Made to Explode by Sandra Beasley (e book free reading txt) 📗

Made to Explode

Poems

SANDRA BEASLEY

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For the grandmothers

Contents

HEIRLOOM

ELEPHANT

LONG JOHN SILVER’S

THE CONVERSATION

WINTZELL’S OYSTER HOUSE

NOSTALGIA

WE GOT AN A—

MONTICELLO PEACHES

TOPSY TURVY

MY WHITENESSES

BLACK DEATH SPECTACLE

***

WEAK OCEAN

THE SNIPER DANCE

KISS ME

JEFFERSON, MIDNIGHT

LINCOLN, MIDNIGHT

CHERRY TREE REBELLION

ROOSEVELT, MIDNIGHT

EINSTEIN, MIDNIGHT

TITANIC, MIDNIGHT

AMERICAN ROME

***

PIGS IN SPACE

BILOXI BACON

RHYMES WITH

STILL LIFE WITH SEX

HAINS POINT

WINTER GARDEN PHOTOGRAPH

CARD TABLE

IN PRAISE OF PINTOS

THE VOW

LITTLE LOVE POEM

***

DEATH BY CHOCOLATE

AN ACCOMMODATION

INTERSECTIONALITY

CUSTOMER SERVICE IS

SAY THE WORD

POP

SELF-PORTRAIT WITH GEORGE CATLIN

BASS PRO SHOPS

NON-COMMISSIONED: A QUARTET

LAZARUS

EPIC

Acknowledgments

Made to Explode

HEIRLOOM

Lo, twelve children born to a woman named Thankful

in Nampa, by the border between Oregon

and Idaho, or as it will be remembered: Ore-Ida.

Lo, two of her sons drive to Miami

not knowing if their plan will work.

Lo, what were once waste scraps fed to the cows

now repackaged—the fry shavings sliced, spiced, and oiled.

Lo, a chef at the Fountainebleau takes the bribe.

Lo, Tater Tots are dished onto the tables

of the 1954 National Potato Convention and soon,

enshrined in the freezers of America. Three decades later,

the golden age of my childhood is a foil-lined tray

plattered with Ore-Ida product, maybe salt, maybe

nothing but hot anticipation of my fingertips.

Lo, my mother is a great cook and Lo,

my grandmother is a terrible one, but on tinfoil plains

they are equal. I need you to understand

why my father will never enjoy an heirloom tomato

glistening, layered in basil. Put away your Brandywines,

your Cherokee Purples, your Green Zebras.

Lo, as with spinach, as with olives, he tastes only

the claustrophobia his mother unleashed from cans

to feed four children on a budget. We talk little of this.

Lo, what is cooked to mush.

Lo, what is peppered to ash. Lo, the flavor

rendered as morning chore—that this, too, is a form of love.

ELEPHANT

On the Route 7 strip,

next to the office supply store,

next to the pool supply store,

next to the Tower Records,

next to the T.J. Maxx,

the Ranger Surplus lurked

where I shopped only

at the edges: iron-on patches,

all-weather lighters,

vintage plate pin-ups,

never venturing into the groin

of camouflage and camping gear,

until I began buying weapons

including a mace, a chained flail,

several throwing stars, and the book

Contemporary Surveillance Techniques,

with its cover art showing a man

crouched in a stereo speaker,

all gifts for my father,

because what do you get the man

who has everything—and by everything

I mean a large-caliber shell casing

upright and decorative

in the living room, where you might

expect a potted ficus to be—

and these, too,

were the years he gave me

T-shirt after T-shirt, souvenirs

of every posting and deployment,

including the one that said

Hard Rock Cafe Baghdad—

Closed—Kuwait, Now Reopening—

T-shirts that fit poorly

over my new breasts, boxy,

unflattering, and so I shut them

away in drawers again

and again, each of us

trying to say to the other

I see you,

the way a blindfolded man

takes the tail into his hands, believing

from this he can see the elephant.

LONG JOHN SILVER’S

Once again at the Long John Silver’s of 1988

the rope-slung walkway seems to sway under my feet

as I look up at the Cape Cod with its steepled roof,

trimmed in yellow, and lean my whole weight

to the wrought-iron sword that serves as a door handle.

At the counter, I order a fish fillet

served in a folded paper Treasure Chest with

a handful of fries to hide the Secret Compartment;

hold the hush puppies, corn cob on the side.

I carry the blue plastic tray with care to a booth

paneled in the mahogany of an officer’s quarters,

then sit on a bench vinyled like a nautical flag.

The batter is always fluffy with club soda

and here, no one has died yet.

My teeth cut a smile into the Icelandic cod,

and perhaps I will go back to order a chicken plank

or a tray of crunchies swept from fryer’s belly,

which they will give me for free.

When I look back on all that I’ve done, I want

to be the person stubborn enough to found a chain

of Seafood Shoppes in Lexington, Kentucky,

five hundred miles from any ocean,

named for a character in a Scottish novel.

I want to admit I’m doubled over and howling,

yet reach up to ring the Captain’s Bell on my way out.

THE CONVERSATION

Fireflies, Col. Glenn calls them—

banging the capsule’s wall to prove

their movement. This

will be the gesture Hollywood

claims as history—how space

dazzles even the seasoned airman,

maddens like Titania’s touch.

The movie version sees

what he sees: Florida yawn, Delta yawp,

a sunrise inside every hour,

lightning over the Indian Ocean.

Yet the operatic soundtrack, paced

in gilded silence, is not what he hears.

Wonder-ese is not the language

he speaks. For this,

we turn to the transcript. Pilot

to Cap Com; Cap Com to Pilot.

This is Friendship 7, going to manual.

Ah, Roger, Friendship 7.

Pilot, Texas Cap Com, Cape Canaveral.

Cap Coms chiming in from Canary,

Canton, Hawaii, Zanzibar, India,

Woomera: every visual check

on the gyros, inverter temp,

every correction to pitch and yaw,

fuel, oxygen, Ah, Roger, Ah, Over.

Say again your instructions please.

Over. Do you read? Stand by.

You can be honest. This

is Godspeed-less, workaday chatter.

But in these pages

my grandfather lives forever—

a Navy captain charged

with Glenn’s vitals, stretching

his stethoscope across 162 miles

and eighteen tracking stations.

I hear him in each pressure check.

I see him biting his lip,

leaning toward a bank of dials

while the retropackage breaks, burns.

No one knows if the heat shield

will hold. Captain Pruett

goes unnamed. This

is how history claims us:

not in the gesture of one but

in the conversation of many,

the talk that gets the job done.

We climb into the syrup-can capsule

to circle the Earth three times.

The miraculous swarm,

we will realize,

is condensation. The light

blinks at us,

flake and ice of our own breath.

WINTZELL’S OYSTER HOUSE

Before six seats and a trough of oysters,

before J. Oliver slathers the wall in homespun,

Charles W. Peters sells squash here, and canned beans;

he sells bed frames & dressers & side tables;

insurance against rising waters;

he sells whatever will send nine daughters and sons

through college. In 1891, a Black man

can build two stories of clapboard for $2,000,

can aspire to his own furniture company,

can preside over the Mutual Aid