Jim Daniels

November 10, 2017

“Prodigal Son Returns to Warren, Michigan” by Jim DanielsPosted by

Jim Daniels

PRODIGAL SON RETURNS TO WARREN, MICHIGAN

The air stings but you get used to it. Were always used to it. Buried it in your lungs at birth in anticipation of today. Dark comfort. Burning oil. Leaking transmission fluid. Exploding antifreeze. A lot can go wrong and already has. That’s the darkness. The comfort’s buried behind the garage. Cigarette smoke—trying to quit. Lifetime hobby. Like collecting LSD stamps. Marking stale beer kisses on your warped globe. Thumbnail bruise slowly making its way to the top. To be released. Good luck with that bruise on your heart. Life in Warren. Backfire misfire. Deliberate fire. Shotgun arson. That hiss leaking out that globe or a spray can sending another inscrutable message. Night breaks glass. Day keeps peace. Peace on loan from the bank. Interest on a ticking clock. The bank, a robot hooker. Hydrant full of trick questions and fake water. Air stings. You sting it back. The invitation lost in the mail with the lost children. Welcome home, soldier. Have we got a minimum wage job for you! No burned bridges. Our bridge takes you to Canada, that girl you always liked that was too nice for you. Ribbons and curls and a mean big brother. Forgot to wipe your shoes on the way out of town—you follow the smudged footprints back. What were you thinking, leaving? Like the senile dog, barking at the wrong door to get back in. It happens. Night is different here, spiked with acrid fear. Fists just lumps in your pockets. Nobody’s built a hill yet—uphill and downhill, relative terms. Related by marriage. Separated by birth. Blinded by the lack of light. The absence of an acoustic guitar. The dance of electric shock. One word for gray—hundreds of shades of it. Comfort, one word for it. Rungs on the ladder: imaginary. Leak in the roof: real. Basement nightmare-flooded. Cocaine cut on a ping pong table. Behind the eight ball. Beneath the cue stick hammering down. It’s all coming back. Blood on an empty dress burned down the neighborhood, but it’s still here. Just needs a jump. Got cables? Gentlemen, start your engines. The air stings with old spit and large betrayal. Rust-mobiles rattling and mumbling their damned prayers. Transportation specials. Dark comfort dome light glow. Somebody getting in, getting out. Idling. Flashers on. Adjusting mirrors. Emergency. Waiting for someone. Maybe you.

—from Rattle #57, Fall 2017
Tribute to Rust Belt Poets

__________

Jim Daniels: “I have spent my entire life in the Rust Belt, born in Detroit, and living in Pittsburgh for the last 35 years, with a three-year stint near Toledo in between. My writing has always been focused on place—both the literal places of blue collar towns and the ‘place’ of social class. My style has always been straightforward and direct because of the influence of these places.” (website)

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September 11, 2014

“The Grand Design” by Jim DanielsPosted by

Jim Daniels

THE GRAND DESIGN

The Millau Viaduct … a cable-stayed bridge that spans the valley of the river Tarn near Millau in Southern France … is the tallest bridge in the world … It was formally inaugurated on 14 December 2004 … The bridge has been consistently ranked as one of the great engineering achievements of all time.

Legend has it that Roquefort cheese was discovered when a youth, eating his lunch of bread and ewes’ milk cheese, saw a beautiful girl in the distance. Abandoning his meal in a nearby cave, he ran to meet her. When he returned a few months later, the mold … had transformed his plain cheese into Roquefort … In 1411 Charles VI granted a monopoly for the ripening of the cheese to the people of Roquefort-sur-Soulzon as they had been doing for centuries.

—Wikipedia

How many times have you had the time
of your life?

I just had shoulder surgery
so I could play softball again.

Does that make me a seventh-day
resurrectionist?

What would Jesus do?
He would’ve had the surgery.

* * *

My wife and I … are you bored already?
The moon and the mad pencil sharpener—

is that better? The happy moon sharpener
and his gardener sidekick, Haymonkey.

Take one for pain. Take two for no pain.
Take three and call me in mourning.

Hike. Call me now and skip the middle part.
My wife and I visited the tallest suspension bridge

in the world on the way to visit the Roquefort
cheese caves in Southern France.

The sound-and-light show gave us the authentic
legend of the caves: the boy, the girl, the forgotten lunch,

the mold. Ah, the mold! Excuse me, I have to put
my pain in the freezer. I’ll shoulder the blame

for that one. Sometimes it’s enough to know
our old lovers are still out there.

We’d prefer not to see a recent picture
or hear about their cute children

or their recent shoulder surgery
or their lifetime of success

on the softball diamond
or the diamond futures trade.

There are only so many things
you can blame on pain pills.

While I was at the freezer, I got a lime popsicle.
Lime popsicles are the best.

I wonder what they put in them,
lime or something?

* * *

Sometimes, it’s that simple. My wife and I
stood on an overlook admiring the bridge—tall,

yes, very tall! But with a grace we could not
mock or ignore. The wind up there so strong

that we laughed, and it swallowed our laughter.
Blown backwards with the other tourists,

we all struggled up the scraggly path,
as if we were not tourists, just old friends

trying to learn a new game.
We stood at the top while a new old friend

took our picture, clinging to each other
after 24 years of marriage. Behind us

as beautiful and frightening as the imagination’s
wedding dress, the bridge stood.

* * *

I believe in the gooey mess of soft cheese,
the life-line of blue mold, the white sea.

