J.W. Marshall
ON A 62
A special padded bus
this one
and it’s a wounded day to ride. Our ratio
of injury to those afraid of how the trip will go
is neither high nor wide.
Pretty much it’s all and each of us.
Sirens axe aside the sheet of vehicles
loud the way police can need to be.
She in the seat across
says Uh oh!
What happened? City of clowns.
Clown city. Uh oh! What happened?
and stands half up to see.
Prior she had been a quiet client
with her plastic box of lettuce
and now is side to side
like a whiskbroom to get a clearer view.
City of clowns. Clown city. Her voice sits down on us
as accurate as dust because
a young man’s cuffed and on the sidewalk.
Four cops and someone’s friends and
some strangers along the block have on
faces so meticulously sad
you have to laugh. They
work their separate businesses
with a frantic perfect calm
like none of them will ever speak to anyone again.
“Emerald Greens USA” is what
the label on her lettuce reads. Emerald
is too hard a word for what she has.
Those are tender greens with lots of edge.
As is she.
As are we all.
And edge is where our spoilage sets up camp.
We have good seats and
will only semi give them up.
She rose but not to standing and sat back down.
We’re settled and we move again.
There is some health in us still.
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*** ** ***
BIG GAME
A big game this afternoon
so the city gets a military fly-over
Nothing says college sports
louder than a bomber low and overheard
It’s always good
to show a show of force
The crowd erupts you know they will
they’ve paid good money to
We’re so much happier to see ourselves
than others are to see us
Hopscotch chalked on the sidewalk
try to guess which rocks were markers
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*** ** ***
THIS I BELIEVE
In this quiet world there is
a derelict sailboat roped to a buoy:
a wobbly grin,
a smirk out on the surface of the bay.
And mountains like scones in a bright blue kitchen.
From that slack vessel, if you are me, if you are
standing on this beach in this city park,
the maestro of a wooden thought or two
rows a smaller boat
methodically towards you.
I say that’s who he is because
the animals I’ve come to know
who live on unmoored boats are
uniformly tinder,
are ready to explode.
When he makes shore
he makes his dinghy leave a scarring sound,
dragged up beach to where
it’s shoved in scrub above high-water mark.
He’s here to walk to town to get
a box of things you need to live
if you are him
aboard a listing craft all night and day.
Alone aboard that craft except
he has beliefs for company, the ones
you’d go to shore to feed.
When his gravel steps have left the ear
we hear again the soothing song the pebbles say
as waves go social through them.
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*** ** ***
TRUANT
A crickety sack blown west by a car
east by a truck—
it’s my some luck
to be
looking at it
from under a big old emotion.
Man on a bike decides he’s for
investigating and when
it blows to the curb
he kicks it twice.
Empty both times!
Sadness has nothing in this world to attach itself to
that’s special.
Still it
comes about
as everybody’s business.
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*** ** ***
ON A 44
She was having trouble picking out
the bus to get
to get her to 23rd and John
Our dear driver didn’t know where that was
The bus half full and fully disinterested
as was the afternoon itself
A yawning afternoon if ever there was one
You want a 43 I told her You want
a 43 It will take you right
there
But I don’t want
to get off the bus in the University District if
I get off the bus in the University District
I’ll never get home
I’m mentally difficult and that place
is wrong for me to be
Probably we were pretty much the same age
she and I were probably
My stop I said is the stop you want
I can’t get off in the University District Tell you
what get off the second stop my stop
it’s a calmer stop don’t
get off this one as we pulled alongside a guy spreading
contents of a sack on the sidewalk either
to sell or look it over
At our stop she and I stood and chatted
Three boys she said she understands
men more than women
There were times she wanted to do things illegal things
but the boys got married and have
children so it’s okay
A 43 I reminded her before I got on
a 49 for the area where
the riots were preparing to celebrate May 1
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*** ** ***
THE GIANT PACIFIC
Art, it’s thought, has heart. Dear art, it’s shy.
It is, I hear, the octopus, shy and here along the waterfront.
Below the pier, perhaps, where people queue to buy fried fish.
Tossing chips to gulls is entertaining.
It is the largest anywhere, the octopus. Still we, leaning on a railing,
won’t see it from on the pier or on the ferry or out in a plane.
We won’t we won’t.
Don’t see art even when
we’re leaning over it. It’s shy and underneath the surface.
When looked at the water seems to be
a kind of breathing skin. Or a kind of sky you reach down into
uncertain what might be there.
Will you find a thing to take from it or will
something there take you.
Shy and who’s to blame it. Its babies are offered
on trays with aioli. A special softened crunch.
Poor art.
And yes the octopus
has three hearts which are
simply organs unless perhaps they’re more than that.
Like you might think the water is
a kind of skin or sky to reach into.
You’ll never know before you do.
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J.W. MARSHALL
J.W. Marshall opened Open Books, a poetry-only bookstore in Seattle, in 1995. He sold the store to long-time customer and poet Billie Swift in 2016 and is very pleased that it carries on. His poetry collection, Meaning a Cloud, won the Field Poetry Prize and was published by Oberlin College Press. Most recently he has had poetry published in Hubbub, Poetry Northwest, and Volta, and a prose remembrance of the poet Lucia Perillo published in the on-line journal Seattle Review of Books. He is currently collaborating on a play with his partner Christine Deavel, to be published in 2018 by Entre Rios Press. He also owns and operates a letterset press, occasionally publishing broadsides as Function Press and chapbooks as Cash Machine.
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A Dozen Nothing 