Illinois, My Apologies

For Mel, of course—and in memory of my mother

Justin Hamm

-2-

RockSaw PressMankato, MN

“Illinois, My Apologies” Copyright © 2011 Justin Hamm

Audio companion in CD format © 2011 Justin HammAll rights reserved

Published by RockSaw Press in the United States of America

ISBN: 978-1-4507-4865-0

February 2011

First Edition

RockSawPress.com

Cover Image by Mike Chervinko

Design and layout: Jorge Evans

A Some of the poems in this collection fi rst appeared or will appear in the following publications (sometimes in a slightly diff erent form), to which the author would like to off er his sincerest thanks:

Cream City Review (“Personal Day”)New York Quarterly (“Goodbye, Sancho Panza”) Nimrod International Journal (“Rebekah Just When the Drought Was Ending”) decomP (“At Sixteen”)jmww (“The Electric Widower”)Spoon River Poetry Review (“Meditations on a Kiss”) The Chaff ey Review (“Sunrise Subterfuge (in the fi rst person),” “What I Have Learned of Grieving,” “Study in Contrast”) Oak Bend Review (“A Promise, Belated”)Plains Song Review (“Illinois, My Apologies”) Willow Review (“The Autobiography, Nearly”)Cold Mountain Review (“The Flour Epiphany”)

I , M A 1A S 3

S S (I T F P ) 5M K 7

S M F 9S C 10

G , S P 12T F E 14

R J W D W E 15A P , B 17

T L Y F 18P D 19

T E W 22T A , N 25

W I H L G 28

C

-1-

I , M A

I , M A

At thirteen fourteen and fi fteenI was an alien amongthe Rockwellian agricreaturesof my home galaxyalways looking awayas they traversed the tablefl at prairie terrainin green-and-yellowplough-pulling podsalways pretending notto hear their crypticyup-n-mmm-hmm vernacularpunctuated with inscrutablehandkerchief dabbing gesturesand carefully selected gruntsoutside the local Farm and Fleet

I always believed that to beheard from the Midwestyou had to screamin every directionand I did so in lungfullsof teenboy angst and self-pitytarbrained and a little sick—I may even have been pulling outmy own eyelasheswhen the deer chose meas its instrument for suicide

Nighttime on a twisty turnthere was impactand thenits meatiest parts splayed widetwitching and bubbling lifebloodin the bright white beamof my headlights

-2-

J H

-3-

I , M A

A S

The Midwest belchesfrom its smokestacksbeside the churning riverand all of its fathers stretchbleary eyed and bitterabout their swollenfather anklestheir crookedfather fi ngerstheir click-clackingfather jointsand their endlessfather mortgageswhile a room awaytheir beardless sonsnurse black eyesnurse hangoversroll out of bedsand into coverallsunknowingly rollinginto their fathers’ skinsand their fathers’ troublesbut the black sheepreads Boethius to the spidersby fl ashlightbeneath the stairsweeps for everythingworth weeping forin a place where weepingis forbiddenfeels himself becomingin a place where becomingis also forbidden—a place where only

The old man stepped outfrom the pale October corncut a line through the rising vaporthe high engine whine and the panicin frosty beard and battered brown hatlike a phantasmagoricWalt Whitman

He placed palm to my foreheadlike a holy mantold a beautiful lie about deathand the natural cycleand to listen to him wasto listen to the landscape itselfthough I didn’t realize thatuntil yesterday

Yesterday my mother diedand as I passed between yourhard black winter fi eldsI rememberedthat I belong to youfor the fi rst timeand for once my fi rst thoughtwas not to screambut to turn my ear to the openand listen

-4-

J H

-5-

I , M A

S S ( )

At six a.m.he enters my bedrooma massive hulk of hardened laborer all stubblefaced all fl annelclad and frownyall stooped over from the sheer weightof fatherhood and failure but already I have my speechprepared:

‘I could work’ I say‘but don’t you thinkthe cruel Midwest has asked too much of its men already—has called it weak and unbecoming even for a man to give himself over to tender emotion?’

He blinks.

‘One ought’ I say ‘pursue softer thingsas a rule and two softer thingsin close proximity ought pursue one another’

He scratches his jaw and blinks.

the smokestacks belchingthe river churningand the gentle turningof son to father and son to fatherhave yet to be forbidden

-6-

J H

-7-

I , M A

‘For honestly’ I say‘who can love an anvil,an anchor tender or tenderlyand tell me old manis not the heart itselfas a thing rather squishy?’

‘But be assured this back of mineit too will breakthis hopeful spiritit too will rotlike so many tiny factory towns in shambles all around us’

Blink scratch blink. Cough cough.

