The Hammock Book
by Alex Appella
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Future Remembered Déjà vu is the proof we’re
seeking the
answer we evade it is a question of stepping in, to a whole afternoon to watch the storm scream novels across the sky, horizon to horizon, beginning to end to beginning. An hour ago, the two minute walk to Luis, the verdulero* burned a cruel flat. I thought the afternoon would be lost. Not a temperature you can do much in, except dream of the hammock that hasn’t shown up yet. But in the hour since the verdulero, the air became a slogan boisterous and confidant, just the politician-- with a fabulous parade we fall for every time. The clouds campaign in columns howled and incredulous their shoulders revving in silent commotion, until these first gusts threaten the woodpeckers back into their caverns before suddenly dying still. A wind at once gone frightens more than a wind present, no matter what fury. We anticipate, stretch our necks here with the cat. These are the big shows that will make many promises, and then crumble the clouds in dollops and ruptured cables veins hurl sparking candy from the floats. We and our mate
full of yuyos** scatter with the bats to the covered porch where the cat already waits where we gape until the final applause, laugh and be quiet and remember what was tossed through last night in the sheets billowing portals to what we suspect, to what we lose to what we will cross into in the most unnamed moments is the déjà vu of deciding each day away. |
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Weeds like jealousy everyday like weeds pull them out of me they come back to me pull them out again until the indifference is the habit. Compost Nothingness is a chance. Good dirt is mixed by hand with leaves and debris, it does not come in a bag or appear for tea on a Saturday afternoon. |
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The Gypsies The gypsies roam in flags of no nations flowering breasts nectars just covered in yards of color from this continent and that one. The gypsies’ curls weave their pupils twist their fingers paw and tug ringless on a day’s work in the city fishing fortunes among the crowds who step into traffic to avoid their possibilities who scurry away with biting temptation from the ideas of the gypsies and what they may or may not tell you. Do not stare at a gypsy unless your pockets and your hopes are empty. Do not wish on a fortune unless you have witnessed a gypsy frolicking, cackling with yours. |
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Day Three Today the laundry will
dry on the line even the doubled
socks under one clothespin in a tersely
humid sun sugared and
thawing. In the night I
heard showers, then the resistance
of settling dust was a rich
smell, not a heavy sigh. Today the weeds will
attack in ferocious hoards. But the daisies
will add a few early leaves,
and the roses, too. Today I’ll feel the
new seeds settle in for the season and the morning headlines
yelling WAR and I am not certain they
know what they are saying. Day one: shock. Day two: stupefied
waiting. Day three: the dreaded
spring of an infant ideal conditions for the budding of this
being nobody wants. Sept. 13, 2001 |
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The Hammock I can see from the get go that the hammock and I will procreate many blanketed sensations together and I will suspend in this air without a watch unsure of memory unsure of how to hold myself there: suddenly shifted into a far back time playing by absorbing all the senses until the long ago moment is the now moment. until you the hammock the afternoon the towels on the line the bird calls the breeze the leaves’ shadow across the grass the storm clouds suspended in the air are not here but there. An adjustment of air reassuring that other moments are as accessible as this one. |
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Juan is 24 father, scowling bitter at all the achievements he won’t be. “I stuck the whole heart of the pepper in the dirt. It’s like one big seed, right?” “No, the heart is many little seeds you must separate, start them in July, give them lots of sun.” Juan shoved them in the dirt in April, too early and on his way out the door each morning crammed back at the kitchen, “The peppers, wife! Put them in the sun, don’t you forget today!” She makes jokes to trick the truth. And the peppers didn’t grow. In October, I had pepper starts, little proud crowns of green eye lids when Juan stopped by on a Sunday. I gave him some to take home and try. He called before November, “They all died!” he complained. I thought, “Yes they did die. No love in your heart.” And then in one afternoon all of my pepper starts already transplanted and taking on new dirts wilted at the ankles and died. |
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Susana has serpents inside her that she soothes barely commands through her bandoneón painted with flowers from black fields that glimmer and dance in falling laughter. A fairy, a mistaken fairy Susana has serpents inside her that writhe and roll through her arms and legs and face and shoulders and feet of willow. Susana seeks the melodies that her hissing entrails demand, and she, attentive, provides them so the serpents do not drown her provides them so the serpents save her celebrate her and the bandoneón the song, the sigh, the
dance of her and of them accompany Susana from the silence to the night possessed, twisting the serpents and the darkness entire in everyone until they resonate in colors, banners, and memory. |
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Cultural Subtleties I. In Juneau, the high school kids measure maintain their standing by the amount of cold they can withstand without a coat. You see them at the bus stops crossing the bridge roaming the sidewalks: the girls in mini-skirts the boys in T-shirts their bare skin screaming dead chicken blue chafing skin splotched but exposed! against the rules of winter. |
