Poisons & Antidotes p oem s
Andrea L. Fry
de er br o ok edit ion s
published by Deerbrook Editions P.O. Box 542 Cumberland, ME 04021 www.deerbrookeditions.com www.issuu.com/deerbrookeditions Find our title previews at issuu.com
first edition © 2021 by Andrea Fry All rights reserved ISBN: 978-1-7343884-8-0 Book design by Jeffrey Haste
For Johnny, Rosalee, Calvin and Sophia
Table of Contents
I. The Noxious and Obnoxious Jimsonweed Mothballs Medea “Consider Your Man Card Reissued” Jack Bildner’s Ghost The Snake Charmer He Will Come in from the Fields The Archaeological Park of Pompeii Therapy “Don’t Let Anyone Dull Your Sparkle!” The Flower Maker Fall Orientation
11 13 15 16 17 19 21 25 28 30 31 34
II. Delirium Mr. Shimshock Help Desk The Back Story of Pleasant Point The Show Dog Tomfoolery Evolution The Death of Rhetoric
39 41 43 44 45 46 48
III. Finding Permanence in Free Radicals Simple Weapons Civilized The Glitter of the Simple Inwood in October Light Narcan Chickens The Secret
53 54 56 59 60 62 63
Against Romance Ancient Man from Chauvet Cave Speaks Crossings Found Day Off on Good Friday
65 66 68 69 70
IV. Not Meet, Not Right, but Salutary Return Hard-bitten Body The Renderer Leaving the Bitter Heavenly Angel Food Cake Amir Warm Season Grasses Advance Directives No Place of Sorrow The Gnarled and Fantastic
73 75 76 78 79 81 84 85 87 88
Acknowledgements About the Author
91 92
It had been a war of kingly poisons, in the air, in the memory, in the blood. —Sebastian Barry
I. The Noxious and Obnoxious
Jimsonweed
Angel’s trumpet, stinkwort, Devil’s trumpet, hell’s bells: Named and named again to try to nail its source of power. Each petal point a corner of a twisted pinwheel, swastika in purple petticoat, these plain assassins live demurely in the dung and meadow. Purest vehicle of lethal dreams, it tunnels first behind the victim’s eyes and lets the night shine through like two black moons with the perfect symmetry of a double barrel. Then it sends the heart spinning away like a child’s top, irretrievable.
Soon the voices.
A few isolated laughs, until the voices reverberate, become a throng that leans and bends into the moat, that fragile moat that keeps your mind apart from them. It can kill you, the older kids 11
warn, and we study the red pendulous berries as if to memorize the simple truth that terrifies and thrills: how easy it would be to eat one.
12
Mothballs
If we didn’t know you, we might see the innocuous: peppermints, a dwarf ’s snowballs, moon rocks, or marshmallows. Not like the red mushroom that screams its deadliness, you are wholly without color, a negative white, never to be found in nature or a prism. And with your whiteness, nothing to interpret, no distinction. You are not soft like cotton, nor sweet like gum, which reveals an inner goodness. Yet neither has evil appropriated your appearance. Maybe it’s just that—you are nothing, just filler, weightless Styrofoam pellets. But then again you could be blank brains, psychopaths—a little gang of white supremacists, a litter of pit bulls hammered senseless, tiny Putin faces with chemical whiskers, white charcoal briquettes that could burn down the block with one match. Or if we’d forgotten you were there, and we came upon a stray white ball, rolled in dust, at rest in the corner, a strange marble, out of context, without landmarks, like your 1950s packaging, fumes dulled and so all the more insidious. And in not remembering, we’d underestimate your power, be too casual with you, let you share the drawer with loose change, unknown keys, lozenges and paper clips. 13
But naphthalene, what if we never knew you, like a child who believes she’s found a boring, unwrapped mint, the kind in an old person’s candy dish that’s stale, that no one takes, but is still the closest thing this moment in her discovery— to sugar. So, she raises it to her mouth, closes her eyes and tilts her head back while her tongue softens, ready for that sweet memory to come again.
14
Medea
How well I knew that simple ornaments would turn his new bride’s cheek. So I let poison loose like ants to line the golden crown, and gild the broidered robe. I lit the fuse of everyone’s perdition. Still, it is not enough. Each breath I take is a bellows to my rage. And I combust again.
15
“Consider Your Man Card Reissued”
Ad for the Bushmaster AR-15 semi-automatic rifle Bobby Russell says he’s going to fuck the Adams triplets. I said I was going to too. I tried to act bored-like, didn’t look at Bobby. Like it was regular as fishing. Like it was so sure, didn’t even need to say it, but did anyway. Then Randy said he was going to also, and Daryl said it too, then all the guys were saying it.
16
Jack Bildner’s Ghost
That most things don’t last. That I had no money for a ball field or a plaque. That I couldn’t write, and if I could, my letter— stuffed into a bottle, or buried in the earth—would likely not be found. And even if they found my letter, would they understand anything, would they care about an old logger from Calaveras County, whose kin never found any gold, whose leg was crushed? These are the thoughts that came to me. Because I only knew water, wood and dirt. And my name—I knew my name. I’d draw my initials in the muddy bank and watch the river smooth them, but slowly and kindly so I didn’t realize, the river was getting rid of the smallest trace of me. You remember I said that most things don’t last. Well, that’s true—except for one thing— I don’t know anything as old as the sequoia tree. So, I hauled out my saw and dragged my purple leg up it. 17
That tree was 2000 years old. The only thing standing after a fire. Even the fungus and the beetles can’t get at it. I spent the whole night on that ladder, working my saw into its side. I carved JB into its flank. I made those letters a foot tall, which was nothing compared to how tall it stood. You can see them if you study it hard. I don’t know if anyone will ever see them. But I know they’ll last as long as that tree. Which will be the closest to forever I’ll ever get.
18