This piece was first published in Quarto’s 2019 Spring Print Edition
1. Bull Run 20’s in a Blue Box
in the trunk beside Frat Party 15’s,
one Peacock-Grand-Slam Finale (green!)
swerving lanes on the I-90- East
in the fields they will crack
like city boys splitting trees
for the fire and the axe
tossed carelessly between their torsos.
A ziplock bag of gummy butterflies
had melted on the dash clear
peach streaks dripping
so there goes breakfast, I thought,
there he goes again pouring Skol
into the orange juice
and grinning like a bad cowboy.
The cabin was damp next to somebody’s grandma’s trailer home.
Here in a small county.
The tennis court and the little soft-bottomed lagoon.
Drove down the I-90-East with expired plates
all that hot afternoon and still:
two of us didn’t feel so lucky striking
the match for an upturned Marlboro
Red or was it a Light.
That night was controlled demolition.
We had paid good, wet cash to watch
the show. There would be no liplocking
at dawn over ziplocked candy.
No wooden porch and certainly
no Oscar-Mayer stuck on a stick
that blazes like, what else, a torch
illuminating woods behind grandma’s trailer,
there would be none of that.
I said unpack the trunk already.
2. A confession:
At senior prom my date forgot
the corsage. What would have been
a hot pink rose, and I cried
alone in the bathroom of a rich kid’s house
while girls posed on the lawn with a leg exposed.
A hot pink rose tied in baby’s breath
and champagne ribbon for my champagne dress.
A satiny corsage that tilts against my gold wristwatch
still cold from the fridge.
A rose with glitter painted on the rubbery tips
of curling petals by a woman at the grocery store
and stored carefully in plastic.
Falling apart by midnight like all the other girls’.
My shy date gifted me instead
a single roman candle from his back pocket
and in the bathroom I clutched it behind
my back like a glinting dagger
that would not fit in my silver pocketbook.
I clutched it in front of my stomach
taut in the creamy dress
like it were a prim bouquet, if only
it were a bouquet of Buck Shots.
Behind the dance alone, I lit my corsage
and watched it take flight, fizzle high
and fast and disintegrate with a pop that shook
my hand trembling with the gold wristwatch
and the firework was green. (Typhoon!)
The roman candle contained three shots. Pop.
Pop, Pop.
I had asked for pink.
Inside the slow songs played.
3. We Knew Not Much Outside
the depths of the neighborhood from whence
we came in our long city on a great lake.
We were not yet ancient then.
Our tan legs quivered with swagger
from summer roofing jobs and bicycling
about town singing Back in the Saddle and slinging
King Cobra in glass bottles that clinked in our backpacks.
This was before the beginnings of beer bellies, see.
When we drank to get sidetracked in waning suns
and took the long way home at night
if just to linger.
Always in our jeans pocket: iridescent switchblade, a casual forefinger.
And at night nothing but love between the boys and girls!
We were a soft bunch of burgeoning addicts, fake scholars,
and reformed thieves. Saints, really.
And we loved our country so much
that we crossed state lines multiple times
every Fourth of July to get the day-glo goods.
We had lost some eyebrows to the cause,
maybe a quarter-pinky. But not yet.
This was before the beginnings of beer bellies, see.
All of our parents were alive.
At night there was nothing but love between the boys and girls.
Seven or eight of us would fit in the car on the way
to explode a surplus
in a trailer park called Woodhaven past hours of corn.
We meant to find lucidity in the airborne there,
starting little sparks
up near trees like cardinal wings spreading and tensing in the dark.
4. The Village of Blue Gill, Illinois
With reverence for the past, and hope for the future,
all Blue Gill citizens are proud to call this community their home.
A place for small town values, monthly newsletters,
man-made lagoons like Black Oaks Pond and Reservoir Yellow Feather.
Blue Gill population 5,004 with a 15-member, dutiful police force
that patrols the Woodhaven Trailer Park in pairs
fat cop in the driver’s seat
sometimes he floors it down Potawatomi Street
after wet, filmy teenagers hop the fence
of the lap-swim pool near dawn
air slicing cool on the local kids’ skin while they escape Woodhaven gates
on dirt bikes doubled up and riding pegs
out to fields of farm near the expressway,
rows of soybean for miles.
