“Here,
images proceed on their own journey to some place off the map. Here,
metaphor leaps and grabs at the wind. An occasion for drama,
pyrotechnics and language that pops and starts, Welvaert’s road
trip West makes us want to do as its young and desperate protagonists
and take off our shoes “to feel the world again, to step on the
jagged rock.”
—
Richard Terrill, author of Coming
Late to Rachmaninoff
and Fakebook:
Improvisations on a Journey Back to Jazz.
"The
characters in Scott Welvaert’s poems travel west, from Minnesota to
Oregon, on a quest to reach the ocean before they die. No matter what
began it, their journey enters the larger parade of American
journeys, where landscape offers itself as a stage for ceremonies of
escape, disappearance, forgiveness, rebirth. While the future “keeps
the car running outside,” Welvaert’s characters rush toward their
fate even as they seem to evade it, in poems tender and elegiac,
poems full of clear-eyed detail and music informed by compassion,
gravity, and grace."
—Richard
Robbins, author of The
Untested Hand
and Other
Americas
Pacific
Scott R. Welvaert
Smashwords Edition
Copyright (c) 2010 Skywater Publishing Company
All rights reserved. No part of this publication
may be reproduced in whole or in part
without written permission of the publisher.
Acknowledgements
The author and publisher wish to express their grateful appreciation to the following publications in which earlier versions of these poems first appeared: “Index: A Road Trip for Two”, Birmingham Poetry Review; “Rescue Mission Over Cannon Beach, Oregon”, Cold Mountain Review; “Marti’s Trailer House Living Room”, Jabberwock Review; “Hospital: Salem, Oregon”, Mankato Poetry Review; “Losing Her Son to the Ocean” and “What Death Is for David Campbell”, Red Owl Magazine; “David’s Mother”, Rosebud; “Like a Raccoon”, Roux; “Piano” and “Painted Rocks in Idaho”, Spire Press; “A Dodge Charger at Cannon Beach” and “The Last Things”, The Blue Skunk Companion; “Waiting for Harrison Ford at the End of His Driveway”, Timber Creek Review; “An Abandoned Church Outside of Ten Sleep” and “Where Wyoming Roads Go”, White Pelican Review
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Welvaert, Scott R.
Pacific / by Scott R. Welvaert.
p. cm. — (Poetry Series)
ISBN 978-0-9793081-0-9 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-9793081-3-0 (e-book : alk. paper)
I. Title.
PS3623.E5P33 2008
811'.6—dc22
2007028504
Photo Credits
Shutterstock, cover
SOL BOOKS POETRY SERIES
Pacific
poems by Scott R. Welvaert
for my girls
Jen, Julia, and Christa
Contents
Index: A Road Trip For Two
Minnesota
Building an AIDS Clinic
On Friday Nights
Marti’s Trailer House Living Room
If an Urn of Ashes was Allowed a Few More Words
David’s Mother
The Tire Swing
Ozone
What Made Him
Group Therapy
Postcard of Cannon Beach
South Dakota
In the Passenger Seat
Dinner at the Corn Palace Cafe
Buffalo
A South Dakota Highway
Driving into Reliance, South Dakota
On the Banks of Box Elder Creek
Pushing a Dodge Charger into a Gas Station
Building a Fire at Crazy Horse
Somewhere Near the Black Hills
Wyoming
In the Morning
Eating Peanut Butter Sandwiches Near Devil’s Tower
Flying a Kite That Looks Like a Bat
Two People Stranded
Waking Up in a Barn
Washing in Crazy Woman Creek
Waiting to Meet Harrison Ford at the End of His Driveway
An Abandoned Church Outside Ten Sleep
Where Wyoming Roads Go
Idaho
Spying on Her Swim
Washing Hands in a Gas Station Bathroom
Playing Football
Piano
Painted Rocks in Idaho
At Midnight
Like a Raccoon
A Night in Idaho Woods
Catching an Old Couple Showering in a Thunderstorm
