COMINGS AND GOINGS, OR,
DORIS HOLBROOK HEADS AGAIN FOR HOME
(after James Dickey’s “Cherrylog Road”)
I. Jimmy
Off Highway 106
At Cherrylog
I go at noon to meet
This boy that drives
His daddy’s beat-up
Indian, a Chief,
A hand-me-down like most
Of Mama’s clothes,
(Passed to me long after
She passed). When we’re
At school, Jim don’t—no,
Doesn’t–know my name,
Just swags on by without
A by-your-leave;
Some big-shot boy, his tee
Shirt sleeves twice rolled,
A Parliament unlit
Hung from his lip,
A red cloth jacket when
The weather’s cool.
(A Georgia guy that smokes
A filtered cig?
Can you believe? What’s wrong
With Chesterfields?)
I know about James Dean
That drove a Porsche,
A Triumph motorbike,
An Indian
500, not some wired-
Round piece of tin
That whines and whinges. Half
A mile away,
I hear him coming, squall
Of tires and all.
I’d rather ride my Schwinn.
Back of the barn,
Than that. “And just because
Your name’s James D.
Don’t mean that you’re a star”
(Or doesn’t mean).
I’ll tell him later. First
I’ll make him wait
And wait and wait, because
I told him noon.
“You always make men sit,
Then get right up
When you waltz in the room
Like Marilyn,”
The Confidential says. Now,
I’m not too much
A tease; I’d just as lief
Talk carburetors,
Plugs, lug wrenches, hot-
Wired starts, almost
Anything than flirt. But try
To tell a fellow
One fact—sprockets, stock cars,
Or even names
Of snakes…A boy from town’s
All hands, no ears,
When tussling in that spring-
Sprung Pierce Arrow
A ’34 stalled out among
Junked cars, in what
Jim likes to call parking
Lot of the dead.
That’s poetry.Well, bone
Yard’s more the word,
If you ask me, picked-
Over field, where
I can glean, like Ruth,
What’s left behind.
II. Daddy
The laying on of hands
Is taught in church,
Along with strychnine
In a mayonnaise jar
(I still see the label’s
Gummy trace—Blue Plate),
And rattlers coiled like
Sister Hattie’s hair.
You’ve stropped me for not
Listening straight
Through, again the laying
On of hands, rod
Not spared, my backside
Not spared neither.
My skin is welted red,
And marks are raised
Like rickrack round an apron’s
Edge—a hem
To hem me in. When Jim’s
With me, I’m hemmed
In that same way. Sometimes
He’ll sing a hymn
Of rattles, sighs, and snuffles,
High notes all,
Notes I can’t quite reach,
I’m more alto
In shape-note singing, more
The harmony.
I hold the measure low,
And Jim holds me
And holds me and holds me.
He holds me down.
The corkscrew springs are fangs
Piercing my back,
Dotted Swiss to the rick-
Rack’s snaky lines.
What would you say, Daddy,
If you was to see
The other points I’ve picked
Besides these plugs
And knobs, my new engine
Revving up?
III. Doris
What’s sharper than
A serpent’s tooth
I know is me,
Ungrateful child.
Born on a Thursday,
Far to go and
Redding up to get there.
Mama’s movie
Magazines, Mary Worth,
True Confessions
And her Bible
All the compass
I need to steer me north
Of North Georgia,
Away from Cherrylog
And Cherry Cokes
And cars that isn’t, no, aren’t,
So cherry. My lipstick’s
Cherries in the Snow, case
Black as that old
Pierce-Arrow’s hood, spangled
With stars, more than
The sky over my head,
More than what’s notched
In old Orion’s belt, or
Jimmy’s either.
My fingernails are varnished,
And my pocketbook
Is patent-leather red.
The highway snakes
Before me like that
Fat racer slow
In sun and smudged
Lightning in
Shadow. Black road, black
Racer, black dress
From back of Mama’s closet.
Of the black and red words
In her Bible, I recall
The first ones best,
Matthew and Genesis:
Begat. Beginning.
IV. DeeDee (Mrs. Madison) Shearer III
I know that time is ticking
After me; the good
Lord knows I’ve done my best
To push its hands
Away from me (the way
I never did
With Jim’s). How time’s passing
And now it’s past.
I’ve gone back only once
Since Daddy died,
Decades since I left
A girl of 15
On the farm, decades since
Jim died. I’ve heard
He wrote some fine books in
His time. I bought
But never read them, my coffee
Table a marble
Mausoleum for books.
My husband likes
To brag I went to school
With Jim. Well, I’ve
Been schooled, all right. I’ve swapped
My name and hair
For something more genteel,
Cherries in the Snow
For muted Clinique gloss.
Madison sells
Chryslers, Buicks, Cadillacs,
Three dealerships.
He doesn’t know I’ve changed
Out plugs and points
As easily as shoes. He
Knows I tap my nails
But not lug wrenches. He knows
The pedicured,
And Botoxed, frozen-
Chosen, proper tail-
Gate-going Papagallo
Girl, pearls and
Circle pin that he married,
Good at golf and
Gardening, who dabbles
In real estate.
Daddy’s acres and that
Neighboring auto
Salvage yard will fetch me
Quite the tidy sum.
I’ll turn it over fast,
For Atlanta
Businessmen will swallow
Up a farm like
Blacksnakes after mice, one
Single gulp.
Pamela Johnson Parker is an adjunct professor of humanities and poetry at Murray State University and a full-time medical editor. Her fiction, poetry, nd creative nonfiction have appeared in Anti‑, Poets and Artists, New Madrid, Muscadine Lines, A Journal of the South, Iron Horse, Broadsided, Centrifugal Eye, Blue Fifth Review, and qarrtsiluni. her poetry is included in Best New Poets 2011 and Poets on Paintings. A finalist for this year’s Bruckheimer Award from Sarabande Press, Pamela lives in western Kentucky.
