’m not.

I haven’t emerged beautiful.

Reinvention is either a myth
or a luxury of youth.
I tried so many times,
but I am more like myself now
than I ever was before.

It’s been thirty-five years
since the casts fixed my form
and my legs were allowed
to regrow.
I’m still waiting for it
to happen again,
knowing it won’t,
wishing it would.

I’m not so filled with new versions
as I was before,
and I’ve given up on beauty.
It was alway a lie anyway.
I long to know where
the beautiful people’s cracks form,
and what they expected to become.

Notes

Written 7 February 2020 in Payne County, Oklahoma.

Brian Fuchs, “Legg-Calvé-Perthes Cocoon” from Scissor-tailed Flycatcher (Scissortail Press, 2020)

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Notes

Written 21 September 2019 in Payne County, Oklahoma.

Brian Fuchs, “1975” from Okie Dokie (Scissortail Press, 2019)

Published in Social Distances (Scissortail Press, 2020)

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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)

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Triticum aestivum

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

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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The Rain

I’m still waiting outside for rain,
hoping for sudden downpours from cloudless skies.
I’m wondering if she’ll join me when the first drops
start to fall and the birds fall silent.
She’s been delayed, I’ve told myself again,
or the rain hasn’t been enough.
It has never been enough
I’ve summoned more and more rain,
for over a year I’ve coaxed it from the air,
the ground sometimes swelling, saturated and marshy.

Brush Creek has filled to overflowing,
washing out parts of the road and clearing out
the debris of our distractions.
It has not been enough.
The Cimarron & Arkansas Rivers have been flooded,
swallowing homes and memories,
lives lost and inconvenienced.
Still she has not arrived.
I continue my incantations, calling for more clouds,
more rain — great hurricanes that try to find me,
creeping along the coasts, tied to the oceans.
Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, The Bahamas, Puerto Rico,
they may all need to be sacrificed in my efforts,
and it will be worth the loss because I will
no longer feel like I am alone.
I am listening for those first signs, the drips on the tin roof
and I am ready to throw open the windows,
clench my fists, and try to push my dreams into reality.
I know she will join me if I keep trying,
and we will sit together on the covered porch,
resuming what should still be.

Notes

Written 5 September 2019 in Payne County, Oklahoma.

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

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Cercis canadensis

When we had tried
putting ourselves together again
we’d used the wrong parts,
made effigies of ourselves
with the piles of distorted junk,
left behind scraps of a once-full life.
We went through the motions of people
spoke like them, practicing their accents,
but did not understand our own words.
We got the phrases wrong,
the tones, the memories.
Periodically, we’d erupt into full color
flowers growing from every part
and our days seemed alive with joy.
But we would catch ourselves lost in time,
eyes fixed on a long-abandoned walker,
a long-absent bed,
a long-neglected garden,
at the things we find so important now
and the flowers would fall from our bodies.
I gave up on trying to find the parts
of myself I missed most,
stopped looking for who I had been before. I’ve been more comfortable with discomfort,
waiting for others to finally leave the safety
of their beds, the safety of their tears.
And we’ve started to share ourselves again,
imagining Spring, redbuds flushed fuchsia,
grief removed from our shoulders,
sadness washed from our faces
by the showers of April and storms of May.
We will remember how to be happy
and how to be sad and how to be,
and we’ll see the long-forgotten remnants
and we will understand who we are.

Notes

Written 19 April 2019 in Payne County, Oklahoma. Rewritten 5 September 2019 in Payne County, Oklahoma.

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

 

Cercis canadensis

When we had tried
putting ourselves together again
we’d used the wrong parts,
made effigies of ourselves
with the piles of distorted junk,
left behind scraps of a once-full life.
We went through the motions of people
spoke like them, practicing their accents,
but did not understand our own words.
We got the phrases wrong,
the tones, the memories.
Periodically, we’d erupt into full color
flowers growing from every part
and our days seemed alive with joy.
But we would catch ourselves lost in time,
eyes fixed on a long-abandoned walker,
a long-absent bed,
a long-neglected garden,
at the things we find so important now
and the flowers would fall from our bodies.
I gave up on trying to find the parts
of myself I missed most,
stopped looking for who I had been before.
I’ve been more comfortable with discomfort,
waiting for others to finally leave the safety
of their beds, the safety of their tears.
And we’ve started to share ourselves again,
imagining Spring, redbuds flushed fuchsia,
grief removed from our shoulders,
sadness washed from our faces
by the showers of April and storms of May.
We will remember how to be happy
and how to be sad and how to be,
and we’ll see the long-forgotten remnants
and we will understand who we are.

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Dempsey, Oklahoma

Squash vines coiled
in and around, spilling &
tumbling over each other,
exploding with fruit,
filled with more water
than this place had seen
since May.
Those vines grew wild
alongside bindweed
in the garden that once
fed a whole family,
the jars lined up in the
dugout cellar —
apricots, potatoes, beans.
We used to play in those
places as they turned to ruins,
our historic homeland.
We’d take watermelon rind,
or cantaloupe halves out
for the overheated cows,
leave the fruit near the salt lick.
Our socks would be filled
with sand burs,
our teeth with dust,
and often my mouth would
still show the traces of chocolate
from a clandestine visit
at my grandma’s parents’ house.
The cows were traded in,
eventually the whole lot
retired to the comfort of town,
to the neighbors
with their cat stories,
and a garden bursting
with cucumbers,
a mowed lawn,
tiger-lilies.
I’d miss Dempsey then,
resigned to sit in hushed rooms,
watching my grandma’s mom
eat cornbread & milk.
She’d tell me stories,
talk about her daddy,
but I always wondered
about the cows
and about the apricot trees.

Written 29 January 2000 in Tulsa, Oklahoma & 23 February 2020 in Payne County, Oklahoma.

Brian Fuchs, “Dempsey, Oklahoma” from Scissor-tailed Flycatcher (Scissortail Press, 2020)

Notes

Original Version:

thirteen

Dust and saltlicks and fuzzy caterpillars. I loved the farm. I often complained about the heat or stickerweed or the heat — such incredible heat. I was secretly relieved and secretly upset when G, with her parents moved into town. Where in town was the garden full of overripe squash and where in town were the cows, anxious for discarded watermelon or cantaloupe rind for dessert. They moved to be close to a hospital — to make certain they would have a place near for death. Poor G, it broke her heart, and us kids would sit around making all kinds of noise and she wanted to cry. Cry now, G, cry. Were off making noises in our own places — we’re grown now. We know you need a little peace — we will be quiet now.

1.29.2000

part of the chapbook Studies In Loneliness