The Poetry of Brian Barker

DRAGGING CANOE VANISHES FROM THE BEAR PIT INTO THE ENDLESS CLUCKING OF THE GODS     Before we are forgotten, we will be turned into kitsch. Kitsch     is the stopover between being and oblivion.     —Milan Kundera Those six bears in the pit behind the moccasin shop pad all summer on a narrow path of shade, panting, swaying,                           stopping to stand tall on two legs & bellow when the god-faces bob in the heat beyond the iron rail, featureless puckers of milky light that cluck & whistle & holler, flaunting candy apples, funnel cakes, saltwater taffy in twisted wax wrappers— anything that might mingle hunger & curiosity— though the bears know neither, know only the pacing that links their days in a tether of sliding fat, & the stillness of the pit at night when the gods step back into darkness, when the shellacked stones swallow the sun & they collapse beneath their own weight at last. . . Already the wheezing warrior has swept up the day’s garbage,                            & vanished up the boulevard toward the neon rigging, the kiss of cold air behind the glass at Harrah’s. Already the stars have wheeled into place over the teenagers huddled behind the stripmall, smoking beneath the peeling billboard where de Soto sits his horse above the town, squinting through a spyglass, the mountains in the background brushed with the gauzy-blue mist of dusk.

*

Discover the Wonders of Cherokee, the billboard read, & another hand-painted sign, roadside: Have your photo taken with Dragging Canoe— Fierce Warrior, Bear Tamer. We posed in front of a yellow sheetmetal teepee. I was six. I grinned sheepishly beneath an oversized baseball cap, his left hand on my shoulder, the right pressing a hatchet flat against his chest. A faded headdress swung down his back, & he squinted, staring past the camera, past the souvenir stands, the miniature golf courses & bingo parlors, past the pit to our left where the gods clucked & the bears bellowed beneath sporadic showers of sugar & grease. In that moment, when the flash flared, when the camera cradled us in its plastic eye                                                                    before blinking us back—     [my striped tube socks drawn to my knees; his belly bulging, a brown     moon, & a pack of Marlboros snug in the elastic band of the shorts he     wore beneath deerskin pants] in that moment, even then, the bears’ teeth were rotting, their brittle claws were splintering on the hot cement; their muzzles were grizzling, the whites of their eyes pooled with bilirubin; blood was seeping from their gums, their lungs funneled phlegm; globules of blubber multiplied, orbiting their livers, sheathing their hearts, buttery nuggets sucking the sheen out of their glossy coats.

*

I held the Polaroid— I held a stuffed bear— I held a yellow mug full of Mamaw Mulligan’s World Famous Fudge— I ate the fudge & then the mug held seven plastic arrowheads & a penny— I held the penny—     [I placed it, carefully, on the silver tongue & fed it to the machine. The     gears turned on their greased axles. Each tooth met its mate.] I held my mother’s hand—     [The machine whirred. It was magic, or progress, & my father kept     saying, Would you look at that? Would you just look at that?] I held the penny, transformed, polished & oblong, stamped with a family of bears— I held cotton candy & rock candy—     [My fingers were sugar. I wanted to touch the bears’ pink lips.] I held a leather belt, my name stitched in miniature turquoise beads—     [Someone could spell me. I existed.] I held the village floating in a glass globe—     [It was quiet. It was empty & filling with snow.] I held the Polaroid—     [Until the teepee melted & the boy’s face sloshed like milk from beneath his cap.]

*

Being’s a vagabond—                                       It shows itself in its absence— It steps out into the snow billowing over the Long Island of the Holston, the snow tracing its thousand shapes, spiraling, drifting into the ancient branches of the pines that separate them & sweep them clean. It coughs & curls up next to the river clogged with ice. It slips into gaudy costumes to stay warm & walks the streets, rinsed in benzene, muttering abstractions. . . To become something you can’t touch, a curiosity, something theatrical, not quite bear, not quite man, parading in circles around the abandoned cul-de-sac of history, as the ice cries out beneath your steps like fingerbones,                           as the branches snicker together & the bayonet blades point the way deeper into what’s already sunk in winter: toy animals & toy tomahawks asleep, floating in the dark that blots the shop windows, the snow like famine touching the casino’s stained awning, touching the eyelashes of those who lost, touching the chainlink mouths & the dim half-forgotten meals spilling from a dumpster. . . To be nobody. To be a whole clan or nation. To be, in the end, both at once.