The Blue Gill teens traipse over these bushes, stepping toward
the protection of corn
where they stomp through stalks blindly and touch each other.
And the fat cop never catches country kids.
And on Sundays, he goes fishing.
And he’s never been to Chicago before. He likes the skirt steak special at Blue Gill Tavern
and he likes the Fourth of July parade
when Ms. Ottawa County floats by
and she plays the flute along to old Gene Autry songs.
But the fat cop dreads the fireworks all day.
They keep up his bloodhound, Bud, scratching at the trailer door
dreaming of mud in Black Oaks Pond, wet lawns,
dreams of howling at the gates of Woodhaven.
5. So We Left For Blue Gill
in X’s van and Sam called shotgun
quite seriously. He twisted the radio dial.
I was a mechanic’s daughter
that couldn’t drive, I sat hunched in back for miles
chasing whiskey with water.
X at the steering wheel: the most handsome
of us, and best, he was supposedly blessed
for surviving a fire of his own making.
That was years ago. (Pyro!)
Now he’s a mechanical engineer
who taps the wheel at stop signs
along to homespun hip-hop.
Sam in the shotgun seat grinned like a bad cowboy,
John Deere cap turned backwards.
That was the year Sam and I split night shifts
at the Italian Ice stand, scooping ruby sorbet
into styrofoam cups.
I made good tips.
In the back, Sam squeezed limes
and measured sugar, we worked
sweating through the total solar eclipse.
That was when I said Sam, let’s go on a trip
soon, my hands sticky and thick with strawberry juice.
The same day that Juan brought cold cans of Old Style
to the walk-up window around noon
and shoved a bill in my jar.
When nights were slow, I picked my scabs
while Sam played acoustic guitar.
On the I-90 East
Juan sat in the backseat of the van with me
while X sped past wide-eyed cows and Burger Kings
and we kept look-out for highway patrol
since Juan was still on parole but don’t worry,
X gets away with everything.
Juan wasn’t going to come to Blue Gill.
He never left town. He was addicted
to cocaine and hung out mostly still
in the park by the high school
taking swills or smoking spliffs on the bench.
Juan sold lots of coke back then.
And he wasn’t going to come to Blue Gill
until the day before we left, some older guys had shot
a single, clean hole
through his living room window, it was penny-sized.
And his head fell
now to rest shaking on my shoulder
in the backseat of the van like we were sixteen.
How the boys fascinated me so.
There were girls too in the backseat
and packed behind in yet another row.
They were interesting and beautiful girls.
They had broke homes too, by all means,
and they were thoughtful and looked good
in cut-off jeans. They forgave. They sang folksy.
They wore sparkles and raved on weekends:
loud-laughing and proud
to exist among wayward young men.
Maxine, Maddie, Bella, the other Bella, Safiya, Lily,
all curled up in yellow bikinis.
But I can’t forget grumbling Sam’s ruddy profile
and the window behind his face moving moments
of farm animals and exit warnings.
How I loved him back then and how
embarrassing. The boys were not fearless.
X would slow the van with a smirk.
From my shoulder, Juan would whisper that
the gunshot sounded just like a firework.
6. Uncle Mad Dan’z off the Indiana Skyway
was a shack in a gravel lot.
We preferred the smaller joints to whopping spots
advertised on main routes between billboards
for Roxy Gentlemen’s Club and Rogaine
just a few feet south of the border
by a turn-off lane.
At Uncle Mad Dan’z, a brace-faced checkout boy
always hustled X into a larger set
of mortars. We all liked to flex back then,
waving wads of singles and pointing up the short aisles
while the checkout boy crunched on Fritos,
climbed the stepladder.
A man, maybe the Mad Dan, smoked in the lot
on a beach chair and stroked his pit bull.
He helped the boys load the trunk by the bagful
while I lingered around inside and imagined Mad Dan’z
burning to the dusty ground.
A vision which made my knees buckle—
so perilous to stand in aisles stacked ceiling-high
with Cosmic Honeysuckle, Combat Zones (yellow!)
Chameleon Centrifuge, Ghost Riders,
Bellowing Asteroid Blaster in huge columns
and Big Pimpin’ 25’s, Aerial Dogfights (blue!)
plus cherry bombs.
