Sarah Wildes Bishop

Sarah who was a Wildes

before she was a Bishop,

having married Edward

of that same name,

and accused of witchery

by those jealous bitches

the two Elizabeths,

Balch and Hubbard

and the credulous

James Kettle.

that her tavern where

they served strong spirits

and made much racket

with games of shovel board

that disturbed the peace

of her good neighbor

Christian Trask, causing

her such distress that

she slashed her own throat

with a pair of sewing scissors.

and Kettle claimed

he saw Liz Hubbard

at Doctor Griggs' abode

on the day, May tenth instant

in several fits and after these fits

Hubbard said that she'd seen

Kettle's children lying dead

and they cried for vengeance

looking as they did the same

as when laid out in their coffins.

Elizabeth Balch

was then deposed

and said that she was at Salem

on the very day that Captain Curtin

was buried and in the evening

of said day, coming into Salem

on horseback with her sister

Abigail, wife of Nathaniel Walden,

as they came to the River Crane,

Sarah and Edward Bishop

overtook them, said Edward

rode into the brook in haste

causing some words of difference

with Sarah it seemed,

Sarah finding fault with Edward

for so doing, for it would throw her

into the water and cause her

much mischief or words

to that purpose.

and he replied

that it was no matter if he did

that she had been a bad wife

ever since they were married

and of late she was much worse.

the Devil did come bodily to her

and that she sat up all night

with the Devil and was familiar

with him. and this deponent,

this good neighbor Elizabeth Balch,

did reprove Edward Bishop

for speaking thus unto his wife

who made very little reply to him

until they came to their house.

after this testimony, affirm'd

with the mark of Balch and Hubbard

Sarah Wildes Bishop answered

if it be so, you had need pray for me.

And she and her husband were found

to have committed witchcraft

and so were bound to the gaol

in Salem Village and thence

to Boston gaol, from which

they escaped and fled

to Reheboth until the trials

were repudiat'd and revoked

and their son, Samuel regain'd

their various and sundry properties.

window shopping

they were walking up pacific

heading for columbus

looking in the windows

of the galleries.

linda says to tom

-those paintings are so nothing

and they probably think

they're awesome.

and all the while she's staring

at tom's skittering chihuahua feet

encased in hard black shoes

crafted to resemble

the carapace of beetles,

the laces wagging like antennas.

tom smiles and nods. -what?

he's dancing stutter steps

avoiding the expansion cracks

in the sidewalk. mumbles 

-yeah, paintings......

tom and linda both watch

his beetle feet skip

over something dark

smeared on the pavement.

they dance up to doorway

of city lights bookstore

glancing at the volumes

in the window. tom says

-look at that stuff.

and linda goes -yeah

who would buy it?

tom says - painters?

they laugh and wait

at the corner, staring

at the marquee of the condor.

the traffic signal changes

to walk and they obey.

a few degrees off center

the zinnias had gone mad

bursting orange at sunrise

in the tainted gravel.

reality was just slightly off,

a few degrees,

a couple ticks on the clock,

the greens a little sicker,

the reds a tad darker

the air a little thicker.

not enough to notice

consciously, really, except

for some buddhist monks

and three-year olds.

the starlings and the sparrows knew,

they sang til well past midnight

and the milk expired hours before

the date stamps on the cartons.

lovers were uncertain

that the person sleeping

peacefully beside them

was not a stranger,

wondering if that ear

was not quite the same

as the one that they had

nuzzled the night before.

it was nothing so dramatic

as the day it rained meat

in olympia springs, kentucky

on march 3, 1876.

just traffic signals slightly out of sync,

and some words in the dictionary

had new spellings in the morning.

John

John walked to the entrance of the park

every afternoon. He wore a rumpled suit

with shiny patches on the seat and a dented

old fedora which he removed with a grimace

as he sagged onto the long curved concrete bench.

Said he had been suffering from chronic

headaches ever since a traffic accident had 

wrecked his ancient truck. That was the end

of his business collecting and reselling

wooden shipping pallets. Now he lived

in a boarding house three blocks from the park.

John liked to talk about selling ice cream

at Ocean Beach back during the war.

Sometimes he drove a cab, shuttling sailors

on shore leave to the bars along the waterfront

or to what he called cat houses. He always 

chuckled when he said cat house. The war years

were the best ones in his life he said.

The hot days when half the city sought

cool relief out at Ocean Beach, splashing

in the waves, and he'd sell all the ice cream

he could carry. The funhouse shrieks and hollers

from the Big Dipper roller coaster at Playland.

