Charles Freeland


Herringbone Sonata

How to turn our backs on this land where reptiles 
are familiar and rough-hewn, like wicker patio furniture? 
They are always opening and closing their mouths. 

Accents and idioms aside, all available information 
suggests there is nothing overly alien 
about the other side of the world, the desert wastes 
and the arboreal forests without visible end. 

We could make a go of it there if we were prepared 
to acknowledge our soft natures, our inability to recognize 
even simple geometric patterns and the outline of fences. 

Maybe the antidote lies at the bottom of a well
dug who knows how many decades ago at precisely the spot 
children were most likely to fall in, at the top of the ridge 
overlooking the valley and the homes in the valley 
with their chimneys losing gray smoke and the crescendo of birdsong 
reminding us of the days long gone when we too studied 
music seriously, memorizing chord progressions and Celtic scales, 

endeavoring to pull enormous, complex, suggestive works 
from the moist interior of our skulls, only to find 
when, finally, we managed to lay them out forever on the page, 
they seemed like little more than empty oyster shells 
stacked on a table with yellow newspaper and warm bottles of beer.



Mingo Junction Fugue

Here where the enormous eels 
talk to themselves in their sleep, 
we are wholly invisible, 
judged by the rest of the world 
to be neither sentient nor quantifiable, 
a people like mushrooms 
hiding out in patches, tending to disintegrate 
at the slightest touch. 

I, for one, am ready to move on, to follow 
the corner of the sky still visible 
with its vapor trails in the morning, while comets 
with names we will never know 
announce the advent of evening 
the way your niece announces she is pregnant. 

We imagine out there a city 
with a gleaming tower at its center, 
pedestrians confused by traffic signals, 
by the endless passing of ambulances. 
They walk in circles 
and mumble to themselves for hours 
until, like the great unplanned flowering of the universe itself, 
their original destinations 
mysteriously come into view.

Happy and relieved by this miracle, 
they forget for a moment the insults 
done to them that morning, 
the unkind words or the splashing 
of the puddled water at the side of the road 
onto their coats by passing cars.



Up Jumped the Apparatus

Much of the initial pain
is replaced by something approximating joy 
but without the primary colors 
and the ocean-going birds circling overhead,
emitting shrill sounds of the sort 
that might startle even the deepest sleeper. 

The point is to rake and damage the flesh 
before it hardens and traps us the way 
prehistoric insects kept getting themselves overrun 
by outflows of tree sap. 

Maybe, like theirs, our reaction times 
have suffered a bit, 
have come to resemble those old, slow-motion film clips 
of horses at full gallop. 

That which isn’t speeding up, isn’t 
accelerating due to the implacable forces of desire, 
must (if not quite by definition) 
slow down, or at least 
search out alternative forms of gravity, must conjure them 
with such intense concentration 
you couldn’t break it even with a hammer. 



Souvenirs from the Fortunate Realms

The permanent residents 
thought us tacky. 
They displayed banners 
to that effect, in secret code. 
We broke it 
after days of difficult labor 
but what was the point? 
The afternoons still drifted by  
carrying their scent of elderberry. 

You couldn’t tell if the violence 
rumored to be approaching 
had anything to do 
with the speeches delivered at the pavilion 
on the Lake of Three Fires. 
The name itself 
suggested a conspiracy of some sort, 
a banding together for security 
or tactical advantage 
such as one sees in the wildlife 
on the savannahs, 
the springbok and mandrills 
traveling together in groups. 

My history books are torn 
and weathered 
at just those sections that might explain 
where we find ourselves, 
but when was the last time
we paid much attention 
to history books, even when pristine? 

I prefer to imagine a past 
so similar to the present 
the only way 
you can tell where the one 
gives off and the other begins 
is to feel for the creases, 
to capture the telltale tactile change 
with the tips of your fingers, 
themselves made sufficiently sensitive   
by a lifetime of practice, 
of caressing the flesh 
of a few accommodating strangers, 
or, at the very least, 
gutting chicken carcasses 
and peeling fruit in a well-appointed 
kitchen.   


Charles Freeland: The Modigliani is on Loan

 
 

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