Craig van Rooyen

April 16, 2015

“Waiting in Vain” by Craig van RooyenPosted by

Craig van Rooyen

WAITING IN VAIN

When my daughter asked if it was God
on my T-shirt, I lied and said yes,
though it was really Bob Marley. So what?
He could pass. The natty halo. The prophetic eyes.
The righteous look of someone who might be
crucified or go into exile at any time.
And who can blame her for wanting
a picture of God? We all crave one.
Just a snapshot to keep in the wallet
next to the kids: Yep, this is my Big Guy.
See his burning bush of dreads,
the smoldering spliff between his fingers?
He’s quite a footballer, but his biggest talent
is saving the world. Instead, all we get
are glimpses. Like that night in the VW
with Marley in the cassette deck and Mimi
in my lap, wiggling to the walking bass;
double skank guitar stroking up the goosebump
back-beat, open hi-hat off-beat underneath
the choppy organ shuffle, call and response,
call and response, the lub dub one-drop
liturgy, riddim, riddim, all about
da pulsing riddim pushin’ in on quarter
note four four like that, like that, baby
like that. Moonlight pouring
through the open window and the smell
of milkweed on her breath. Now that
was a look across the river Jordan,
as the prophets would say.
I could tell my daughter that was the night
she got her start. Then I’d have to tell her
the minor chord stuff—the weeping and
the wailing stuff. How we didn’t want
her. How we stayed awake plotting
her demise. How we sat in a clinic waiting
room hiding our young faces in old magazines,
the purgatory of Fox News on the overhead TV.
How we couldn’t get our feet to move
when the nurse called Mimi’s name.
How Mantovani’s Orchestra mutilated
“Let It Be” as the elevator descended
like the angel Gabriel, moving us
from one life to another while we looked
away from each other’s eyes.
I’d have to tell her about the time spent
walking circles in the desert, trying to build
an altar at every godforsaken turn in the marriage,
looking for a sign from God in every date night
fortune cookie. How we waited in line
at the liquor store for cigarettes and lotto tickets;
waited in line at church for a cracker on the tongue;
waited in line at the movies to find a story
in the dark. But then I’d get to the part about her.
How she arrived like a familiar four on the floor
bass line—a remembered backbeat in our chests.
The same cross stick snare. The dominant chord
in minor form. How her hunger and wailing
woke us up. How our hunger and wailing
led us back. How the same voice keeps calling
from the wilderness, calling, Idowanna, idowanna
idowanna, idowanna, idowanna wait in vain.

—from Rattle #46, Winter 2014
Rattle Poetry Prize Winner

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Craig van Rooyen: “I write poetry for the same reason a frog croaks—I want to be a rock star, but I can’t sing. It’s an uncomfortable situation. ‘Waiting in Vain’ is about redemption. It wasn’t until I fully committed to Marley as Word-become-flesh that the sound of the poem began to emerge. That’s when the speaker finds his voice and tries to follow it to the meaning beneath the music. Religious people may find this blasphemous, but for a frog or a poet the process feels very sacred. In fact, it feels downright redemptive.”

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March 17, 2013

“Reading Exodus” by Craig van RooyenPosted by

Craig van Rooyen

READING EXODUS

after Marie Howe

The thing about the Old Testament is that
at least metaphorically

God has balls. If Pharaoh can’t make up his mind fast,
he’s looking at a world of hurt:

“You don’t think it’s time to let my people go?
Well maybe it’s time for me

to open up a whole can of frogs and boils, asshole.”
That’s Yahweh for you.

A guy who wears the pants in the family.
Sometimes I fantasize

about saying to the woman I married: “Let my
people go,

or frogs will multiply in your eight-hundred-dollar
Italian motorcycle boots.”

By “my people,” I mean primarily me. But if
history is any lesson,

that would only lead to years in the wilderness.
Not to mention

an unnecessary sacrifice of children. As a minor prophet once said:
“Wherever you are,

there you are”—whether that’s turning circles
in the desert for forty years,

or paying a mortgage in the suburbs and making
small talk on date night.

Remember the story of the Golden Calf? When all the people
took off their wedding rings,

thinking they would get a second chance at love?
They danced and threw their lives

into the fire. Look at the poor bastards there around the flames,
faces glowing, while Yahweh gathers himself

on the mountain top. They feel the desert on their backs,
they feel the sky is ready to collapse.

Look at them. They’re dancing.

—from Rattle #37, Summer 2012

__________

Craig van Rooyen: “My father is a preacher and I grew up strong on words and Southern cooking. I think the old stories in scripture still can give shape to our longings if we let the words live in our imaginations. The ‘I’ in ‘Reading Exodus’ is not autobiographical. I live with my wife of fifteen years, happily married, on the Central Californian coast—maybe not the land of milk and honey, but pretty close.”

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September 2, 2012

“The Minstrel Cycle” by Craig van RooyenPosted by

Craig van Rooyen

THE MINSTREL CYCLE

is a group bike ride involving guys in tight pants
and floppy hats with feathers, I tell my daughter.
They play flutes and lutes and flageolets
and recite poetry while they pedal.

She asked—shyly passing a note in her 2nd grade script.
I didn’t misspell anything. Plus what am I supposed to say
about training bras and tampons—still years away?
OK, for reals, I say, laying next to her in the dark:

There’s a whole frickin’ peloton of these guys.
They decorate their bicycles with cowslips, primrose,
foxglove flowers. They ride (no hands) into town
with the breeze on a warm summer evening.

And the frogs and crickets go quiet just to listen
to them tell knock knock jokes. They ride in circles
around the Mission square, long hair blowing back.
There will be time enough for the rest. To tell her the part

about how they stop their bikes and pull out
their horns. There will be time for her to hear the music—
how they play the sound of summer—the heat of it,
the ice-cream sundae smell of it; how they play

sun on wild rye, barefoot prints in the key of oak tree
shade—how they play it lazy like a shallow creek
on Mississippi mud; how they play it quick
like a lizard tongue or thumping like a dog’s tail.

There will be time for her to hear them play it loud
like the Fourth of July then gentle like a mama duck.
And when the sun is down and the bats come out—
specks in a darkening glass—she will hear them play

“We’ve Got All The Time in The World,” and know
that they are lying—lying in their floppy hats,
lying in their funny pants, lying with every last breath
they let out of those beautiful sad horns.

—from Rattle #36, Winter 2011
Rattle Poetry Prize Finalist

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Craig van Rooyen: “One of my biggest faults is avoiding hard conversations. Among other things, writing poetry is a way to trick myself into saying things I would not otherwise say and knowing things I would not otherwise know.”

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