*

If you heard crying on the wind, it wasn’t me but the warrior in the men’s room stall, his moccasins framed in the sour rectangle of light beneath the door. How far did I follow him with my penny in my fist, watching him wind through the crowd, his shoulders heaving? How far did I follow him? Past the artificial waterfalls & ramshackle motels blistering with bright paint? Past the casino like a ship of glass marooned in the mountains? He shed his feathers, his deerskin pants. He chucked his hatchet into the kudzu. He walked the shoulder of the road like a tightrope, into the long-leaf pines, where the pearly scent of wild onions floats above the river                                   & clings to the locust-light, to a basket of black hair swimming with silt.

*

(The Chiefs Remember) They shuffled words— They shuffled cups, bottomless cups—     [Rum roiled like a gluttonous river.] They shuffled time—     [Day swung from their gold chains. Night was swaddled in their wool     pockets.] They shuffled us—     [We were marked cards smuggled up their sleeves.] They shuffled their faces—     [One touched his moustache & laughed. Darkness fluttered out of his     pocket like a moth. It flit on the tip of a candle flame.] They shuffled the treaty of a treaty of a treaty—     [Birds darted into their secret rooms. Trees shuddered & turned white.] They shuffled Xs—     [We were Xs. We were blown musketsmoke.] They shuffled him—     [But he was young. He rose & stomped the ground. His anger was a     furious wind dismantling the dark.] They shuffled smiles—     [They put on their hats & strolled off into the forest, into their forest.     They forgot it all & emptied into streets, strolled past leather shops &     candy shops, past the casino.] They shuffled his breath—     [He was chainsmoking at the slots, a cup of quarters cradled between his     knees. Each time he pulled the lever he held his breath, waiting for what     hung in the air behind it to come clattering down.] They shuffled his flesh—     [There was so much of him now, it spilled over the waistband of his     sweatpants. How did we know him? He wore a softball jersey with his     name silk-screened on the back.] They shuffled their feet over sidewalks—     [There were too many to count. They clucked. Their faces were     featureless. A young one said, Where are all the Indians? The father     said, Look, & pointed. Two bears were standing on their heads in a     dumpster.] They shuffled the wind—     [There was no wind, only silence buried in the putty his body had     become. Only feathers of sweat fanning from beneath his arms.] They shuffled us—     [We were so far away. We were falling through his breath.] They shuffled beauty—     [He uncrumpled a twenty & Andrew Jackson glared back. Smug & regal,     latern-jawed, a bit bemused. His hair swept back off his forehead. Like     waves of fire. Like a fashion model’s.]

*

Bear touched back to salt—                       Bear on the wind— Bear beneath the river                                            in the shoal-swirl & turtle-oar— Coughing Bear                                  suffocating at the end of summer, when the trees fold their green tents & the hides are stretched, hung up dripping— Bear of Polymer—                                            Bear of the Gone Gall-Bladder & the Halo of Flies—            Bear of Sugar, eating its own lips— Bear of Gunmetal & Glue— Bear of Air                  Bear of the Ten Tongues bellowing in the air, tangled in a rope ladder, swaying                                            in the middle of the pit, a palsied pendulum, a hiccup in the sky, the cement twenty feet below, a jar of peanut butter ten feet above, tied to the clapper of a bell—            Come down to me            Bear of Memory, Bear of Hurt,            carry me crying into the cattails            where they’ve slept, untouched,            for thousands of nights.            Come down to me,            with your warm hug & your fur            I could bury my face in, a pelt of sleep,            an old suitcase of smells—            something I could curl into,                                              & pull the lid down, my cheeks burning. . .

