Alan Catlin

 Alan Catlin's latest books include a selected poems Drunk and Disorderly from Pavement Saw and the Schenectady Chainsaw Massacre from Staplegun. He expects a new book,"Playing Tennis with Antonioni from March Street Press shortly.

The Optimist's Daughter's Hair

She keeps her daughter's

hair in a covered hat box

well-hidden in the back of

her clothes closet, coiled as

a snake in a rain forest

digesting its prey, seemingly

inert, incapable of escaping

a tight prison of cardboard,

mothballs and dust storming

but more alive than anyone

would care to imagine, gently

nudging aside the loose fitting

lid, uncoiling strand by strand,

sluggish, restrained after all

these years of estivation, after

all of these years forgotten,

gradually gaining purpose,

motivation as it moves toward

an uncertain light.

Cries and Whipsers at Caldor's

After the doubletake

in the department store,

she extends greetings as if

we were long lost blood

brothers and sisters, her

husband trying to end our

chance meeting at this point

of an unexpected intimacy.

His pained expression declaring

all the unsaid, hidden secrets

of the flesh, what happened

behind all those locked doors

inside. As a kind of farewell,

she declares, "We only knew

each other for less than a week

in the hospital but I have often

felt I was as close to you

as anyone I have ever known.

There were an awful lot of hours

when there was no one else

around and nothing to do but

talk. Funny how you have to

almost die to have some life."

It wasn't diffcult to imagine

the husband in the role of a

repressed, Bergman movie cleric,

a series of tableau composed in

chilling blacks and whites,

real dream sequences showing

him pouring an acid wash into

her goblet and forcing her to drink.

Sad Talking Fast Lane Mescalito Blues

The summer has

ended, died

the way you did,

of unnatural causes:

poison

pills and mecalito,

the taunting of the worm

at the bottom

of a clear bottle

daring you, the snake

of your tongue

inside trying to draw it out,

still the worm teases,

teasing you

the way hurricanes are

teasing the Florida coasts,

moving inland

the way the eye of an inner

storm will, becoming

as red as

signal corps flags

spelling out SOS in

Morse to

blind light house keepers

long gone the way of

ghosts, those

mad Indian witch doctors:

of your dreams: mojo malo

malo for white men

blanco hermano no mas no mas

no more, the renegade worm

eats your lost

soul now

leaves you mucho frio,

way cold man,

way cold