I always pocketed a few.
On the label a gold-eyed panther bares
his searing fangs: a hiss you could nearly hear
through plastic-packaged boxes of the name-brand.
His face torn open again and again by eager hands.
I imagined the cherry bombs covered in chocolate.
I always left one or two on the counter
in the back of the ice stand.
7. What the Fat Cop Knew
round noon when he saw a dented van
speed through town center with city plates
and a trailer park guest pass pasted
in the windshield: a trunk full
of thirty-cases and love-makers,
no doubt. But what else?
He watched the backseat waving
cigarettes out the windows
passionately. The fat cop tailed behind
till he was radioed for backup:
Drunk guy won’t leave the library. Over.
He reversed the squad car back up over
West Street, red and blue light fragmentary
drifting across his forehead.
It was midday in central Illinois.
The local cardinals sang a song
of roses and violets. Momentarily
the fat cop closed his eyes behind the wheel
basking. It was a sweet summer.
The bum at the library kept asking
for shoelaces and using the C-word.
He would eventually be peacefully
transferred somewhere leeward.
Somewhere else in town—
in the timbered curves of Woodhaven—
boys and girls had torn open
the first box of High Life.
The Irish ones were applying sunscreen.
Nicole, whose grandma owned the lot,
was in the shed poking old tires on bicycles
she rode with brothers when they were young
and visiting. She recalled those hot, nothing
weekends but oh, the excitement of
the diving board then.
The tires were all half-flat but would do
just the mile or so to the pool although
the road was hilly.
One bike was a tandem. And how I tried
to understand him when Sam and I mounted
its corroded skeleton, pedalling silly.
I remember he spit on the ground.
I remember the sky was cloudless.
We rode past small lakes with painted signs.
All in a line, grinding drained wheels through
the gravel-paved meadow and up green mounds.
Made our way as if whistling.
Whenever we slowed, Sam lit a firecracker
which disturbed like a camera click:
all the white-tailed deer bristling.
I said stop that. Or we’ll run out and what if
we get hungry later. His right hand
extended and pinching a shrinking wick
against the wildflower clatter, we cackled.
Crackers. The does scattered. My god, my chest.
He looked back as if to say don’t flatter yourself.
8. We Caused Trouble in the Locker Room
shotgunning gold cans and waiting
our turn with Juan in the handicapped stall.
We had no self-control.
Mothers hunched and changed and covered
their children along the concrete wall:
No Run Zone.
Fenced-in blue the lap-swim pool shone.
Freckled X had stayed behind at the cabin
to have sex. Couples had to do it in shifts:
First Bella and X then Maddie and Travis
and then Nicole and Alex.
The rest of us slept on quilts on the floor. Confession:
I’ve never had a real boyfriend before
but I fall in love all of the time,
it’s easy when you’re drunk.
I used to wake up and make a screwdriver.
I used a screwdriver to break up chunks
of ice before I fed them into the churner at the stand
while Sam squeezed limes.
Sam and I staggered home sometimes
getting loaded while he went on about
his drowned brother and I thought I was so special.
After swimming us girls finished another thirty
amongst ourselves. Tossing gummy butterflies
between our mouths. We lay browning.
I didn’t know it then that my blood was boiling.
Shaded by a visor crown,
I was so drunk and kind in the grass
when X crouched down and asked
where we hid the fireworks.
Nicole said something about noise complaints
and a clearing outside of the gates. She said later.
I rose.
Glancing under the oak tree, Juan dozed.
Keyring looped around his thumb.
And with his eyes closed I swear
that boy looked about ten years old
and beatified.
I had to pee but one of the couples was still inside.
9. That Night It All Started
when Sam sat cross-legged on the porch deeply engaged
with Maxine who was loud-mouthed and big-hearted.
I had brought her along, we met at college that year and became
dear girlfriends. Sam’s guitar in his lap
while Maxine held our Stella crystal chalice brimming before
her like a gloved queen.
Yes, I felt the sloshing
and smelled the splash onto the swinging bench.
And Maxine was going on about dropping out
of school so her big, brown eyes filled with tears
so perfectly and Sam moved the guitar to the ground
so carefully so he could move in toward her.
