HEARTLAND



WALKING OUT THE DOOR

“As I’ve said before, I write in the voice of a child…”
     Kurt Vonnegut, The Last Interviews


returning to the family reunion, our host says, 
“By the way, you’re not a veteran are you?
it's National PTSD Day, all who served

receive a copy of our Armistice Anthology,
and so it goes. In and out of the doors,
going through, it’s the doing that matters,
anecdote beneath the concept, gesture

prompting response. The asterisk on the cover,
Vonnegut Code. The laughter released spontaneously
by Kilgore Trout’s question: What is the purpose
of life? Caught without a pen, he couldn’t say:

“To be/ the eyes/ and ears/ and conscience/
of the Creator of the Universe/ you fool.
To be the poet asking,
You know what I mean by blue?”

And so it goes walking through doors.
I wouldn’t have gotten to
Breakfast of Champions without the question
from the guide at the door.

Persimmon pudding bless us all.

Jim Bodeen
6 July 2014


HIS WIFE HAD BROUGHT HIM HERE

She had given him this world.
Her mother belonged here,

had married a man from the West Coast,
a fisherman who told her sea stories

and tales of Alaska. This took place
after the Great War.

She gave birth and then she died.
The daughter grew up in Seattle

and that’s where he met her.
The people from here always wondered

what happened to her, that little girl
who was taken from them

when the mother died. Decades
later, the grown up child

returned for a reunion
with her new family.

An aura of light surrounded her.
She was charmed, nevertheless, unaware

of the emanation coming from her.
She thought it was she who had returned,

but everyone talking to her believed
they were talking to her mother.


Jim Bodeen
4 July 2014


WALKING OUT THE DOOR
FOR SOME REASON HE REMEMBERED
THE SOUND OF THE WOODEN SCREEN DOOR
SLAMMING SHUT

They were walking the cemetery.
The man said, I know more people

here than I do in town,
but I think I’m in the wrong row.

Mom and Dad are in the next row over.

Jim Bodeen
4 July 2014


NIGHT FLYING

He had been reading Basho all spring
bouncing between translations.

Flying at night across the country
he woke in the altered state of sleeplessness

sometimes found in the dreambody.
He had come from the heartland himself,

knew its cruelties and kindnesses.
His town had disappeared completely

taken back by the grasses
who maintained a quiet and fierce

solidarity with the buffalo.
His wife showed him the genetic code.

He remembered his feet bound
in tennis shoes walking railroad tracks.

Jim Bodeen
4 July 2014


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