‘Old man’ I say‘believe you methere is no reason for anyone to hurry.’

To which as ever he says nothing— then as now just blink scratch blinkcough cough cough and not even a whispered curseword betrays his disappointments as deep as the pocketsof the rich men we’d serve but never become each of us for a diff erent reason.

M K

Yesterday I saw this manin the alfalfa fi eld behind my house who’d dragged his recliner and a cooler of cheap beer out to where the sunset was at its most magnifi cent for no other reason exceptto kill with his rifl ewhatever he could killin comfort utmost

And in an attempt to resist a snap judgment I thought again of fi rst impressions and how in Vasari’s version Cimabue the painter couldn’t have guessed that the dirty shepherd boy seated like my hunter in a Tuscan pastureand sketching sheepshapes on stone would give the world perspective

Nor I thoughtcould the everyday whitecollar know my old man eitherby his black fi ngernails and his workingclass teeth which said nothing of the scope of his imaginationor of the tenderness that lived in his heart

But Giotto gave us Judas with the bulldog brow

-8-

J H

-9-

I , M A

the perfect mask of hate bled it onto a panel and forever turned a kiss into something profane which reminded me that my father once left the reddish phantom print of his open hand below my mother’s right eye

And I sat there and watched my breath cloud over the window and when the gunshot soundedI couldn’t be sure if it was really safe to place my lips on another human being

S M F

Welcome tothe great stateof Missouri.

One minute you’re dying to climb atopa wooly greenOzark mountainand point in a biblical mannerat every otherAmerican region,casting out all the bipedal creatureswho seem to bein certain momentsbeyond all redemption.

Next minuteyou’re reminded how often goodness is a closely guarded secret, a private aff air, the faintest whisper passed on from heart to mouthto ear between friends and neighbors.

Guess this is as good a place as any to feel exiled from the species.

-10-

J H

-11-

I , M A

S C

Your mother saidour failure was writteninto our histories at birth and we laughed at her ignorance.

But tonight while your fi ngerglides across the glossy pagesof Popular ScienceI hold a séance for the Holy Spiritin utter seriousnessamong the book clutterand crumpled manifestos in the basement

and none of it seems particularly funny.

Earlier at dinner the gunshot syllableswe discovered on our unwilling tonguesscattered crows abovethe curling cornstalks engaged in espionage at the edge of the yard

in a scene from the mind of Mr. van Gogh.

I thought it was an omen

but you called itcause and eff ectand exhaled in frustration

and now after you’ve scoff edone more time at my feelings after I’ve mourned once again over your thoughts there is only this: silence.

and the blue night lingersand the hot sun hesitates—both reconsidering perhapstheir mutual obligationsor else the permanence of the defi nition of permanence.

-12-

J H

-13-

I , M A

G , S P

I meet a Slim Jim munching Sancho Panza goateed now all leathered out and in close contact with his inner beast

Five hundred yearsafter the death of his beloved mulehe rides a Kawasaki wants to know if I will sally forth with him through Missouri as his loyal dimwit squire

There’s this broad he’s s’pposed to meetnear the riverside in Capehe explains

So I pull out my blues harpand toot a few noteswhile I think of the babymy sweet scented daughterwhose pudgy upturned nosematches my own

A newborn’s a fragile thinga soft cooing heap of possibly maybe long before it hardens into something permanent

like a souland for the fi rst three weeks I refused to use her name

Earlier tonight I drank to overcoming these fearsto Jesus and Scienceand green bean casserole but Sancho is as soberas an ice cube as serious as any grain of sand and despite the longingI’m forced to decline

Missouri is veined with deep winding caverns so many of her secrets tightly concealedand anyway I’m too old and civilized for the sort of diggingit would take to learn anything good

-14-

J H

-15-

I , M A

T F E This morning, I decide I wantto make biscuits the proper way,fl our and Crisco and buttermilk all meted out in careful measure, but there is an accident involving the fl our canister; a white mushroom cloud rises, coats my hair, my eyebrows and bare shoulders, and I cough and hit my head on a cabinet and say I word I won’t repeatin case my baby daughter ever reads this poem.

When I examine myself,angling my scalp lightward,staring hard into the bathroom mirror,this sprinkled-over look plays tricksand I see my father in two versions: one as a young man,when he wore so much drywall dustwith a vast, innocent dignity, and one as an old, old man,when the color will be nothingmore than another dreaded sign of his accumulated age.

And I ask myself out loudis it really so wrong to wantto hold certain things while your grip is still strongrather than wait until whatever you might wish to holdis too heavy for old man hands and only keeps falling awaysoon as your swollen fi ngers can close in around it.