Mold is bad. Mold is good. Free samples,
and we’re digging in while behind glass

Rochefort wheels are rotated by special
Rochefort rotators who know at birth just how far

to turn them. It appears I’ve already
forgotten how to spell it. I’m blaming the drugs

again. It’s hard to be patient. To be a patient.
To tell the truth so that it matters. So that

someone doesn’t actually shame you
by calculating your batting average.

Thunder in the distance. Thunder is
the distance. We learn it once.

We learn it over and over. We are tested
on our knowledge. And we fail. Blame it

on lime popsicles. The smell after rain
might be the closest thing to heaven.

But how many other things have been
the closest things to heaven? Twenty-four

years ago, I forgot my sandwich in a cave.
Blown backwards, I’m having the time of my life

once again. Once again, and always. The stitches
will dissolve, or die trying. How many times

have you died trying?

—from Rattle #43, Spring 2014
Tribute to Love Poems

__________

Jim Daniels: “I was born in Detroit and live in Pittsburgh, and my writing has been shaped by those two places and the people I love who live there. Even the poem published here, which takes place in France. My latest book is titled Birth Marks—we carry those marks, those places, with us wherever we go.” (web)

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December 3, 2010

“Lip Gloss, Belgium” by Jim DanielsPosted by

Jim Daniels

LIP GLOSS, BELGIUM

The phone company sent me six bills, postage 42 cents
each, to tell me I owed 26 cents. Then they sent

a bill saying I owed $6.26. When I called to object,
I was phone-menued to a new dial tone.

I borrow my neighbors’ dog for runs in the park
just to be able to hand back the leash and walk away.

The moon is missing a smudge tonight.
My daughter pulls on my hair to make sure

I’m not a witch. She cried when I beat her
at ping-pong. The computer’s red thing

underlined it—I’m supposed to capitalize
Ping-Pong. Red Thing wants to be capitalized too.

A train runs under my chair and crashes into my foot.
I wish I’d grown up in Ping Pong, Wisconsin.

Or Hyphen, Missouri. My daughter’s been studying
the phrases of the moon (Red Thing didn’t catch that one!)—

My favorite is Doth Hither! My hair’s not falling out,
just stiffening white. I tried to keep the game close,

but that made it worse. I would’ve happily lost.
The soul is the size of a ping pong ball with the consistency

of jello (Jell-O?). It’s lit by a wick formed with the letters
of the first lie. The world says I owe it 26 cents.

To send it c/o Red Thing, AL. Maybe Red Thing
should just underline lies. I was born before

Lip Gloss was invented. I used to use an ink eraser
manufactured in Oxymoron, New Jersey—I believe

the soul of the nun who was my sixth grade teacher
was made of that exact same material. My daughter

is asleep now. Someone is calling a dog in, but the dog
isn’t coming. Maybe the soul is a place where someone

is calling for us. No matter what we say, the voice
keeps calling—it could be dinner time or bath time.

We’ll never know. Or maybe when we die, and our bodies
are taken to Lip Gloss, Belgium, we find out.

Or else, we meet some boring asshole who keeps insisting
we call it table tennis. When the moon’s last dark smudge

becomes light, like a ping pong ball rising off the table
toward the basement’s spiky rafters, nearly anything could happen.

—from Rattle #33, Summer 2010
Tribute to Humor

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September 1, 2008

“The Dark Miracle of Insomnia” by Jim DanielsPosted by

Jim Daniels

THE DARK MIRACLE OF INSOMNIA

Chimayó is home of the Santuario de Nuestro Señor de Esquipulas. Local residents walk miles, often barefoot, to visit the sanctuary… Many take away “tierra bendita” (holy dirt) from a hole in the floor, claiming miraculous healings. Sometimes referred to as “Lourdes of America,” the golden adobe church with its twin bell towers attracts close to 300,000 visitors a year.

for Demetria Martinez

She handed me a baggie of holy dirt—
a gift from a new friend. Back at the motel,
it reminded me of various drugs I’d ingested

in various ways. I wondered if airport security
would sniff it out the next day. That night
in a curtain-less room, I watched darkness

swallow the random lights of Albuquerque
while the freeway whisper faded to a nearly
inaudible hiss. I could not sleep because
an alarm was set or I had eaten too much

or not enough or I hadn’t stretched or I was almost
cold and faintly overheated, over-hearted
with longing for my family back in Pittsburgh,
back in Detroit, back in Oshkosh, Wisconsin

and Paw Paw, Michigan, and in the deep dark
ground or drifting forever away from me.
The tremble of panic strummed taut strings
till all was rigid and brittle, the hair-

line crack of sanity spreading with each blink,
each heart thud, each dry swallow. Finally.
I grabbed the baggie and spread the red dirt
in an arc around my bed.

I did not have pills of any kind. Cold turkeys
gobbled at my sliding door, steaming the glass.
I felt like I was spreading salt across
the icy sidewalk back in Pittsburgh

where my children slept, their soft breath holy
as all get out. This is the part of the song
where the gospel choir sways into action,

kicks it into the high gear many of us die trying
to find, burning out the clutch of the heart,
the soul, the faint smell of burning rubber,
and we’re stranded forever.

I woke up to the alarm
of a truck beeping in reverse
and morning’s definite light. When I rose,

I wept at the faint red half-circle in the faded green
carpet. The smirking genie. The shame
of the bargain. The broken hourglass.
The wall of abandoned crutches.

—from Rattle #28, Winter 2007

__________

Jim Daniels: “I don’t get many poems out of being on the road giving poetry readings, but this is one of them. I think a lot of writers suffer from insomnia, but it’s not something we talk about a lot. I’ve always felt vaguely ashamed of having sleep problems. But, when you can’t sleep, what else can do you but write?” (web)

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