Oregon
A Last Birthday
Roads
Hospital: Salem, Oregon
What Death is for Marti Reed
Speeding Away from a Hospital
A Dodge Charger At Cannon Beach
Death for David Campbell
The Last Thing
Over Cannon Beach
Losing Her Son to the Ocean
Index: A Road Trip for Two
acting foolishly, 3, 189
AIDS, 1, 13
barn
disrobing in, 260
finding shelter in, 254
waking in, 263
being cynical, 34, 97, 153, 202
birthday cupcakes, 292
bones
as coat hanger for skin, 200
cold to the, 352
sleeping on the bottom of ocean, 281
buffalo, 59
church, 79
complaining about driving, 76-79, 124, 164, 199, 250, 297-303
conversational references to
a good Rueben, 94
approaching weather, 151
being cynical, 203
Cher’s poor taste in clothes, 119
Elvis lyrics, 302
fishing on Leech Lake, 305
her inability to separate love and sex, 190
her father, 112-113
her mother, 68-69
his inability to confront his past, 190
his father, 194-195
his mother, 72-73
phone numbers in gas station bathrooms, 115
ocean, 26, 50-51, 199, 211, 239, 263, 287, 306-307
she is not going to die, 307
their deaths, 110, 318
they are going to make it, 311
corn
eating a lot of, 38
vomiting of, 40
Dodge Charger
leaving, 327
making out in, 226
riding in, 21-45, 53-67, 79-93, 125-138, 174-181, 209-225, 283-301
pushing, 139
speeding in, 23, 45-49, 80-82, 156-158
driving, 43, 83-85, 121-128, 199-205, 250-251, 329-331
Elvis lyrics, 302
feeling sick, 301
football, 16, 264
getting nosebleed as result of trying to
catch, 250
playing catch with, 245-250
God as
housecleaner, 10
prick, 60
son of a bitch, 23, 42, 51, 110, 150, 206
savior, 302
grass stains on jeans, 282
Guinness, 19
helicopters, 370
hospitals, 74, 136, 182, 241, 300-320
creepy factor of, 76
“funky” smell of, 299
not wanting to die in one, 300
kite
crashing of, 285
flying of, 283
kissing, 251, 253-263
on forehead, 253
on hands, 254
on lips, 255-259
during nosebleed, 251
with tongue, 259-263
laughing, 35, 60-62, 81, 93, 95, 101, 132, 139, 164, 170, 179, 183, 201, 212, 218, 222, 236, 278, 284
laughing as a result of
a French kiss, 260
a speeding ticket, 138
a thunderstorm, 155
banging head on trunk, 131
eating a Twinkie, 102
tripping, 88
love as
needed, 324
stupid, 25
things stored in a freezer, 15
old skin, 7
painted rocks, 244
piano, 300
playing of, 301
postcard, 19
putting clothes back on, 273
rain, 57, 126, 354
running, 56, 249
sandwiches
mustard, 199
peanut butter, 221
stolen by Harrison Ford, 269
sex, 263-264
sex thought of as
barking and slapping seals, 12
death sentence, 143, 317
excellent form of exercise after a large
meal, 146
physical release, 122
pop quiz, 71
replacement for love, 141
revenge, 147
something to do when the car breaks down, 107
vehicle of disease, 144
snowplow, 367
stars
looking at, 42-49
compared to broken glass, 45
swimming, 162, 202, 354-362
sunflowers, 11, 220
therapy groups, 15
tire swing, 18
wishing
God didn’t exist, 330
he would sit closer, 98
Holiday Inn was nearby, 109
she could fix her life, 148
she would sit closer, 98
the earth would stop, 233
they were other people, 129
they’d have never met, 160
things would have ended better, 332
time would stop, 144
water wasn’t so cold, 335
Wyoming had a better license plate, 225
Minnesota
Building an AIDS Clinic
When the masons laid
the floor to this lobby,
did they stop to weigh
each tile in hand, slide
their thumbs down the
smooth side, take pride
in the mortar frame,
moist along all its edges,
or did they shake sad
heads with each advancing
flat stone, the aches dripping
down their backbones,
the pain a sliver to those
who will call this place home?