R J W D W E

But the best thing about Rebekah was the way she fl oated alwaysbeneath the scent of woodburn and dusty Middle America, her keen ranch-queen convictions slicing deep and deeper intothe tiniest of daily miserieswith skepticism, demanding alwayssome proof before she’d concede this life He pieced together for uscell by cell with ever shakier Godfi ngers contained even one malignancy.

Every bow-legged young bull rider, every sunburnt farmer of somedaywho stopped by to mend a fenceor just to off er genteel salutations would see her backlit by sunset, dream her into his own mother and pray to the essence of the prairieto do what old bones could not. And it worked. She survived well enoughto give of herself four more seasons among luckless kinfolk who every one drank greedily the blood she squeezed and felt the cracked lips of dry times less.

As long as there was some great needinto which she could empty herselfshe could will the heart to continue and none of the rules of dying applied, but she must’ve seen that the new rainwasn’t baptismal or meant for her restoration.When those stormclouds fi nally swelled

-16-

J H

-17-

I , M A

and burst into fat miracle drumbeats she must’ve felt the change was coming on. Why else open the windows so widewith no thought for the evening chill? Why else cut a hundred wildfl owers and arrange them into fi ery clustersbut pour no water into their vases?

A P , B

Old man, you don’t know this, because I never told you. But I so wish I could travel those winter woods on horseback or make good things, necessary things, grow green in dark spring soil. I wouldnot neglect to savor the smell of catfi sh frying, the sound of soft banjo picking on the porch,in the fading light of summer. I used to dream

of you and me, young and young together,the same warm sun bleaching our identical cowlicks, tanning our twin facesinstead of two suns, on diff erent days, in diff erent photos taken fi fty years apart. We were never set in my time, the era of cheap plastic and wire, always in your time, when one could still fi nd an abundanceof the rich, painful authenticity of life.

That old world might’ve fi rmed my muscles and my outlook, left me sturdier, stronger, and more deeply scarred. Like you I’m governed by a wild, burning restlessness, a desire to know all that I don’t already, and the same fl ames that chased youfrom the South through the countless counties of the Midwest, all the time collecting moreshady women and padding your outlaw biography, those fl ames cause me to fl ing myself headlong into the rear exit door of my generation.

If I ever get out, I’ll come and fi nd you. I promise we’ll learn about one another. We willdrink in the strange life of that old America greedily, two children who have somehow understood the lifespan of a sunrise, the frailty of a single fl ower.

-18-

J H

-19-

I , M A

T L Y F

You found your grandfather, remember, staring through two rheumy eyes and two panes of clouded glass at an ancient International Harvester, rusted beyond orange, a fragile, a fossil-like thing half-swallowed by the unruly bluestem and Indian grass bearding the rough face of the prairie.

The way he sat, head cocked, studying this long-useless artifact as closely as one might study one’s refl ection year and year again in alarmed confusion fi rst suggested dementia, the thieving disease that would eventually cause inability to use a fork, certain words, the toilet, but no, this was not that, not yet.

There was still an audible understanding in his sigh when you crawled into his lap,pressing pillowy cheek to sagging cheek, enclosing in your fi ngers his twisted ones and straining against the obstinacy of time to see the same thing he was seeing.

P D

But some mornings I wake unwillingly shake free of that goodsleep most unwillingly and even the showerringed in greyblack mildeweven the egg substitutes seem overwhelming

I’m always so damn hungryfor vicarious humiliation so I shift to half uprightand sketch Dostoevsky envision him curled up and fetal before the fi ring squad the moment that surely fractured his mind into jigsaw heapsof twisted blue paranoia

At noontime I confer with the spirit of Nora Belle Guthrie who tickles seductively my fl eshyfat earlobesand whispers DNA is a diseaseof the mechanical ageand as the sweet lady’s fi ngertips turn to fl uttering fl ames the tongue in her face the whites of her eyes glow a blazing orange like embers alive

But her teeth glitter like so many jewels sandblasted smooth by the drifting dancing

-20-

J H

-21-

I , M A

dustbowl dust and though in life she cooked her own husband in keroseneI believe her every wordas if she has called downthe absolute power of algebra

I explain to her my regretsthe anticipation of what I thought was an ancient thing—before I was crazy you seeI was Pentecostal and one evening at tent revivalI convulsed in the wet grassnear a colorless cornfi eld forgotten at harvest I teetered on the wild verge of Pentecostal holyspeak but could not give myself over and it made me sorry perpetually

