JAMES JAY
WHISKEY BOX: NEBRASKA
I found first the scanned arrest record
for my great grandpa
through the genealogy research
to which I subscribed monthly.
Bad check writing. Sixteen years old. Nebraska.
The family had come down on tough times.
He only found the ledgers, claimed his confession
to the court. It’s not like he pilfered firsthand.
Buy of this what you want.
He’s not my great grandpa anyway.
He’s yours. Your family had come down
on those old and familiar tough times.
Whatever makes you feel better, keep.
The rest toss back, so many tiny fish hooked
on a wide sea of bad luck. You passed those bum
checks, so you’d be in a tale, whatever the role.
Because you went quietly, the sheriff kept
the cuffs loose. This evidence is my record.
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*** ** ***
WHISKEY BOX: HURLER
In the goalie box, a man with no helmet
on a three-day bender
that would seem to know no end.
A refused helmet pitched by a post.
Torn jeans, a yanked-on
Mountain Hounds jersey
and an ash hurl in hand to remind him
he’s playing an ancient sport.
He spits into the dry autumn
dirt, the grass of Tucson.
A landlocked sailor with nowhere to go.
He’s here to help. This is your life,
counting numbers, for another go of it.
May the sliotars slip past his eye
sockets, spare his orbital bones,
his nose at least. He’s on your team.
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*** ** ***
WHISKEY BOX: A PRIORI
The box of Talisker 10,
go inside
with your fingers
and pull up a flap.
There, there rests
Richard Hugo’s lines, not Scottish at all.
Wide forehead
like a Cadillac,
mechanic at Boeing,
forever American,
he spent time on Skye
jotting notes in journals.
Press them, map-flat,
and be content as a fellow
moved to dayshift.
For the Guggenheims,
he fired off poems
for a book. For you,
he left words
elsewhere,
cast onto currents of the sea—
We are what we sing.
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*** ** ***
TIME CAPSULE
after W.S.
At La Senita elementary
a metal cylinder,
a tube like an artillery shell
from World War II
which my grandpa told me a bit
about, something I’d only seen
on late night, black and white
shows. In there, we place
objects from our age to be
sealed, buried,
abandoned: The Kingman
Daily Miner and its
news on already dry
paper: “Another Route
66 Café to Close,”
“Argentinean Copper
Threatens Duval.” We
bolster the pages
with our notes,
our now known cursive,
the confusion of
the Q with the 2, an
inverted b and d
there and there. To children
of the future, a distant you,
in the year two-
thousand, I seal
in a toy. Hoth Han Solo,
his bent gun arm gone,
his blaster long lost, plastic
becoming artifact
for the cattle
on the Neal Ranch to
unearth by hoof.
Down the tube, I slide
Solo. Who finds him?
How? Who knows the location now?
Was it ever
opened? Time sealed and
pointed for the future
reader. My old friends,
look here. The wide
open hand unscrews
a top, and the face
I saw peering
into the dusty dark
was always yours—
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*** ** ***
WHISKEY BOX: THE HURLER UNRETIRED
Jab lifts. Roll lifts.
Just pull on it!
It’s a wristy game.
One more season?
On his rump
black short shorts,
the old hurler,
his fingers lace
the cleats. He eyes
the blades
of grass,
one by one
they thaw—
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*** ** ***
WHISKEY BOX: CITY LIGHTS
Much of North Beach shut down
from the days of my youth—
The Sex Shop shuttered.
O’Reiley’s Pub boarded up.
For a dollar “Confucius will tell
all” reads the plaque in front
of the encased mannequin.
I imagine Confucius won’t
make change for a five. Reader,
I can tell you this:
I don’t want to know
all. I’d go for some nickels’
worth of hints. Why
are the postcards in Chinatown
unchanged? Who took down
the dust piled
“Free Leonard Peltier”
t-shirt at City Lights?
Labor Day. The sun setting
on another record heatwave.
The night approaches
with so much left to not know—
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JAMES JAY
James Jay has worked as a bartender, a wildland firefighter, book seller, surveyor, and furniture mover. He lives in Flagstaff, Arizona where he has taught poetry at the jail, the public schools, Northern Arizona University, and given Irish Literature lectures at Northern Arizona Celtic Festival. For nine years, he wrote the “Bartender Wisdom” bi-monthly column in Flag Live. He owns a bar, Uptown Pubhouse, with his wife, the musician Alyson Jay. They have two sons, Wilson and Henry and two dogs, Neville and Digby (they’re a wily pack).
When not writing, working at the bar, and running with the kids and dogs, James Jay plays the ancient Irish game of hurling as a half-forward for the Flagstaff Mountain Hounds. Recently, he received the Copper Quill Award, and his poetry has been featured regularly on National Public Radio’s Poetry Friday on KNAU. His third collection of poems, Barman, was recently published by Gorsky Press.
To download a printable PDF version of this page, click here.
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A Dozen Nothing 