MAINSTREAM RUNNING CLEAR
Let me write, OK? I am the echo of a salvage, the
creature of a kid, the third off-shoot of a vagabond
band, one guy who scurried into the ring, two others
who were shot dead. Now, we try talking, and no one
even listens, let alone understands. I snuck under the
ropes when the referee wasn't looking; the short count,
the long count, they both went against me.
-
The slats of the fence, well, some were missing - thin
enough for a cat to escape, thick enough for a cow. All
my stories went through with no problem - I lassoed
the pretty seamstress, I caught up the fallow garage. My
featured anomaly was mumps on the brain - in some
vast medical record my history remains. There are
people, I know, who ask: 'How long can this go on?
Who is the guy? How and why?' I just sit back and
smile. Explication's in my blood, on the slipstream side :
my grandad murdered and my grandma sewed. My
Uncle Nabuko fished eels and clams on the sand.
-
The South Jersey whistles, I remember them - through
the pines, along the waters, up the shoreline, down home.
Me and Leo Benjamin, walking the sandy pines out behind
the retreat house and dumps, we'd find - nearly each time -
some girls' panties; bloomers and bras hanging in trees. It
was a local trophy custom, Friday and Saturday nights, at
least - 'you get the babe, you leave the trade. Just to
prove you at least got laid.' Local legend. Pineys all. I
never let no provincial gall like that get to me.
-
Every time I got to the end of that book, the one about
B'rer Rabbit, I'd get lost. A man is a man and a slave is a
slave, but with everything written in some old-time code, well
then what were they tryin' to say? B'rer Rabbit happy and
wise? Or not? Don't put one over on me; don't pull my leg.
-
Legerdemain - do you know what that is? - when the magician
does a trick by the quickness of hands : I lived a lot like that most
all my days. Singing cat 'o'nine tails to the cat o' nine lives too.
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