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Jan Beatty Page 2 California Corridor
On the San
Joaquin Line
between Modesto
& Merced,
past the
arroyos, past the fruit trees
in rows,
rows—hands of the farm workers/
beauty always
with blood behind it,
nothing free.
The holding tank
& the drainage
ditch, the cast-off trucks
of the workers,
woman & child wait
for the angels
of bread to swoop down
& bring the
night with them, covering
her & her baby,
feeding them, saying
sleep, sleep.
This day, California is a wide,
wide lover—sweet
& slightly off-key
in its song.
Wacky & loose, the train rumbles
through
Richmond, Martinez, ocean
on the left,
gang tags on the right beside
the paper mills,
refineries,
the brown, brown
hills—
then explosion
of jacaranda (red flower!)
more mounds of
brown, beautiful
red, a young
couple playing cards
across the
aisle: does she know the way
he looks at her
is what people spend lives
looking for?
They’re
laughing/curling into
each other—he in
his little skid hat/she’s in a
striped tee—this
kind of desire the most
radiant—from the
body outward—
No way to be in
CA & not feel frontier—
so many
suffering drought/poverty/
only the hills
outlast us—
How to have
body/space/land of the mind/
knowing the
ravaged?
Be awake in it,
one rail tie at
a time.
I want to be in
the open—
Out here, the
land grows wild hair on the side
of the tracks
the way a dead man grows his—
dry, stickly—so
stray—going to a place no one
knows. Mountains
are the only salvation—
windmills on the
left, “Golden West” train
on the right,
truck junkyard:
You left your soul in LA,
the guy across
the aisle says
to his friend.
Then why does he
look so alive?
I was here, I
was loved. Were you?
We go through
Pittsburg, CA—factories shut
down here,
too—where I met Wild Bill.
Blue blue
cerulean next to brown dead hills—
otherworldly
with the windmills—
standing water,
huge pallets for transport &
we are riding
through a feeling—suspension—
Nothing, nothing
can be done right now/
we are free.
Then all aboard
in Antioch:
a skate punk
kickflips his board
& sits down,
hoodie w/skull & hat back-
wards, I love
him for his pose, brilliantly
—Jan
Beatty, The Switching/Yard,
University of Pittsburgh Press,
2013
When I was a girl I
was a boy
with black boots and
holster and
a basketball hoop in
the backyard.
My reach was
endless, I was
birthed in a meteor
shower and
all the stars knew
my name.
Ever since, I’ve
been on street corners
with gimcrack men
you wouldn’t want to know,
making myself a
luminary.
I had this piece of
paper—took years to get it:
the story before the
story changed,
before the
government got their hands on it.
I’ve been
told___________________.
My first father was
a millionaire, his
name on my birth
certificate/voice
on the phone/his
lame-ass answer:
I didn’t come inside
her.
I was the small
voice asking/
he was the hammer
coming down,
shattering me into
shooting stars.
I covered my bedroom
ceiling
with planets, prayed
for a meteor hit
to bury the house.
My second father
was a hockey player
who fucked
my mother when she
was 20—
I drove to Boston to
meet him, armed
with her picture, he
didn’t
remember her:
I was a professional
athlete,
he said,
there were a lot of women.
His green eyes
burned familiar,
and I thought he was
a good man—then
two weeks later, he
said no, he didn’t
think he could be my
father. I decided
I’ve come from a
long line of cowards,
men who can only
stand up if they’re
fucking/flaccid
after that.
Sometimes the earth
moves in my dreams
with lies about my
past. I was
bent on ruination:
drugs for lunch
and dinner—with some
dope in between.
My face the face of
no/
father,
unrecognizable/so why not?
I was the immaculate
cum-shot,
I was the wildly
surviving thing,
racing after
ghostdaddys in dreams:
Dear father, whoever
you are,
I hope the sex was
ravenous,
with cross/checking,
slashing/
I hope there were
slats of light everywhere
to see my star on
the other side.
—Jan Beatty, The
Switching/Yard, University of Pittsburgh
Press, 2013
© Copyright, 2013,
Jan Beatty, |