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Show Go Love/124 Stadium while the pole vaulters lay down with one another and the high jumper said Geronimo and cleared six-eight It came over the Visitor's Side bleachers, about to rip up the stretch of green lined Bermuda where I'd made an eighty-yard run one autumn night when the frosty air was sweet with Stickum Coach had sprayed on my hands, about to destroy, even, the fifty yard line where I'd once made love to my girlfriend's big sister, one night after passing out at Grandma Dee's hospital room and waking up with her sweet-smelling breasts in my face. Please Jesus-if you're who you say you are, come home as the tornado that shines full offish when the devil beats his wife. Shine like the golden faces of shocked cheerleaders in the drainage ditch where we took refuge Their red-pleated skirts flew up over their heads and one would scream out in prayer, "Oh Jesus I'll never suck dick again, oh please Jesus let me live," and another'd cry out, "I will never ever do it again with Bill Lingo's daddy," and another, "Oh Lord, he'll not be tasting me again," and the one boy cheerleader goat-eyed and pink-faced, he bit back his confession. All these voices twisting Sheets of roof tin spun over our heads, flashing light then dark then light. Around me, upturned faces in angel-light, girls whose skirts had flown up over their heads, who'd confessed the almighty sins of this carnal world, a harmony I too joined on my knees. I prayed my prayer. A gum wrapper slapped my face with the full force of a man's fist. I prayed harder. The tornado was slow and deliberate and real, haloed-it seemed-in the purple sky. On my knees I stared into it, the glittering fish and tin and Lonoke County dust~I loved it with my heart's heart. She crossed Highway 89 and moved over the Junior High School and the Middle, over the wood desk where my brother's blond head was cradled, toward the slaughter house where the while bulls would run amuck, so Mama'd see one get head-shot by Deputy Self. Right in our front yard, the fairy blood pooled. O.W. was deadheading across the funnel's northward path-on |