When the doors open
and this floor is a year old,
those that are dead will still
ride in the patients’ eyes,
tracking their black footprints
over drained legs and bones,
and a man will carry a woman
to her car. Together their roads
hang between them, scoop out
the warm mush of their bellies
and if they tipped their bodies
to pour out their AIDS, dry
lakebeds would drink again,
canyon valleys would crack
smiles, and the empty bowls
in the ocean would fill to the brim.
On Friday Nights
the blues huddle
in the corner of her eye,
push along crows feet
and creeks of mascara.
She backstrokes her
whiskey, its rocks cool
and cumbersome.
She has tried to forget
the blues, to twist her body
like a wet towel and watch
the smoky crooner slide
down the rag of her body, lick
the sweat tumbling down
her breasts, his harmonica lips
warbling her mouth,
cigar smoke blooming
above the bed.
Her whiskey has traveled
the rounds of her stomach
and she tongues the ice
like it's a husband, a lover
who exists between
greasy guitar licks and fingers.
On the way home, the street
is cold, the sidewalk
has a frosty beard, her breath
snows from her mouth. It's here
on this asphalt stage, she slumps
off her clothes, leaves her shell
by the curb, and walks home
under paladin moon.
Marti's Trailer House Living Room
Through the window,
her mother loves a man on the couch,
their flanks red like hams,
prime roasts bound in twine.
They are seals barking and slapping each other.
Her fingers press cool against the window,
the wheels in her feet wobble and twist.
She falls asleep on the front step,
listens to the words waving
from the long weeds beside the house,
how the wind bends them with its hands.
In between sleep and waking
she thinks of love as animal,
lions mounting each other in midday sun,
hiding in prowl grass with cubs,
ripping open zebras.
She sees this in herself
as a part of waking each morning,
putting on shoes,
fixing eggs before going to school.
If an Urn of Ashes was Allowed a Few More Words
I never had a beer with my son.
But if we had, it would have been a Guinness
with a cream top like sea foam
and a brown cascade of sediment
rolling to lake muck at the glass bottom.
The bar would be cool and dark
with just me, my son and a game of nine-ball.
We would talk about mothers and aprons,
casseroles and kitten oven mitts.
Afterwards we would walk home
under streetlights,
count them out like stars.
I'd tell him how I'd take care of him,
and if it came to the end and his skin
wrapped his bones like butcher paper,
I'd talk about that nine-pound walleye
he caught by Spirit Island,
how life was better with a fish on the line,
how we'd dump our ashes on those island rocks,
let the lake waves lap us away,
scatter those flakes of us,
like a storm cloud beneath lake water.
David's Mother
She settled life
in the layers of her freezer,
lost pieces of wedding cake
wandering between bacon
and a bag of sweet corn.
Three epochs down
is a pair of white baby booties
flat in places where they should
be warm and round.
A carnation smothered
in Saran Wrap sleeps there,
its pink face and leaf-arms
raised against the stem.
Had she known so much beauty
existed with her perishables,
she'd visit the freezer more,
pick up this flower
and hold it cold to the back
of her hand, close her eyes
to see her husband's coffin
and the buttery elation on his face.
Atop the frozen heap,
next to a beef pot pie,
is a shoebox of pictures:
her son behind a bar piano,
his girlfriend like a scarecrow
in white clothes lying on a bed,
him running,
her eating a Twinkie,
both lying on the hood of a car.
In every picture they smile
like licorice and cracks in dry mud,
thin smiles like piano wire
and crescent moons. Now,
when she opens that freezer,
she feels those cold clouds
roll down her legs,
and she can't eat for days.
The Tire Swing
She drove sixty miles to sit down with her mom,
but she can't bring herself to step
out of the car, walk past the lawn mower,
stalled with rusty wounds. The grass
cheers victory around it.