*

           So long Old Hickory, you sharp-knifed son-of-a-bitch, Dragging Canoe thinks, descending deeper            into the ravine behind his breath, through a neon mist, through tear gas & acid rain            gnawing at the edges of the mountain ridges as he poses with one child, then another,            cataleptic, the visions unspooling beyond it all spun by the carousel of buzzards            above the dry pines, above the mock-mock-mock of a bayonet dragged across the stockade slats,            where a woman kneels to pick corn kernels from the dirt, her baby slung snug against her, its cries            splitting her breasts against the rhythm of the blade she’d like to drive through the soldier’s chest,            although he means nothing by it, is just a kid, is just in love with himself & bored of standing            guard, of watching the wide swaths of smoke rise over the mountains, carrying the houses & barns            & fields on fire, carrying the offices of The Phoenix burning down— So long ghost-hand, he thinks, as it flutters, as it fans behind his eyes, the blankets            stacked like cards, the sick Queen in the hole, small pox, whooping cough, dysentery, tongues            swollen, lips pocked with ulcers. Just last week, a grandmother with a little tatter of Kleenex in her fist,            touched his elbow, called him Dear, asked if he spoke English, & he imagined, for a moment,            how easily her blue hair, her waxy skin would peel back from her skull, even with his rubber hatchet,            even not knowing the technique, how to hold the bloody thing up to the sun or what scream            might make the gods human again, their knees gone wobbly, their hearts jostling in their stomachs as they run—            But it’s too late, he knows. History’s the gash the bootheel left, the gash language leaked out of, so that now,            when the teenagers beneath the billboard pass the pipe [the chemical ember winking in the glass            bowl like a cooling star], they pass it in silence, always to the right in order not to lose their place, pass it            all through spring & into summer, season of exodus, the soldiers rising in the glacial light of dawn,            yawning, scratching their chests, pissing on the campfires to douse the dying coals—            So long wind, so long crows, he thinks, as trees buckle, as roads muscle up through            dynamite grooves, the Palace of Burgers & the Palace of Cards strung on a dull constellation of rivets,            trailers shimmed with cinderblocks above a current of shale, whole families of bears trampling out            of rhododendrons to stand roadside, backing the traffic up, swaying back & forth a bit, their forepaws raised            for balance, their pink tongues licking their lips. [The gods cluck & throw in six-packs of beer,            melted motherboards, bloated road kill; they throw in milky condoms & rusted out carburetors;            they throw in shells of televisions, bicycle handlebars, spent shotgun cartridges, cigarette butts & tattoo needles.]            So long Dragging Canoe, he thinks, as he squints, or winces, each thing plummeting inside him            when he places his hand on the shoulder of the boy & steps out of himself into his own gaze,            into an abandoned camp to touch a muddy sandal & a newspaper crumpled on a pallet, to touch a clump of gray hair            tangled in a brush, just before the flash flares & the bodies are slipped into the river like empty boats.

*

I held the warrior,                                until the novelty wore off, the Polaroid stuffed in my back pocket where the colors crumbled & the details sweated out in a wet chemical paste. Now the boy is a streak of carmine, the teepee a sulfur smear along one edge, the warrior floating in the middle of the frame, a blue blur of static I lean over tonight & study. I want to stare at this mist until he’s whole again. I want to set him in motion for once, there, on the otherside, where a transistor radio bleats across the floodlit pit. He’s slipped out of his costume & out of his name,                                    humming through his cigarette, swaying, sidestepping as he sweeps so his sweeping becomes a kind of dance. Flakes of dung & tufts of fur tread the air as he stomps, as he shuffles around the bears asleep on the cement, their tongues hanging half-out, their bodies twitching in dream & after-dream. He throws his back into it            & lifts his left leg high & sets it down—            & lifts his right leg high & sets it down— Blood ringing like bells through his swollen ankles, the bears jerking in time with his steps. . . Beyond the rock & iron rail, the town is burning down. He feels it coming apart, spreading in hot eddies beneath his skin: the casino going up in a breath of sparks & shattered glass, the billboard wavering on its tinder stilts, the scaffolding collapsing, de Soto breaking away on umbrellas of ash. But here, now,                        the air is clear & empty & holds them, man & bears, as the pit sinks to blackness beneath their shapes I trace. If I lean over the edge                                    I can almost touch them.            They are thin                                   & light as snow now...                       Now they are nothing.

NIGHTMARE FOR THE LAST NIGHT ON EARTH Through the hole in the back of my head I could see the room— a metal bed, hooks, a pulley, a tub of water. The light flickered—                               fissured, vertiginous, as if a Ferris wheel churned inside the cement wall. In the shadows, a hooded man handcuffed to a radiator. He was sprawled in a dark puddle. He was so small, he was disappearing, his ribs glistened like black grains of rice. . . I heard chattering in the distance, something guttural & moist, like an army of worms tunneling through the white screen of sleep, their soft beaks scraping the window pane. . . I opened my mouth & nothing came out— This was the last acquiescence: my silences rose to heaven like handkerchiefs on fire.

