The question Easter weekend in Nampa
becomes how to tell
the mall landscapers that even if
I believe Howard Jones
I don’t need him. From this sidewalk bench
April alone astounds: battle royal
of clouds in raucous blue,
my teen daughter stormtrooping through
another outlet store an hour
before state team dance competition.
Zoos of tattooed commuters zoom
through the holy kabloom
of snowy crabapple blossoms,
a plague of turbulent beauty
coating ten counties, gusting in gutters,
lush and prodigal enough
for a Latino woman in a maroon smock
to come brooming volumes
into the flip-up bucket of her dustbin,
trashing the plush manna
like so much movie popcorn.
So no need for the drab green speaker
on the subtlest setting,
camouflaged like a claymore mine
in the trimmed hedge behind me,
the shrapnel of sunny pop sentiments
shooting through my solitude.
Insisting things can only get better
on the sly only gets in the way.
City of Nampa, when did we learn
to fear our silences? No matter
where I stray some slue-foot shyster
with a spluttering leaf blower
of sound bytes strapped to his back
sidles up and starts me lip-synching
his preachy jingles. Who decreed ambience
over ambivalence? Are we worried
that if someone kicks the plug
from the elevator music
we might look up and see Death
parachuting in her pink bunny suit
to the smooth green parks
of winded mothers and bowlegged toddlers
rampaging through plastic seas
of lilac, yellow, and powder blue eggs,
hoodwinking us the instant
we ponder the line between
pacifist Messiah and rebel Jew?
Spring suckers us into dismissing
the rowdy hounds of winter.
Every drunk neuron waves us
with a megaphone from the midway
into a comfy crowded tent
of fried ballyhoo. The question, Nampa,
becomes how long can I escape
escapism? Maybe you’re saying
I should succumb: Angle my aerial
to twenty-four hour snooze
in a devout slouch, raising psalms
of rapturous pap to the Jumbotron.
With the sludge of cash greasing
the skewer through our globe of griefs,
the smoking carousel of refugees,
Sri Lankan churchgoers blown
to thy kingdom come, maybe I should
soak in noise until I’m numb.
Oh Nampa, with the redundancy
of your vacant strip malls,
your faded all-day breakfast banners,
charming grandmother cashiers
with bewitching smiles of true afternoon,
hoodlums bombarding train tracks
with used car parts from the overpass,
if I think of something sugary
and simple will I not feel the bullet
or the bomb that changes me
into the sweet, startling fragrance
that swerves your suicidal jaywalkers
from stretching their tax dollars
at Vista Pawn? The question becomes
how the question becomes
the question. Quick, subscribe me
to the sexiest sidetrack. Look, headphones
crown the moon! Hallow my center
of marshmallow hallelujahs,
my hollow heart as heedless as
the boxed chocolate duckie
softening on the dusty dashboard
in the unseasonably hot noon.
Let my fishbowl eyes brim
with hip cartoons. Make my mind
a civic center, complete with Roy Orbison
tribute band, the stage jammed
with pert ponytailed girls in platinum
leotards choo-choo-cha-boogie-ing
away every scent of sorrow.
Maybe I should march in
and seize my busybody daughter
by the shoulders and tell her
of that young time when despite
my best efforts to focus,
the sacred ascension in my blood
let me think of nothing
but her mother. But Jackson Browne
has other finger-popping plans,
and C+C Music Factory advises everyone
to dance with the swirling storms
of supple white blossoms perfuming
the unruly sky, each pale petal
a thought bound for a place to land.
Matthew James Babcock is the author of Four Tales of Troubled Love (fiction), Heterodoxologies (nonfiction), Points of Reference (poetry), Strange Terrain (poetry), Hidden Motion (poetry) and Private Fire: The Ecopoetry and Prose of Robert Francis (criticism). His awards include the Juxtaprose Poetry Prize, a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Award, the AML Poetry Award, the Next Generation Indie Book Award for Short Fiction and Winner of Press 53’s Open Awards Anthology Prize for his novella, “He Wanted to be a Cartoonist for The New Yorker.” In 2022, he was Arthur Dolsen Visiting Writer at Idaho State University.
Ellen June Wright’s work revolves around the power of color and the emotions and memories they evoke. She is inspired by the works of Stanley Whitney, Mary Lovelace O’Neal, Frank Bowling, Howardena Pindell, Jamaican Artist Cecil Cooper and others. Her art appears in LETTERS, Gulf Stream Magazine, Wild Roof Journal, Breakwater Review, Burningword Literary Journal, Hole In The Head Review, Oyster River Pages, Kitchen Table Quarterly, NOVUS Literary Journal and others. Her work was included in the 2024 Newark Arts Festival and featured at the HACPAC in NJ. To see more, visit: https://8-ellen-wright.pixels.com/
ELEVENTH HOUR LITERARY 