Her life tied its slipknot
on top of the tire swing in the front lawn,
her yellow sundress rubbed black,
her thighs red from holding
the rope between her legs, almost a tickle
from a boyfriend's hand.
Had she known her choices would mold
her life into a bracelet of men
each one interchangeable, charming, and plastic,
she would have cut that thick rope
and dragged that old tire to the road.
From the hill she would watch her future
spray the pavement with collected rain,
painting a wet line as it rolls away,
wobbles dead in the grass.
Ozone
Today the rain left its cool, wet breath in the streets
and stepping through it in shorts and bare feet
reminds her of opening a window in winter.
This merging of seasons arouses her,
catches her breathless in her morning walks.
The boulevard ash trees fluff green
after the rain, a green so natural, so alive
that it looks fake.
Her car is the same.
Its hail damage a pale red shimmer under the sun,
but after a storm tumbles through town
the finish looks freshly painted.
The rain has given the neighbors
new cars, driveways, and siding.
Everything has shed its old skin and shines.
She'll walk past all their houses
admiring the clean sidewalks
and the ozone smell that reminds
us there is a higher, more powerful
house cleaner looking after us. A man
will open his front door to pick
up his paper. He will smell that the cleaner
has come and she will think to herself how
the earth finds a way
to rub away its grime and evil.
She'll wave to this man as she passes,
maybe tell him he has a fine square hedgerow.
At the end of block, she turns and runs back.
Her body does what the earth
just did. Rain. The balls of her feet throb
and each breath bleeds down her throat, salty.
Through her front door and into the kitchen,
she pours a cold glass of water, glugs it down.
So cold, it stings. But she feels her body
fluff, her breath cool, her arms and legs weak,
and she feels a little greener on the outside.
What Made Him
His favorite time used to be fall,
when the trees tossed down their dry
and crackling mittens
like children home from school.
Each year his street grew deep
with the swash and scrape from people
walking through leaves,
their destinations always two steps ahead.
Half through the raking, his eyebrows
flush with sweat, the groove between
his thumb and finger blistered,
David stopped, leaned against a tree
and closed his eyes to the death in each rustle,
the chaos in each miniature whirlwind of leaves.
The rustle came back with the heroin,
the pinch in the pit of his elbow.
In moments, his whole world grew swollen.
He slogged through each day, smiling.
David the human waterbed. His mother's voice
a blackbird's warble. His father's death a bedtime story.
His body salted to jerky
and his lips bled like broken toilets.
When winter hit, the trees stood like fish bones
over the street, he felt the rustle within him,
weaving its way around his bones, through his veins,
building a nice nest in the trenches between his ribs.
Group Therapy
Outside the clinic, summer hangs the night
like wet laundry. Marti holds a cigarette
with paper fingers, her hands
and shoulders rustle, a leaf pile slowly
eroding in the wind.
Answers stand inside like windmills.
Coping is stirred into cheap coffee,
glazed over complimentary pastries.
It's hard to boil her life down
to a textbook and weekly meetings.
She'll take the black hand
the smoke offers her, suck it down
until her lungs are tight and painful,
a last gasp of air.
Inside David wrings his hands,
a madman, his knuckles bobbing
like whitecaps on his skin.
He sees the zombies
around the circle, the half-eaten meat
to their cheeks and hands, their eyelids
thin and dark.
His future keeps the car running outside.
It's laying on the horn good and hard,
revs the engine with a heavy foot.
Sweat slumps down
his neck. He's noisy when
he leaves. His chair shudders
across the tile floor. The door
chuffs shut with a click.
Outside her smoke gloves his hand,
strings him along to her car,
the engine running.
Postcard of Cannon Beach
The card grew old with her. Its yellow face
a migrant worker's, wrinkled
from high sun and dusty breeze.
It ripped once and wears its Scotch-tape
battle scar down the middle.
The corners are worn to the nubs, paper frayed
soft and round. It has not lived a day
without her, palmed in a sweaty hand,
a shirt pocket, a lunchbox.
As much as she would like to believe,
it is not her father, just an old photo of the ocean.