A BRIEF ORAL ACCOUNT OF TORTURE PULLED DOWN OUT OF THE WIND [What the Hood Whispers to the Head] friend I grow more alive with you each day I drink up your sweat your spit your tears I drink up your grey phlegm & the blistered coagulations of blood minerals once a part of you fizz between us like cold starlight scouring the desert & when you drown in the long keelhaul of electricity I suck in your breath that prickly chandelier of wind shuddering from your throat believe me when I say that there are things you do not want to see your body is eating itself & still they grin they strike a pose for the camera when they wring me out they'll know I held your dreams like a bell holds the iron ghost of sound [What the Dog Whispers to the Shape Cowering in the Corner] & now I'm drenched at the end of my chain truculent implacable circling inside the shape your fear makes lunging toward that cloudy omphalos of scent that plumbs you like a poisoned well tang of urine tang of sweat blowback of pheromones rising in corpuscles of oil ripe with the soured colostrum of your beginning this is our first & only dalliance for we’re off & running headlong downhill through some bottomless perdition statues topple songbirds plummet from the sky generals hide beneath their overcoats clouds boil then blot out the sun whole continents fall away beneath our feet & when you turn to face me at last you will face the gnawed synapses of memory rising mercurial from the deep brine-flooded folds of your own brain gathering into a throbbing body of froth gathering into a windbent wound sprouting teeth you will weep you will call it dog you will kneel & rise & kneel again you will devour yourself in your dreams [What the Boot Whispers to the Heart Beneath Its Heel] at night through the crack below the door I’ve glimpsed you floating in the air above the body suffused with a vermillion glow the whole cell gliding beneath your light I’ve dreamt of throngs of you rising unabated through the abominable calm of sleep hearts of string & papier-mâché stuffed with the offal of goats or chickens humming chanting stammering on the vulgar parlance of the backward & the dead of devious sodomites that starve themselves for their sins of djinns sidling through subway tunnels drawing their bristling tails up beneath their robes one flinch & the hemispheres are riven sliding into the hardscrabble abyss of your caesura one flinch & whole civilizations are buried in sand believe me when I say that such figments of the imagination will be squashed with impunity I will kick you back across the precipice of illusion I will marry you to the earth or hold you down squirming until my master sets you in the middle of a cold tray fool you have neither wings nor feet & I have no heart yet see how I gleam without it [What the Torturer Whispers to Himself in the Mirror] whence the fuck have we come to this place to this godawful understory of the unrighteous where the nightsky looks like some putrid ocean drying up & the air itself stops up the breath like wading through static through a thousand broken voices a scourge of suffocating ghosts languishing in the heat & despite it all we sleep the sleep of the just dreaming of the cunts of Istanbul a whole harem calling out to us wraithlike across mountains & the vast expanse of empty desert whispering to us through a veil of hookah smoke & silk scarves until we rise in darkness at last without rebuke hardened by what we forego invoking the fear of our people invoking the columns of fire & ash even as the low concussions in the east reverberate bellowing those spineless simians from their mudhuts & holes those muddleheaded mopes that they bring here to cower & slobber & sink into a pile of their own shit listen we are beholden to no one we are without peer without recompense we have pledged our troth to the one god & the one country & to each other & still there is this monumental boredom this loneliness this squat cinderblock prison the tv nowhere a garble of pixels the flies the fetid stink of the weak & the mad some nights a sunburnt lieutenant drops by to give orders or to laugh raucously at his own dirty jokes some nights we drink & wait for the phone to ring some nights we burn sodden mattresses books photos clothes of the dead or sit gasmasked shooting at animals scurrying across the lunar landscape of the lost but listen tonight we’ll redeem the names of our fathers tonight we’ll rise up shirtless lipsticked levitating in front of the mirror brandishing our cocks in our rubbergloved fists the dogs whimper pace inside their cages through the walls we can hear our enemies crying out [What the Prisoner Whispers into the Ears of the Sleepers] cold sleepless I drift beneath the hood & dream the silence is a glass ship descending from the fathoms of outerspace then occasionally a burst of laughter from another room or a blunt yowl & I remember my face reflected back at me from the gleaming surface of a boot like the enormous wizened face of a squid at the bottom of a black ocean drying up once I dreamt my body was a liferaft on fire or a bed going up in flames & my heart flew above me like a wet kite as I paddled with all my remaining strength through my village through refugee camps through foreign cities dissolving on the wind I kept passing you you had been to market you looked besieged by boredom so small inside your clothes you couldn’t lift your eyes what I wanted to say was this once in the beginning I dreamt of you surging over a hill singing your voices welded together in the air you were defiant & mysterious you were a crush of candlelight at the gates [What the Fly Whispers to the Voices in the Wall] once when you could not lift your arms I partook of your bodies now you’re no more than puddles trapped in stone forgive me my old opprobriums as even tonight I’m about my father’s business the world churns on through endless joy & oblivion so speak to me now as you disappear & I will carry your message to the cold lips of the sleepers yes I will tell them I saw you standing amazed smiling in another life I will look them in the eye I will tell them you longed to be loved