Robert Fernandez

The Pines

I am unable to see. The attendant stretches

in his chair. The chair feels thirst below its feet

in strips of oak. The oak tears away to reveal

rows of red reef. We climb “out on a limb,”

wave a small flag at cars passing by.

An emergency in the woods—

pull over. Woman with a rag for a heart,

child with rags for hands. We have no money

to give you, we’re betting you’ll be kind enough

to pull off alongside the road. We pray our need

won’t turn against us—that in seeing us you

won’t shift the balance, start to hunt us down.

We make it to a delicatessen in the nearby

town that splits and bleeds in its hide

of brick and awning. We pass

red brick crawling with threads;

the tailors and seamstresses of metonymy

are out on break, huddled under

awnings. A group of teenagers plays

basketball down the street. Metonymy

cuts off their arms. The hoop closes into itself.

Lush the teenagers all over the bloody street.

Mercy that such strange luck could have

come their way. Mercy that the margins

were too narrow, we had nothing to gain.

We scoured the road for clues to the event

glimpsed behind the trees. The event

was stripped in our listening. The eyes

refurbished it—cell-like, a red chair.

Love, dry mattress with seed packed in it,

began to grow—sent out boughs, leaves.

Love releasing briskly white leaves, lustrous

hysterical white. Love hauled from a motel room,

thrown into ocean water. Love’s laughter

and dispersion of evidence. We did not

take our time. We filled our stomachs with souls

and forgot to speak. We were overwhelmed

by the thrust and intensity of action. Waves

hit us in the chest the blood fanned out

from the sternum. Softly spoke then

of a violence farther off—go find help.

Of a heel caught in the mouth of a snake

pressing up from the sand. Above windshields,

billboards, mouths closing around the light

driving above the road in crystalline packets.

There is a heavy wind and I cannot eat.

There is no end to the meal. The charge

leveled against us is that we are bodiless.

I was stuck in the sedan’s snow-like leather.

I was stuck with Kai and Dana on the roof

of the Savoy; the red and black bungalows

nearly swallowed us. I was stuck in a tank

feeding packets of diamond dust to thirsty

soldiers. Uncrossing our bones, subject to debt

and loose laws, if we’re not realized then at best

rehearsed, skillfully tuned, fanning. If a body,

then fan out the bills. It is impossible that we

should reach the roadside. It is impossible

the levels of virulent water shuttled into us.

We are not rough units of sense we are sand-

blasted. I meet fathers, meet daughters, sons

and mothers in lidless durations on the road.

We imitate the overpasses stretching above

the roads at night. A fan of eyes. Loss of

hope. Bounty. Unable to see. Thus poised,

we evacuate—roughly glitter. Everything

addresses you. The clouds ball up behind

your sternum. You are listening. You see.

A challenge is on its way. It wets its beak.

Because we are flesh, we glide then think.

A mountain of eyes, of rubber bullets,

pours through us, washes clean across

the pines. A wall of seeing passes through

with its shuffling laughter. There are pale-

red pills with pentacles stamped on them,

there are bruises on the road. We are open

to suggestions. The beaches are soft black.

We stall. We unfold soft economies, soft

residences. I am waiting for the answer

to the request the disclosure the spell

that could not listen long enough

to float up its beams of presence and say

this is reality. Laughter. How arcane and

does it not now seem you had a hand in it,

the rose-and-amber carp, a Venus or Adonis?

They restored us; they did us good. Suddenly

the bonds are broken, suddenly the arms don’t

work so well. Faint and rapidly drawing closer

to the disease—flag us down. Flay, remove

the roe, lay out the spine. The spine, scales, the

earth are fallow. Platitudes and folly. The earth

is impossibly young. I like to drink black beer,

get fucked up on boardwalks on black sand.

I would sell my name back to myself in

exchange for a ride, in exchange for cords

of order, for a face, clouds—nothing. Who

compels us with their restless batons? Where

is the motive? Where is the mandate? Outlaws

rule these hills. Angels rule these mountains.

We recall, looking up at the violence of spinning sky—

recall a violence that took place in sound alone.

Skilled, we see our arms unlock, souls trained

on fresh estates. We flee from mountains,

from pavilions building across the eyes

in thirst and scarcity.

This poem is from We Are Pharaoh (Canarium Books, 2011). Robert Fernandez lives in Iowa City.