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Topsy by Peter Mladinic My dark side isn’t as dark as
Thomas Edison’s.
Edison gave us light, and for that like any sane person I’m down on my knees thanking
him. But what about Topsy
the elephant? A barker or some such shoved a lit smoke, the orange tip up
Topsy’s trunk and
Topsy hurt the barker, crushed his foot or just sprained his foot. For that Topsy, outside a tent,
chained standing
but immobile, got electric
bolts shot through her. She was wired, it’s on YouTube, smoke rising, the elephant’s ponderous
fall, all because Edison tried
something out. Afterwards
he celebrated the execution, broke out the champagne. Hooray for advancement! He shook hands with circus higher ups and ones who did the dark work.
Bundy by Peter Mladinic An
infant he sucked my nipple as I lay in the hospital. Fifteen,
single. I lived two years in Mrs. Eliot’s
home, then I met and married Steve, Ted came
home, and we, Steve and I gave him a younger brother and sister. Our
eldest, handsome, affable, grades good
enough for law school, I was proud, someday maybe for Ted my
firstborn, politics. Today I sit in court with others, in
Florida. Ted, his own defense lawyer, wears a suit, a
bow tie. I slap prosecutor hard across the mouth, at least
in my mind. My blood boils how he lies: the
VW bug, the cast-crutch sympathy seduce. A hammer-rope rape
kit, jail escapes, a twelve-year-old
victim, the sorority rampage, bludgeoned by
this subhuman savage. Sex with the dead, the victims’ mothers families
in court, as I am, weeping, only my child is here, his own
attorney. Ted worked
a suicide hotline. A clerk at a law firm, nothing amiss. In jail yesterday,
in a jailhouse jumpsuit, he leaned across a table and looked in
my eyes. I didn’t do it, Mother.
Calais by Peter Mladinic Stationed
at a place listed on official forms as
US NavSta Cutler, a radar station in Maine,
I was assigned its commissary store, and
reported to Chief Hadler, Kenneth Hadler,
a Catholic. I imagine his asking me if I believe
in God. I don’t recall exactly where
or when I told him I too was Catholic. One
Sunday I rode with Chief Hadler and others
from our station, fifty miles to Calais,
Maine, a meeting of the Knights of Columbus,
a Catholic men’s group. It was upstairs.
I barely recall that meeting. I assume
we prayed, words about the K of C were said.
Downeast Calais speaks to the fled—but
where to—in me, my flash
in the pan, out of the way antithesis
to Bar Harbor, Kennebunkport. I imagine
Christ on a cross on a wall, watching
over us that Sunday afternoon my only
K of C meeting. I was eighteen. Now, seventy-five,
an agnostic who leans more toward
atheism than religious faith, I remember
Chief Hadler smoked cigarettes but not
what brand. I see him in khaki shirt and
slacks, a cap with a gold anchor insignia
above its black visor. Being in
Calais, a city of brick and wood, was like
walking in a giant’s wooden leg.
The Room by
Peter Mladinic The
other’s feelings go out the window or lie like shoes in a box
on a shelf in the closet. I
sit on the bed’s edge, I take up the whole bed.
There’s no chair for
the other or for me to
look in their eyes, see how they feel, or tell by how they sit,
with their hands moving or still. Out
the window treetops thick and green. Were
it winter, the other and I could look out at a river,
bigger than both of us. I
care about how you feel, I say to the wallpaper’s western
motif: cowpokes lasso steers
and gather round a fire.
Elvis’s Pompadour by Peter Mladinic I can’t see Tricky
Dick or JFK like that, clean-cut young man, doing his patriotic part
far from Sun Records West Memphis and
the Shreveport stage where hips and a prop-guitar rock him into
idol spotlight. Later, in a photo with Nixon at the White
House— I’ve
enlisted Elvis to help me fight drugs— it hides ears that had listened
to “Mystery Train” at Sun and heard possibilities. By
the time of the White House photo the face is beginning to
bloat. His hair not shoulder-length
but long, his eyes— he’s
a drug-addled Vegas Elvis, the King, sure, but a far cry from
the hip shaker idol of Louisiana Hayride. “That’s All
Right, Mama” frenzies teens. Behind Elvis,
a pink stage jacket. His brow’s dissenting cowlick the right
touch.
