ALTA SUB TERRA
Writings from Underground
POETRY
I Tell You What
By Amos Howl
For your own good, forgive me, burying forget me
Spending neither petal nor stone, bless your hearts
In the daring fanlight, humid darkness of mourning
One thing I'll say, when I was a child, the pumpkin
Truck would go bump'n down the road like marbles
Sooey-up! That's Sawyer
For ya, hymns of harvest
Prayers in the imaginations ol' Kentucky, Heav'n 'n'
Momma's kitchen want you to think, the sole view
Through holes is up, the boots and bottoms of bare
Feet hour, the dirt in the eye show, around six-thirty
Children feed the chickens 'n' dogs while granddad's
pipe smoke drifts through
walls and rattles the planks
Savoring up on the clothesline, steam from the pot
Momma recalls stories about how great-great-grand-
Ma split a deck of cards with a cleaver, over euchre
Which ain't nearly as funny cuz she got poor Nester
On the next recital, momma wonders none of them
Boards was ever lifted, what's under there, nobody
A coarse knot, gram's old books, hand to the bible
Stirr'n chick'n 'n' dumplings would know except'n
Ol' Granddad owns both ax 'n' floor, and Kentucky
Boys love their mommas
Way down in the muddy
Roots of their souls, where it would surprise them
To find God's mercy and gaze upon endless rivers
As plump with trout as uncle Don when he spoke
against momma's spatch-
cock breasts, seasoned
More than great-great-grandma ever would have
Tolerated, he declared, ol' bumpkin, to the rust
On his pickup truck, hauling big, educated ideas
Silencing the katydids with a chew-spit motor
You could see how you'd start to see floorboards
That way, forgetting to be a forgiving neighbor
To your own kin, a body
Imagines blood and dead
Carnations, cordwood in the crawlspace, shine
Boldly on the ax-head as evening roosters crow