N a p a
l m H e a l t h S p a : R e p o r t 2 0 1 3 : S p e c i
a l E d i
t i o n
L o n g
P o e m M a s t e r p i e c e s o f t h e
P o s t b e a t s
CAITLAN MITCHELL
From The Vacant
Stillness
of late
august
in maryland
i’ve
been long ago far away
follied down a well
after
false premonitions
of
foggy discontent
hollowed
&
beaten
brown
as mulch
on the
shaded concrete
a boy
asleep
on the
bench next to me
how
long has he been here?
before i interrupted his space
like a
trumpet crooned
child
laughter
out of
a fourth story rafter
in the
middle of the day
i was left addled
and
paid for
on the
front porch swing
shucking
oysters & idling
a billy-goat in the dandelions
roaring
in the garden
the
yawning ardent want of wandering to wild
this
earth is
wild
no
matter how many highways we wend across it
how
many miles we surpass rain on semi-trucks
i’ve
been long ago far away
as
ranch cattle staid
on the wyoming prairie
that
begs to be a desert
to be
freed
of the
cud
&
the chewing
&
the spitting rails
&
the rank spittoons out of old beer cans
skunked
radishes
in
scarlet’s garden
the
iron swelling
of the arab spring
bowled
over
impregnated
in the
belly of late august
the
vacant stillness
of
waiting for fall to furrow its brow
over a
dusty stack of textbooks
browned
at the edges
&
in rings from black coffee
remind
me
of when
academics sat
in
smoky wooden lecture halls
&
took themselves seriously as a yellow legal pad
scratched
over racingly in dogged precipitation of waltered suprension
and we
the
masturbating library fiends
are at
it again
sneaking
up behind quiet
suspecting young women in white make-up
laced
tight in the night as bourgeoisie buggles that break
under
lightning in an eye-dropper
early
morning deemsters
like
pancakes & bacon
are
worth waking for
when
your body is aching for more
than
what it got the night before
with
some loose cannon rooster
strut-slutting cock-lockety across the
street
in an
abbey road daydream
on a monday afternoon
in the
hot attic room
dropping
grizzly b-more believe drones
the
re-verb static moans
falsetto
scratch-back tones make me geek out
like i’m red lean buffalo meat
sold
pre-packaged saran-wrapped with coleslaw packets
all
sting
like
the back-snapping pains
of illegals
their
homes
all
ramshackle adobe in the red hillside
has
eyes
&
has steps carved of dried blood
from
cracked man hands
&
old mother birth wounds
are
black ink
blotched
all over
my
clean white hands
like
childhood arthritis
like
patella-femoral stress syndrome
E.T.
phone home—earth to author earth to author
can we
cut it out please
with
all the earth-to’s?
who
ever said i want to come down
from my
head in the clouds?
so long
as my feet are on the ground
i think i’m doing okay
lately
i’ve
been lolling about milling
&
walt swoops down &
accuses me
complains
of my gab & my loitering
my
cloistering of cloth garden rose dis-symetry
my finicking-trinksing
soft-staking
love-making
in the
hollow drum belly of djembe night in late august
humidly
settled down
&
blowing on tea
we take
our time
about
delving the old mines
left
abandoned mid-19th century
the
homestead act
would
give you 160 acres
and a
mule
for the
worst hard time
is the
same as this one
but now
we are here to bear bull run
dressed
in fine linens
but wiltered by noon
is like an oven already—
[Used
by permission of the author.]
Caitlan Mitchell is an MFA student at Naropa University's Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, having earned her BA from the University of Maryland in 2011. She has been published in the 2012 Naropa Summer Writing Progam Magazine, and is co-editor of The Love Shovel Review, a literary magazine based out of Nederland, Colorado. Caitlan is currently working on a novel-length lyric myth which she plans to self-publish in 2014.