At the drive thru twenty years ago
we stopped to call in an order
we'd white bag back to the house.
We'd just moved in
and after all of that dust and shoving,
what we really wanted were filets of fish
and vanilla milkshakes the way Americans do.
And as we said our creed
to the confessional drive thru screen
a girl said back four fixty.
We looked at each other,
and mother said
pardon me, ? —
is that fifty or sixty ?
not because it mattered
but because it was so damned interesting.
And of course, the girl repeated again
four fixty.
So then we got really crazy,
and tried like mad
not to blow it
before we could ask one more time.
— Was that fifty or sixty ? —
and sure enough —
fixty, fixty, four fixty —
came out. Now, sure we were racists,
but things were so damn funny back then.
Remember ?
Your grandfather's name is Oscar. You do not know him also
as I never did too. He had a tavern across town.
The people such-ed and huddled around him,
got up close to his face as possible
with a big wooden bar between,
pointed at things with cigarette hands
and made levy's with crystal ash trays —
white people, from the seventies;
kind of cheap people, the way some people were back then
and the way most people are that way now.
I think the phrase is white trash,
but these people had money for golfing and drinking in the afternoons.
They weren't outside the welfare office dead-pan,
but they were lean, haggard — can you see ?
They came mostly from Burbank. White, but still, you know.
Which brings up, since when
did just having a white face mean
you've the goods on something ?
These people were white for hundreds of years maybe,
but they were always somebody's stooge, even in Mesopotamia
or where the hell they came out of.
They were like drunks too, only not that drunk.
Today we call them social drinkers or alcoholics, like Aunt Peg,
on account of you don't say drunks anymore
even if a person's falling all over themselves from being blasted
or if you want to be very Joan Crawford about it.
But so far as your grandfather —
the light in his bar was redder
than the sun in the parking lot.
When you'd push open that heavy wooden door,
time seemed to change, not just location.
Sound was deeper in there, and the angles jangly.
When you'd emerge, if it was still the afternoon,
the sun would blaze your senses white
for all of the gold pieces that'd be thrown around
between the asphalt and the cars.
You'd have a stone cold freak out
every time the sun made you remember
where you were and what had gone down, time ways.
A bunch of Mexicans worked like lightning, looked busy as surgeons,
moving in the kitchen behind the works there.
They'd be making those kinds of brunches people liked back then;
eggs benedict, low bowls of cheese toast,
plates slathered with pink sauce.
When I'd nose in to sneak my awestruck stare
that the place even existed,
some guy would catch sight of oscar's daughter
and would rush me
like I was a veteran
of a foreign war come home, or some diva —
and he would usher and scrape,
he'll want to see you, course, no doubt,
oscar oscar where's the man, his daughter is here,
no the real one. The stranger who knew me
like I was a movie star
was somehow more welcoming
than the man himself,
like even those locals knew me better
than my own father. And even though
he seemed happy to see me,
he didn't know me and he'd watch the golf game
from a high bolted television
and look over at me
between strokes.
I was eleven years old.
Maybe I'm being unfair. He's dead now,
so what the hell.
I just wanted you to know
that you had a grandfather
and his name was Oscar
and he'd give me money sometimes.
He promised to take me to Spain.
All the time when I was growing up,
he'd tell me
that when I was fifteen
he was going to take me to Spain.
If you come in
I will rub your shoulders.
I will give you chocolate, even I
will give you the one you want
with the milk and the sugar
and the paper wrapper.
Concentrate now, come in. Do it for me.
You came because it was too loud
out there.
You need rest, just like everybody,
don't you ? You deserve to rest.
How long has it been anyway ?
That long ?
You've been brave. I see that.
And I am not different from the others,
they will see it too. You've
been abused. That's
plain to see. Come in and I will help
you out of your clothes, I will help you;
it is a uniform, yes, but it fits you
so devilishly nice, you look thinner
in it even, have you lost weight ?
You look like it, much thinner than in your picture.
Concentrate again, see the world beyond the
gate, beyond the metal grass, the
eye test of hash marks — those vertical slats in your sight,
concentrate, beyond. What do you long for ?
Tell me, or I'll slap you.
We are so different, you and
me. I am like everyone and you
are not.
Who then do you turn to,
to whom do you make your appeal
at night, in the car, alone, at your 40th
birthday party, the one that never was;
do you think you will turn to your
children ? They never even liked you.
Only I have made a space for you,
only I
have thought of you
beyond what you can make or do,
only I acknowledge you
beyond your self — acknowledging / that stare thing
you sneak,
even without a mirror.
Linda Ravenswood's work has appeared or is forthcoming in Flaming Arrows (Ireland), The Wilshire Review (Los Angeles), Enigma Magazine (England), Audemus formerly Mount Voices (Los Angeles), Poetry Salzburg Review (University of Salzburg Press), Poetry Magazine (US), Caterwaul Quarterly (US), BlazeVox (US), Rivets Literary Magazine (US), Relief Magazine (US), Break the Silence (US), Underground Voices (Los Angeles), ReadThis (University of Montana Press) and on PBS. She has lived extensively in the US, Ireland and the UK. She is presently in Los Angeles pursuing her Ph.D.
Comments (closed)
Frankie Metro
2010-05-18 08:32:07
the first 2 poems have a real Coolie feel to 'em..like jive alley talk run rampant at the drive in or, strung out on youth alley and thinking of imaginary trips to Spain. "and the angles jangly." and the angles were very jangly, and still ring in my mind as i write this..very dig