He would forget his headaches for awhile

when he told his stories. About four o'clock

he'd slowly rise from the bench, his headache

back, put on his old fedora and make his

way back to the boarding house for meat loaf

and mashed potatoes, or beef stew. He said they

weren't very good, nothing like meals he used

to eat in diners, his favorite was pork chops.

the muse

i keep looking for

a resurrected clipping,

band-aid sized,

a shovelful of words,

a pollenating swarm,

a muse with a flower

behind one ear,

she might be wearing

a beggar's tuxedo or

shakespeare's nikes.

although it might be that

all my fish have left the room

and i just don't know it yet?

four hands:

four hands

one for the oven

one for the throttle

one for the trigger

and one behind the back

for crossing fingers.

moccasins

she fit him

like a moccasin

soft and supple,

thin enough

to feel the rocks.

maddy goes to mardi gras

maddy likes to play a game

watching fellow passengers

at the airport. try to guess

at who they are: student,

businessman, daughter

flying back home to a wedding

or a funeral. computer nerd,

mid-management zombie,

single mom who should know

better than to wear that

tacky outfit. and her sloppy

daughter, the two of them

look like sausages stuffed

into pants and tops

at least two sizes too small.

"spooning leads to forking?"

and i bet they got all those

beads in some filthy doorway

jesus! they must be headed back

to the single wide out in the swamp…..

that guy in the linen blazer and jeans,

those shoes look italian and he's

reading…….gravity's rainbow,

kind of cute, wonder what seat 

he's in, hope it's 23B.........

oh shit, that dark middle eastern

looking dude is staring

and muttering something,

asking allah for success

for his plot to commandeer

the plane and crash it

into disneyworld? counting virgins?

don't look at me guy, i'm not

a virgin, at least not technically.

maybe mr gravity's rainbow

will be the lucky one.....oh yes.

ibrahim sees the woman

in the row of seats across

from him staring at him.

oh god, the merciful,

please don't let her seat

be next to mine. she was

right in front of me at

the security checkpoint

and her perfume was

overwhelming. if i have

to sit next to her for

three hours, my allergies

are going to kill me.

runaway

processed in

at 3:00 a.m. then

the nausea when

the jail house nurse

couldn't hit a vein.

the wire reinforced

window in the door.

the seatless steel toilet.

the sour orange juice

and runny eggs,

the cardboard toast,

the gray blanket,

and the permanently

unshielded light,

the clockless time.

the silence,

the embarrassment,

and the lesson:

don't jaywalk

at laurel canyon

and sunset boulevard:

teenage pedestrians

are always suspects

in beverly hills.

break-in

unconcerned

by the plastic owls

with their frozen stares

perched above the roll-up doors,

-i'm no pigeon-

i cut the locks.

the stuffed beaver in the window

stares at me, it's little arms

pressed against the glass.

there's a light over the door.

i hesitate when a moth drew near

then enter the building.

i have a bag of sandwiches,

three cans of acid green,

neon pink and blue spray paint,

and a 32 gig flashdrive

and six hours before anyone

is likely to show up.

moonshine

they've eaten well, and sensibly,

bodies perfected in the gym

with all the soul of mannequins

and the sincerity of a laugh track

the amateur tyrannosaurs, make

moonshine gossip on the patio,

as if they were a mere eleven.

it's all about toothpaste bombs

and potato guns, the revolution

du jour, funny stuff on youtube.

they take a brief interruption

in the preening and rituals

to speculate on building stars

with seawater and lithium.

so many phone eyes,

voyeurs on the square

capturing the geometry of scars.

all the signs and angles,

the trajectory of atrocities and

arcs, the rhythms overturned, 

an avalanche of books

timed to launch careers

for gilbert

he wanted to hear me

read a poem before he died.

so i recorded the one

about sunset magazine:

martinis, e-z recipes

saigon pussy.

fighter jock haircuts,

chrome tail fins,

and picasso.

where the sun

never falls,

perched forever

on the cusp of night

with the clink of ice cubes

and a pack of

marlboros.

i called him an asshole

so he'd feel good

because he could always

find the jewels in the shit

tattoo

she has a tattoo

of a wind up key

on the small of her back,

just above the elastic

of her panties.

so she never wears

a deep backless gown

to the symphony.

or a bikini anywhere

but in the privacy

of her own backyard

infinity edgeless pool.

where the arborist,

there to assess and tend

her maples, his eyes fixed

on the pictured key

is now curious to see

what would happen

if he were to give it

an experimental twist.

the message in his eyes,

his saucy question,

she reads with no need

for translation and answers

with one raised eyebrow

and a touch of tongue tip

to her lips.

she slowly turns her back

to him and waits, with a

slight twitch of her hips

until he places his hand

on the tattoo and looses

the strings of her bikini.

it flutters down and

catches on her ankle.

she nabs it with her

nimble toes and flicks it

onto a budding daffodil,

then presses her naked ass,

still cool from the pool,

against the warmth of

his maple scented hand.

the same old story

dragonflies, those flying twigs

orange as cinnamon,

remind me of helicopters

defying logic and gravity.

