Sam Anderson : Amerigo

Loren Cressler : Ode to a Mustache

Amerigo Sam Anderson

Amerigo with the wrinkled sides and the Mis’ouri River

in his hair, skinned the mule on the one side from selling off elephant hides, and all Canada’s iceglooms and pailsheds on his back, carrying her, on, through ice ages of her soaking body— he persists,

lumbering and impossible, hood over his head pitying and a sheetmetal breast, red cities inside the chambers of his heart burning in sane—he been at the forge for ages, ol’ Amerigo… Amerigo his shoes are longsince highway robbed from him, I saw them washed out into sad Mexico ‘s moldy sea—some old cheese man on the run got em while he were twisting in his sleep, between rocks that still sloop ships to old friend Bretons and rocks that can almost see

the Far East, where still you are dreaming, Amerigo—

dragon tattoos and plastic milks and closer, silks (and she knows you ran out of money while you were still awake making jokes)—

FAR EAST

now youre paying her your american shen you got from yr shovel-hole in the backyard of ‘Regard Mansion,

of the falling columns— but Amerigo it aint all across that sea and friends a’yours dont always meet

your hands with shaking plastic— Amerigo your middle is my own—

because i name it Wheat Belly

while i eat from your skinny tables and slat-chairs, because i’ve lain me in

your fields of calico and dreamed there (and named them that,

even though really theyre brrr lap)—

because i know what it is to write home on dirty paper, all that i have for my mother with her apron on— because with your shoe-shine fender automobiles i am dreaming— we are machinists together, cranking out highway lights and chrome-plated stars, hand-over-hand in wartime, because the same company man of ours draws his pay from the same tank of overseas melting Chinee plastic drizzling—

of your sorrows, Amerigo we are no end, we have no Vaspucci for you, no woman. When your children are screaming, lighting fires on flags flapping at your fingernails & kicking your old wooden ribs, out in the wind, raging and drunken— we are drinking with you— eye-beams of your whiskey from the same glass we pounded outa sand in jail and tempered our own, our own workin gloves with the iron under the fingers, protecting your heart from a bad break out at those ocean bucks—we will drink with you, Amerigo, but your old shoes

you wore out walkin on rocks—we can only sling

your crock’ed old arms over our shoulders and

shrug when they ask us where we are goin when you, man, cant walk—