And one of the couples was still inside.
And one of the couples was in the back of the van.
So I asked Juan to take a walk
and we had made it to the gravel road by the trash cans
where X was taking a leak and looking
dumbfounded, he asked again where
Nicole hid the fireworks.
Juan was astounded when I pointed
toward the bush behind the shed.
See, here’s the thing: years ago X survived
a fire of his own making. Not so dead
but half-balded and he still he loved to play.
Scalded boy, I called him.
When he drinks he aches for a little gasoline.
When we fourteen X left trash cans burning down the alley
like valentines for his Bella.
Baby smokestacks in the city, we used to roast
marshmallows in the park.
X always with the tangelo display.
Mania out of a match and hairspray.
That was why Nicole had hid the bundle under the bush.
The Bull Run 20’s in a blue box beside Frat Party 15’s
and one Peacock-Grand-Slam. (Green!)
X could not be trusted to wait until we made it to the clearing.
The secret valley
she knew far from the rows of shuttered homes where
no one would have heard us cheering
for what the air held.
Nicole said the cops around here were real jerks.
Juan offered X a bump off his own wrist
while I looked back to the porch. Its figures.
That’s when white-toothed X took off resisting
our hands with a twist, downright giddy
when he fled. Arms loaded with explosives.
He howled catch me if you can. And I ran back
to the house screaming fire like a madman
as X wasted our finale on drunken antics.
How romantic, I thought
when we split into pairs to effectively search the Woodhaven grounds:
the forest, ponds, jungle gym, the pool.
We trailed where cardinals fled from faint popping sounds.
10. A Brief History:
Research into pyrotechnics first began during the Han Dynasty, when the emperor approached Taoist alchemists with one request: to live forever. To conjure immortality, the alchemists combined potassium nitrate with sulfur. Potassium nitrate provided enough energy to blast out from the bamboo casing. The sulfur sprayed and stunk. But it was not until centuries later during the Song Dynasty that charcoal was added for a slow burn. The bamboo tubes were stuffed thick and tossed into fire pits to ward off evil spirits. Along with the ingredients for gunpowder, fireworks spread to the West through the Silk Road. To increase morale during the American revolution, fireworks were displayed along with booming cannons and the discharging of muskets. John Adams referred to this triparate “illumination” as a tradition which he hoped would continue every coming summer in celebration. Although dangerous and violent aspects of the festival were subdued, his wish was mostly granted. Americans still delight in the noise, light, smoke, and floating materials. Most cities and townships provide citizens with a public display every Fourth of July. (New Year's Eve too.) Oftentimes neighbors will curate their own hazy show on street corners while other neighbors grill meat and gaze up. In some states, red billboards punctuate the freeway with a deranged cartoon cousin of Uncle Sam offering a swell deal on bottle rockets, mortars, and more. In many movies, when the couple finally kisses and the man says, “I love you,” fireworks ignite in the background.
11. A Wooden Guardrail Rings Reservoir Yellow Feather
shallow and muddy at the trailer park’s edge.
Illinois herons rested in the wings where we could not see them
their knees bent backwards.
The tennis court was across the pond.
Droves of mosquitos hovered above the still water.
We swatted.
Sam and I against rotted posts,
we called out X, X like kids following smoke.
Sam kept asking who told X where the bundle was hidden
since we all knew what was forbidden
but I was quick and mean asking him
about Maxine and why he didn’t call me back last week
when I was leaving a house party and I wasn’t tired yet
and it was so warm outside.
I was still in a pink bikini top
as we squinted into clusters of trees.
I sucked in to muster up what I needed to say please
look at me, Sam. Our drugged, wet pupils.
Jean shorts pulled up over the fold of my belly button.
Legs shaved and then bitten clean.
My god, my chest.
And he said I don’t know if it’s best for us
to walk so long or sleep together anymore because you love me.
You love me. When he said it, hot wind whirled.
So then what could I do besides fall into the marshy grass
and cry like, what else, a girl?
Sam chainsmoked Reds while I cried,
or were they Lights?
I cried until I choked while Sam drank a 40 from his backpack.
Every few minutes, he handed me the warm bottle.
He did not look at my soaked face.
When the sobs stopped and I moved to get up,
the gentleman offered me a palm.