Hachiko by Peter
Mladinic The Akita
walked to the Shibuya Station with Professor Ueno, each
day, each day at the station waited for Ueno’s
return. One day Ueno didn’t return, Hachiko
waited nine years. So at least
he made himself a legend of loyalty. People near the station gave
him treats, petted him. Even a dog statue there in his memory,
his story in films the sentimental watch with
a box of Kleenex nearby. Give Hachiko a moment before turning
away. He earned it. Though he’s no longer
there at the station, to feel your fingers scratch
behind his ears. So easy
to pull a Kleenex from box, watch the credits and then get ready for
your dental appointment, or a round of golf or a dock where
on a forklift you take pallets into
and out of trucks at Star Distributing, or sit at a desk in a bank. That
memory of Hachiko buried in a stack of papers that comprise a
to-do list, one: buy Lady a collar at
Pet Sense. Maybe you have in addition to Lady, Duke (two mutt rescues,
and Midnight, a cat, a third rescue). Your
hands full, no room for more pets. While
Hachiko rescued himself, his
heroic deed, simply to live, makes possible,
not a memory, (he died
in 1935), but our knowing he lived, if only for a moment,
before turning to other things.
Nuns by Nature by Peter Mladinic are
chaste. You have to be pretty chaste, clean,
to be a nun, really clean to be a nun that sails from Ireland
to Ellis Island and in Fort Lee starts Holy Angels Girls Catholic
High School. Since I can’t come up with chaste’s opposite,
corrupt? I’ll say dirty. You have to be pretty dirty
to be a vamp, a priestess of seduction and corruption
in decadent Hollywood, a vamp, a femme fatale,
Doña Sol in the famed silent Blood and Sand.
I’m thinking of Nita Naldi, niece of the Holy Angels (that
my sister attended) founder. Mary Dooley, aka Nita Naldi went there
too, and dropped out. From what I know Mary was born in an
East Side slum, three siblings died when infants, she was orphaned
at fourteen, but I guess looks, talent, luck and something,
the hand of God? driving the inner Mary, landed her
in a studio, modeling, then in a chorus line,
then in silents being filmed in Fort Lee. Fort Lee was
Hollywood before Hollywood was Hollywood.
How’d she ever find time and energy,
with all the rickets and scurvy of the East
Side slum, to sit behind a desk in her aunt, her
great aunt’s school. The great aunt’s order was the
Dominicans. They wore, like other nuns, wimples, also habits
that resembled shields you’d see on official signs,
with lions to the left/right and coming to a
point at the bottom, only Dominicans’ habits
came to a point at the top. They were
big, so when you saw one you knew this is
a nun, a bride of Christ, a clean person. In Blood and
Sand, Valentino is Juan, Spain’s matador, their top-notch
man with the sword and cape in the bullring. Yes,
he’s gored, but ultimately dies for love.
Lila Lee plays the wife/widow,
Nita Naldi the other woman, maybe in life, the other
woman too. They lived hard and fast, vamps.
In one photo, the curve of a hip, Naldi’s
back gets the spotlight, you don’t see
her face. Her dark hair bobbed, her pale
back, curves lovely to look at, and desire?
She’s wearing a sheet. You know that’s all she’s
wearing.
Magazine Sestina by Peter Mladinic In Cold War days
the zines were Look and, one cut above, people read Life. People who voted Stevenson
read Time, suburbia, Better Homes and Gardens, behind-closed-doors
hubbies, Nugget. and informed Catholics, the Advocate. Father Joe sampled the Advocate but his tastes went more
to Look, in small hours to glossies like Nugget though he seldom looked
at Life and never at Better Homes and Gardens. With God he spend most of
his time. Intellectuals
for light reads opened Time, the communion receivers, the Advocate, the planters,
Better Homes and Gardens. For a little of everything there was Look and the cut above,
more popular Life. Father Joe eyed the bodies in Nugget, nude bodies in sinful bliss in Nugget, that like his body was subject
to time. Mostly he looked to God to lead his life, to God in heaven, and not the Advocate. He
liked the secular scope of Look, and eschewed Better Homes and Gardens. Roses in Better Homes and Gardens bloomed as bloomed bodies
in Nugget. All one has to do is take a close look he thought, all of life
is subject to time. Time passes, time, the devil’s advocate. Most everyone then subscribed
to Life. Father Joe walked
his path in life. He often bowled but never gardened. His team’s staunchest
advocate, stirred by strikes, and flesh in Nugget in waiting rooms he perused
Time, where others preferred Life to Look. At life’s beauty he longingly looked. Thrills in Nugget diminished
in time. He read his Advocate in a garden.
Eggs Over Easy by Peter
Mladinic My partner, a performance poet, launched into a poem about a short-order cook. The poet covered every significant
facet of the cook’s post-World War Two life in the mining town, Durango, Colorado, where the cook, the poet’s distant relative, morphed into a miner. Crossing
a street he was hit by a logging truck and died. I could smell hash browns on the grill. I could hear the staccato
pace of orders shouted in, going out on steaming plates in the crook of servers’ arms.
