One of my very good friends at Stanford Vince Chaffey,
he and I both became incredible Larry Levis-philes--
Larry Levis, who unfortunately left the poetry world
due to his death in 1996.
And this is kind of an angry elegy at Larry.
"Broke Down Elegy."
"My darling pegs a kiss to her hand
then the roof of the van whenever we pass hazard lights,
raised hoods, defunct, marooned, the otherwise stranded.
I-80 corridor makes way to hog and corn,
Nebraska's flat redundancy, Platte River, five, six times,
Continental Divide, Wyoming rain, and eggs underdone.
In Utah, my gut drops out an unexpected ditch.
Salt Lake-- I am disconsolate in this cafe.
A maple, full June green, stands the corner of nine and nine,
and Larry, you've left that pink smudge on the horizon.
I won't forgive your addictions today,
though I think you'd be pleased that Hawaiian shirts are all
the season's rage and the sun still
sets where it's become accustomed.
Behind me somewhere, a blackening thumbnail
teaches a lesson in patience--
a lesson I'm bound to deny, even as that nails sloughs off,
though not for weeks now.
And because I'm a wreck waiting for metal,
my darling guides us past the sun flaring solstice,
past the arid, past rows and rows
of orderly agriculture, where something of Larry
is still swamping peaches--
peaches I'll buy in a month for my darling's cobbler that
won't thicken, though while eat it á la mode while my thumb
throbs like a phantom.
I've never seen ghosts, though I hear them scratching
in roves in their slack mouths.
Larry, the mundane measure of your habitual heart fails us.
Even now, I wander too far across the center divide,
my darling asleep against glass.
It's your fault, Larry.
These oncoming rigs, blood blooming under that black nail,
these miles left to me."