I told him he was an asshole for forgetting the corsage at prom.
That’s when we saw it
in the tennis court from across the pond:
a vertical eruption almost like a cylinder of sparkles fizzing
and it was mostly orange, I think. Until the green mortar
exploded, a peacock unfurled so high, twinkling peony
into a flash powder titanium salute.
Golden spider legs inching out from chrysanthemum (silver!)
the twitching legs dissipated into platinum flare. Bang.
Showering, momentary red glare.
And the crackling traipsed down as a velvet curtain upon
a bare-torsoed boy who danced around his flames like Merlin. Bang.
He did not notice us spying.
A reflection of the color wavered in the reservoir.
Of course, I started crying.
12. So the Fat Cop Demanded to Know What Was Wrong
when he pulled up to the wooden gazebo.
Sirens flipped off.
He grabbed Sam’s bony shoulders
and cornered him to the rail.
The cop’s back to the vanishing trail
of X’s final tennis court torpedo.
I crossed my arms to cover streaks of dirt
and explained that I was not battered
so the cop let go of Sam.
He said that was all that mattered but
where the hell was my shirt?
Sam said, I’m sorry, we’re just in the middle of breaking up, sir.
And the cop blushed. Then he said, I’ll need to search your bag.
See, I’m responding to a call about a reck-loose running
and lighting shit up, disturbing the peace, see,
you fit the description you dirty blonde.
Go ahead, take another drag. Stupid kid.
And while I’m here, would you happen to know anything
about the big group in the cabin off Section C?
You know, the cabin with the shed and all the bicycles
strewn about on the lawn by the willow tree?
And we said No sir, not me.
I was crashing hard and shaking, sobbing still,
and the cop ordered Sam to hold me.
That was the last time he held me.
He held me stiffly from the side
while the fat cop wrote us tickets for underage drinking.
We were twenty then. What a joke.
Obviously the coke was in our pockets.
The cop drove away.
Then Sam left to find the others but I said
I wanted to walk back alone through the woods
just to see. And he said okay.
We were twenty then.
It was the last time we spoke.
13. Back at The Cabin, The Girls Were All Shook Up
because when they went to look for X,
Maddie slipped into a mud pit and lost her shoe.
In the aftermath, a flash of sirens came
from down the gravel path which sent Juan running.
When the fat cop ransacked the place,
he discovered a stunning 210 empty cans of Miller High Life.
He was looking for something explosive.
X was still missing.
And other boys had been skinny dipping in the forest
while the girls all lined up on the porch.
Side by side.
It was Nicole who first dared to slide
out of line and shatter our Stella crystal chalice
so the callous cop would pop out and investigate the crash.
That’s how Maxine scurried in through the door in the back
to shove all of Juan’s stash in her crotch.
When I finally staggered in, I was regaled the tale of heroism:
how Maxine crawled through the grass
and how the girls were all lined up quaking on the porch.
They swear they saw smoke rising from the tennis court.
But they could not see his orchestrated flames.
And I would never tell them what I did see.
How the pond illuminated.
Nicole kept saying if we had only waited,
she knew about fields of farm near the expressway,
rows of soybean for miles.
She rode there with her brothers when she was a child.
She said the police can’t find you there.
X came back near dawn with brambles in his blonde hair.
He apologized for stealing the show.
But everyone knew it was me
who had pointed to the bundle below the bush
and around the shed.
While Bella kissed his mouth, I said Good Thing
that fat cop didn’t find you or we woulda been dead.
We left Woodhaven that morning in a dented van.
We left the tennis court scorched black in the shape of
a chrysanthemum.
We drove around Blue Gill till we found Juan in a tavern.
All of us sat at a long table and ate quietly.
We stunk like sulfur and cigarette ash.
My eyes hurt. We all paid in cash.
Went home to the city.
That shift I made tips enough to pay my drinking ticket.
It was still July.
We were still twenty
and all of our parents were alive.
As I passed sweet ice through a window
crickets moaned the new night.
It was not unlike the hissing of a cat (black!)
or the fizzing of a bottle rocket.
I found an old cherry bomb in my apron pocket.
A lighter was hidden in my cowboy boot.
I thanked myself, sadly disposed of the fruit.