The performance poet and I went to the newspaper to talk to a reporter
who does
stand-up comedy. Instead, we talked to a secretary at the newspaper
counter, a real big but curvy woman, maybe late 40s, pale, with ash-blonde hair. I don’t know what got
her started but she talked about the stroke her 55-year-old husband had. He’s
learning to form words, to write words. It sounded horrible, as I remembered my mother in the hospital, propped up, her face, I don’t remember if her face drooped but she could only make sounds. Later on, she could speak in short sentences, but it was as if she’d been walloped
by fate, hit with some big club, a blow from which she would never recover. So when the secretary was talking I was thinking of all my mother
went through, and this man was only 55. She
and the performance poet prayed right there for him, quietly, as I wrote down phone numbers to give to the
reporter-comic. One more thing,
Jack, the short-order cook in the poem was Irish-American with black hair, like my mother. He was married
to a
Native American woman, who lived on in Durango long after he died.
Pretty
Face by Peter Mladinic She sat across from him at
a table outdoors, they were eating hamburgers. His and hers. The burger in her hands close to her mouth, as if she were about to bite into him, bite by
bite devour my boyfriend Colin. So I Kaitlin devoured Mo. Shot by shot. The girl whose apartment she was staying in found her in a fetal position near the toilet
in the corner of the bathroom, her brains leaking, the girl told the police. What the girl didn’t see was I shot Mo once, as she tried to get away, shot her
twice, a third shot, I just kept shooting and ended it in a corner, she couldn’t run anymore, or cycle, to win ribbons for cycling. I fled to Costa Rica. First
I must tell you in high school I was voted “best hair.” In court my sister said she didn’t know how I got her passport. A lie the court didn’t swallow. In
Costa Rica I taught yoga, as I’d done in Austin. I too cycled, that’s how Colin and I met, and how he met Mo. They’d dated off and
on before
I met him. He won’t visit me in prison, my sister will. I did my best not to get caught, in Costa Rica, plastic surgery. But I couldn’t change
pretty. If I weren’t white, female, young, pretty would I have gotten the death penalty? In high school I was voted best hair. Can’t change a sociopath,
that crazy. Ninety years. With parole I’ll
be out in thirty. Sixty-four. I’ll still have a sex drive. I’ll ride a bicycle.
Something Mo can’t do. Her brains were leaking. The court considered manner of death. Maybe if I were male, and looked like the boxer Sonny Liston, they’d
have strapped me in the yellow mama and fried my brains. I don’t know how she got the passport, sister lied. Lock her up for aiding me. I’ll win the sociopath
beauty contest they have in the prison. I’ll teach yoga, write a book. No crossing the finish line for Mo, no more Colin. I caught them together. She lifted the burger, about
to devour him. I devoured her. Look at my pretty face.
Steve Reeves by Peter Mladinic Steve Reeves was
taller than my father. He had thicker hair, and probably
better feet than my father. In 1947 he was Mr.
America, in 1950, Mr. Universe. His pecs a sight
to stun, a sculpted horizontal of flesh that spoke strong and softly. Beauty rippled through his thighs, biceps, lats. A
beauty parlayed into gladiator movies: Hercules Unchained, Duel of the Titans. By then he wore a
beard. After Hollywood, a quiet life on his Oregon
ranch, he rode horses, baled hay, put time in the gym, ate his grains and
greens and never abused drugs or alcohol. After a while we
all start to fall nearer the ground. Reeves stayed toned, knew to move,
exercise, keep away from saturated fats. My father’s
only exercise, to mow the lawn,
take out the trash, walk a little black mutt on a dirt path after a day of
shuffling papers at a desk. He drank a little, smoked often, ate
anything set in front of him. Even when young he was no Mr.
America. Yet he outlived Steve Reeves
by eleven years. Reeves played a pirate on a ship. Now they’re
both on that ship of death out on the ocean.
Needless by Peter Mladinic It’s a song. One of
the things it contains, like a periodic sentence, is the phrase “You’re
not here.” Night before last, I read a critic’s saying
it isn’t any good, the lead, Buddy Bailey
lackluster; background pipes, (the rest of the group),
the Clovers flat. Well, the critic got it wrong. Its laconic sound evokes
a noir mood. I woke today thinking “I’m here,”
counterpart to “You’re not here.” In the song, Bailey and the other Clovers singing
sway around absence, something timeless, universal. The
song is 1951. Lucky me, night before last I caught a Clovers video,
stage, stand up mics, white suits, dark stashes, Bill
Harris off to the side, on guitar. Bailey between
Matt McQuater and Hal Lucas on “Fool, Fool, Fool.” “One
Mint Julep” segues into “Lovey Dovey.” Jump tunes, R&B choreography subtle, band
behind them. No “Needless.” Still, the mood’s
there. All of them gone to Glory today, band, audience,
announcer who says, Here are the Clovers. “Needless” kicks
it. “Needless” gets it done, as it did for others when
it came out. Needle in groove, the 78 spins
on the turntable. “So needless because you’re not here.”
Peter
Mladinic’s fifth book of poems, Voices from the Past,
is available from Better Than Starbucks Publications. An
animal rights advocate, he lives in Hobbs, New Mexico,
United States.
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