i was calmly watching the reports

i knew i'd seen that look before:

on the face of the man

in the ten o'clock news van

parked in the bus stop

with the window rolled down

and his puke in a pizza box

on the sidewalk.

he wiped the bile off his face

with the microphone

and fixed up his makeup,

it was time for the interview

with the witnesses

in the school cafeteria.

before the helicopters arrived.

sirena

sirena listens

to the smoke sweet

violins in tents

invoking dawns

from times ago,

when the cock's crow

was no sour alarm.

and the frog chorus

did not remind her

of the geiger counters

the white-suited men

arrayed around the pond

where they croaked

their ancient songs.

she drops the hood

of her princeton tigers

sweatshirt to her shoulders

now that the mosquitos

have gone quiet

for the night. just

the muffled thump

of drums, no longer

the boom of guns

over the blurred horizon.

sirena stirs the coals

of the smoldering

roulette wheels

and fifty seven decks

of cards. she softly sings

-midnight, not a sound

from the pavement,

has the moon

lost her memory?-

and the note she misses

is the one that cuts

the deepest, because

swords are not

the only things

that have two

edges.

jimmie's rolling wreck

remember that time that jimmie so and so

quaffed his favorite quart of ale and he

and his old lady, suzie, split four doses of seconal?

and painted up his nova with a couple gallons

of flat black house paint? then he and suzie

scratched their names and various misspelled jibes

through the resulting coat with nails they swiped

when they copped the paint from suzie's dad's

hardware store. it looked like a psycho's blackboard.

i think it died out on the coast road, so they started

dropping boulders on the roof until they got too tired

and passed out in the back seat. must have jarred

whatever was wrong with it because when they

woke up in the morning it started up just fine.

(although not without a whine)

that rolling wreck was legendary.

don't know how many babies were conceived

on the busted springs of that back seat. suzie and

janelle got knocked up for sure from what i heard.

though neither of them went to term.

i thought suzie would end up on the street, but she

moved up to portland and got her shit together,

started flipping houses. now she's got a dozen

apartment buildings, a strip mall, and a bar.

i heard all this from jimmie, he was up there in june.

said suzie gave him fifty bucks on account of their history

but wouldn't let him fuck her. not even for old times sake,

so he came back down here on the bus.

i ran into him out in front of st vincent's dining hall.

he doesn't look real good. i asked him whatever

happened to that old nova and he said that one night

after he and suzie broke up, he pushed it off a cliff.

the ribbon

he kept a hair ribbon

with a black velvet bow,

still fresh and dustless....

in a del monte pickle jar.

the only thing unbroken

after the emergency.

one morning -he smelt

the coffee brewing

in a blackened can,

locusts roasted

on a scrap of

corrugated roofing.

she was frying

what looked like bacon

in a hubcap.

he tried to sing

over the rainbow,

but just didn't have

the range. what he had,

was a ribbon in a jar

still twitching.

sea monsters

it wasn't sea monsters after all,

just doodles on the margin

and the opportunity

for five centuries of potatoes,

tomatoes, and theft.

castles made of corn

housewives making porn,

an incessant flood

of ones and zeros,

a sahara of cartoons

and gestures,

forget the math,

it comes out to a trillion

sporadic tragedies and laughs

muffled lullabies

mozart on an out of tune piano,

roaring stadiums,

and loneliness

crouching over tables

at green and white cafes.

plain jane and average joe

she had blue eyes

and the only damage

was a broken taillight.

she had tibetan prayer flags

strung across the back window

of her scruffy old toyota.

there was a splash of red

on the dashboard where

she propped her feet

to paint her nails,

a few grains of sand still

imprisoned in the bright polish.

her big tabby cat, bagheera

dozed on the dashboard

till the pickup following

too close behind rammed

jane's treasured ride,

a big chrome kiss 

on the bumper sticker

that spelled out coexist.

the pickup driver, joe

yelled, what the fuck

you doing, god damn

hippie bitch?

jane stepped out

of her corolla, those

blue eyes ablaze

and said to joe, why don't you

watch where you're going,

you trying to give me whiplash?

or are you blind as well as deaf

from that deathmetal trash

blaring in your big manly truck?

is that big motor something

you like to think you have

installed between your legs?

well that was how they met.

jane was plain

and joe was average

before they both became

officers of the national police

in matching gray uniforms. 

they looked like

elevator technicians,

except for the pistols and boots.

they weren't entirely dull,

they shared a small measure

of the chemistry of empathy,

voted for democrats

sometimes, sold her old

corolla and his dodge ram,

financed a new red minivan

on a seventy-two month loan.

joe still liked his metal

and jane still loved her chants

so when they rode together

they kept the radio turned off.

no kids yet, but lying in bed

at night, they imagined family

camping trips and soccer games,

pancakes on sunday mornings.

then they'd watch the late night

talk shows until they were bored

enough to fall asleep.