Poor Woody I understand afternoon and evening are takenwith visions: my own mother for instance in the churchyard naked from the waista hollow specter outlinedagainst the purple Easter skyshivering in the icecold mist smoking a cigarette and alternatelygnawing at the clear plastic bracelet still affi xed to her left wrist

The wrist— wrinkled and withered and bleeding

the shared poison nobody sees when I return a ridiculous person to work among the other ridiculous persons early next morning

-22-

J H

-23-

I , M A

T E W

In the weeks aftermy mother passes on the old man contractsa scorching case of the lonesome electric jittersand takes to pacing head fl oorward feet all atwitter ina Chaplinized shuffl e

And then – Jesus! – the energy explodes and suddenly he’s halfhis age againcan lose whole days to the methodical clank of hammer on nailor the static scrape of the drywall knifewithout breaking— eight to fi veeight to seven seven to nineturning pits to palacesfor cashfat investorsto fl ip

I’ve been staying overto help him adjusthave been sleeping on the sofa and some mornings I waketo fi nd the back door half open

the old man’s silhouette outlined in a soft low voltage crackle foregrounded against the cool indigo darkness orange cigarette tip fl aring and relaxing like some kind of electronicwarning light

Standing in the threshold he looks as if he is in between two important moments as if he is returning for somethinghe’s nearly forgotten or else decided to turn his backand leave it behindfor good

But then again: with his features obscured in the halfl ighthe might well be something fl eshandblood the stout folk heroof my fi rst nine years for instance— the bike fi xer and jerk beater upperfull of warm blood and father miracles

so that is whatI let him be –I recognize the illusion recognize that this energy could be transient and false

-24-

J H

-25-

I , M A

that soon the wounds of labor and loss might return that money again will spill like liquid between his gnarled knucklesthat some other hard luck womanwill run him down will run out on himwill die on him and I decide as long as the currentstill runs through him there’s no harm in simply letting him be

T A , N

Mother was the image of a vengeful voodoo witcha bag-eyed and bleach-hairedtrailer park Cleopatra with a twist of sweet southern belle that only emerged when she’d swallowed her precious pick-me-uppers

But I loved her anywaybucked up and origamied through a tough childhoodadjusted the thermostat sometimes oracled and danced the Quixote wildor sucralosed without regardfor independent testingbefore turning suddenly into the slick brown earthwormalways curled up or curlingor into the small calf who suckles milk from dry gray bone

As I matured I learned to use myguillotine eyeballs for acts of dastardly deviance sold rare insect wingsto down-on-their-luck cherubsfor movie money and kicks but all the while I dreamedI’d build abuse shelters

-26-

J H

-27-

I , M A

on the foundational principles of trigonometry and drink Culligan waterwith the woman who’d carried the straw baskether whole damn life with no fruit inside

So I taught myself to craft bulletproof syllogisms in rapid sonar beeps and to always keep the barley in my prayers but like anyone else for the longest time I had to contemplate the fog over various bodies of waterhow it evaporates how everything evaporateshow empathy and compassion always seem to evaporate soon as the sun pours itself in hot waves over the world

This brought on a low periodmy idea of a good time devolved into fl inging butterfl y knives through open windows down into the street carnivals bulging with casual ironists and all other species of shameful mangy mammal

And why not why not a low period a murderous period even when the hurt people infl ictis like an atomic blossom

that explodes into crackling neonon a regular cyclebut the hope they inspire only fl ickers with the rarity and intensity of a bashful fi refl yon the darkest nightof the coldest Midwestern winter

But the truth is I’m past all that nowI’m thinking diff erently I’m all grown upI’m reading the street signs in the language they were writtenI’m baling my own hay tracing my own lifeline coloring with my own set of Crayolaspouring my own cups of tea

So all in all you could say I’m doing pretty good—or good as can be expected anyway staring as I am directly into the screaming howling mean taunting eyes of the heartless monster called healing

-28-

J H

-29-

I , M A

W I H L G

You may shake away these white winter petalsand smooth peach smears

that fl oat beneath your honeyblue skin. You may rip from your head all these

sweet mother symphonies but time will bare urges crush wild garden storms

into dust abstractions and knife through otherwiseperfect moondreams. Need always

scalds like Tuesday’s mistbut autumn will water againyour silk hair gorgeous

and heal like rosary beadsof sweat sliding down the other side of the window.

A A

Originally from the fl atlands of central Illinois, Justin Hamm now lives, along with wife Mel and daughter Abbey, near Mark Twain Territory in Missouri. His work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Nimrod International Journal, The New York Quarterly, Cream City Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, and a host of other publications. Recent work has also been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the Best of the Net Anthology. Justin earned his MFA from Southern Illinois University Carbondale in 2005.