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Cultural Subtleties II. In the sierras of Córdoba the weekenders drive to the pass where there’s snow! Take the kids take the mate take the camera mittens mother-in-law fill the tank and go. Then the sun goes down and tomorrow is the grind and the weekenders drive back down to the city in one long thread. Here it is: each and every car is crowned with a mini-snowman on the hood. Pebble eyes tree branch arms moss scarf. The idea is to get all the way back to your garage in the city with the snow trophy intact on the hood. What calls my attention so is the uniformity of the intent. |
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Giving Light Ceci’s face has changed just 26 days after the baby came, it is complete. The mica in her eyes is of relief and pride now, not of the Friday night dance. I have seen the transformation (this is the first real time) between youth nail painting and giggles for every moment innocently to the surprise and nervous glee of 26 days looking to her for everything. Ceci’s cheeks are of walnuts now with the role that was hers to take or not. Nothing is incorrect, but I witnessed the first turn from 21, hot cross buns and pony tail jeans, towards nylon cardigans and jogging pants 52 at 39 just from the resignation. I never hope this to be true, but I keep conversing with it everyday in the super stumbling over it in the park picking up after it at the river shying from its morals and media outside my door and wading through it the walkman helps at every crosswalk in every errand on every bus. When I stumble in English, it is assumed I’ve lost oil in the gears. When I trip in Spanish, I am pardoned as a foreigner with a bit more to learn. The truth is, neither excuse is valid. I am losing track of codes, my words are becoming chess moves decipherable according to the need. I have invested in just the right tweezers, like Ceci has in learning what 26 days expects of her first and foremost for the rest of their lives generations lineage continent planet. I am thinking nothing is incorrect. I am thinking possibility is a saint you either pay for or you accompany with writhing bouquets of humbleness. |
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From the roadside, from bed, in the kitchen under Scorpio just returned I hear the trucks thunder through town into the night running lights in a blur (crayola colors set in a cross, a star, multi-christmas
lines,) half of them rattling empty beds
behind in wild determination. Times are hard impossible but the road calls the road calls and the truckers hypnotized climb into their thrones and shift down into the night our town the last one before the pass they push back the high sierras on bald tires past where the condors live their truck beds chanting
certainties that are no longer but that can be recalled on the road in the night hands steering what planning
cannot, they look so possible in their cabs cells high, warm and certain the tassels and virgins help. I wonder of going with them again but they are who brought me to live here in patience next to the highway where I can hear them thunder through town into the night. The stars and I stand as close as we dare to their whipping current, the dust baptizes a fluttering perception. I feel my feet still at the roadside, I wave know stay. |
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A safe place, betting on a safe place. My house? Absolutely. But the doors open, the locks are loose and outside roam gargoyles armed with laws and masks I have no defense from. How long until they discover I am here? Your house, then? I hear the children are medicated and that you must buy to speak; and that you must eat to pray… all obese in a crooked church. An island, then. Low in the pacific with mountains of spirits and a people tattooed in their spirit songs. But I don’t have the papers that give me permission to this land. When did we jail the planet behind rusted barbs and wire? Cutable only occasionally with little stamped booklets. Silly for us, but then humans always were violently silly. But worse, it is an insult to this little globe in the cosmos that has given us life; that was a safe place until we got here. Deciding on a safe place, then. How to predict exactly in which way and where we will repeat our own wretched history? Customs of death and misery we impose on time circular again and again and again. Betting on a safe place unimportant and calm inside me inside time (despite) inside the possibility that the black circle the gargoyles the medicated children the barbs and wires will not hurt me more than I can stand please. |
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If I take the shortcut through town I see the colts seek the invisible of shade; I see the yellow lighting out of branches in one last flare of so many siestas having branded themselves into the leaves’ patient veins, now embers before their end is blown into them and down for the colts and I to step over, inhale the tired wilting, then dust, the trail. If I take the shortcut through town I see Luis digging up worms at the stream; I see Maximiliano and his sister wobbling on one bike, with one coin in hand, in a beeline for the candy counter. And I see Lopez, well into his afternoon firewater, Fanta, and his horse bored by now. He waves, says louder than he knows, “Truth be told, that’s a pretty gal,” as I stroll on, my neck warm,
where the knowing slant of sun rolls and glimmers. If I take the shortcut through town this is what I see which is and is not what is right now in town in Argentina in the planet where, if the straits of human consciousness could be photographed,
made as visual as the headlines and the dow jones, my lungs would close my heart would fold my brain would cease from this that I would see which is and is not what is right now. |
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The Hammock Book ©2002,
All rights reserved by Alex Appella. alexandmagu@transientbooks.com |