William Teets

Four Winds  
   
She asks me what I do when my heart’s choir has no more songs to sing. I tell her I play Mohammed’s Radio and listen for Ray Charles’ ghost to haunt me long and hard. Drink straight from the bottle, hope to hear whispered tomorrows. Watch rising waters so I can bob, batter, and bleed against blue-white ice from Northern seas, juxtapose and dismiss the wanton West, seek the seminal Far East. Long for the return of the great god Pan, where just below the equator, we’ll buoy in Arabian salted waters of an indecent time. Against it. Against it. Always against it.
  
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Resurrection in Reverse

Maybe like Johnny I’ll dress all in black. Drink in the dark with lights turned bright. Skip the obligatory mass but pray so hard, every child will be fed. Friday started good but after three days of heavy drinking my hoped-for resurrection rose with nothing but ears made from chocolate. My garbage refused by any landfill. The fucking dice were loaded from the start, yet everyone acts surprised when craps is rolled. Offended that I bought a handle of Jameson from the hot liquor store girl open on Sundays. Scowl when I announce my movable feast, my glory to thee, is a BLT on rye and a stale bag of chips. Jesus Christ, someone roll that stone back. 
 
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Albany Post Road 

Past the Gallon Measure, past St. Christopher’s on the right. Humming streetlights paint the sidewalks with yellow hue. Arteries pump so hard, skin is hot to touch. Through the humid summer night, even perspiration above the lip cannot unboil blood. The last place to want to go is home, the only place left to go is home. A rogue car gravels by, Aqualung feeling like a dead duck. The small-town folds in on itself, a rusted birdcage without any birds. Key unlocks a quiet door, dead air inside smells of moth balls in a dusty closet. Speed Racer sheets stick like shed snakeskin. Cock in hand, slight gasp and groan, mother exhales in an adjacent bedroom. Baby is safe. Baby is home. Baby has never been so fucking far away. 

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Coliseum Bar

Fruit flies drone around the dirty bar mop. I check none are imprisoned in my ice. Hank Snow locomotives steam through secondhand smoke and spilled rye. The last payphone in Manhattan waits for diamonds and rust to call from the Midwest. Construction workers on Columbus Circle jackhammer over Fats, and not until barefoot Courtney enters the Coliseum like a conquering Cleopatra, do the lions and Christians become unwary of one another. With soft-licorice tar on the bottom of her feet, she jazzes across the blue-tiled floor and the dive-juke-joint turns into Shalimar. As shadows draw long across the scarred mahogany, I pray to every mythological god I can summon, Courtney will share.

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Order of Operations

Homework heavy in her bookbag, empty stomach heavier. 9x12+3 doesn’t solve the past due school cafeteria bill. There is no order of operations for a missed breakfast, missed lunch, bare cupboard at home. She sits at the small folding kitchen table and dreams about Three Musketeers. The faucet drips. She doesn’t want to be president someday, she wants something to eat. To quell the hunger pain, the hurt of her classmates’ snickers. She doesn’t cry from this pain, unlike the pain from when she fell skipping double-Dutch in the church parking lot and Father Foxx gave her black licorice and a kiss on the forehead. Her tears carried her home that day, and she’s been falling ever since. Mama sits at the same folding table, head in hands. And the faucet drips. Pushes away past due bills and some math teacher’s progress report. Fiddles with the Mickey and Minnie salt and pepper shakers. Thinks about a boy she knew in school and thought she loved. A lifetime ago. And the faucet drips.      

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Baptism

I stand on the middle of the bridge while it burns from both ends. Hope the water below will cleanse me when I descend to newer and deeper depths. I look for you on the shoreline, shout your name. Wonder, if I had listened when you told me your learned truths behind the old stadium—smoothed your summer dress and said we were being watched from above—could I, too, be saved from a fall by faith-words preached in a rectory’s stale-mold basement? As blue-black crows scatter from a twisted willow, marking my time, cawing accusations, I still believe this whole Jesus thing just may be overrated. Scandalously shambled by elders who forgot how to love, who never shouted your name.

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Skipping Stones

She still has the nicest looking legs of all the girls who sling morning hash and eggs at the By-Pass Diner. Gets the most look-sees from all the fellas. Still believes—must believe—that’s worth something. Remembers all the gold-plated trophies, Ms. Popularity and Homecoming Queen, shaking her hips to The Macarena. Smiles about riding the Dragon Coaster at Playland, always in the front car with Johnny D. After her shift, every night, she takes an early exit off highway 9D, drives the abandoned service road to the end, drinks Stoli airplane bottles. Tries to remember the name of the cute boy who taught her how to skip stones on Peterson’s Pond, while she throws item-two pebbles at the moon, pretending she can skip across the heavens. 
 
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Or the Captain’s Daughter

The main thing is, there's a dead poet woman under the bed, or the captain’s daughter. A muse from Saturn’s rings, a maiden from a sea shanty. I can’t tell the difference, and don’t care to. I’ve answered such a beautiful Siren song, slept with hags in shadows of canneries. But this isn’t that. The main thing is, there’s a dead poet woman under the bed, or the captain’s daughter.    

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Stephen XLVII 

At the intersection of third and sixteenth street, south of where the best weed is sold, Stephen got so stoned he spoke with common-sense valor. The guardians of the gates became enraged. Frenzied. They killed stray dogs and small children and swore to crucify all blasphemous barkers on every corner of every block who listened to Stephen and didn’t share their magical speaks. Now, no one looks into each other’s eyes. All windows in town slam shut. God is refuted, the Devil elected mayor. And after a recount of cast lots and rolled bones, everything turns to salt.
    
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One More Time

Before I finally listened to my heart, before I left you for good after too many straws busted that proverbial camel's back, you made us visit your father’s farm one more time. Proved opposites don't always attract. While you shared stories of bottle-feeding baby lambs at Catskill Game Farm, brother Joey scaring the ponies with his cap guns, I dreamed of Madame George and Cyprus Avenue. Grimaced at your father’s saccharine sayings of ducks on June bugs and everyone buttering each other’s bread, while you bowed in some false solemn silence. And I never felt so goddamn alone as when he pulled quarters from behind your ears, and you squealed like a schoolgirl. Hugging him and his smoky-ash flannel. I stared out the window, down the dirt road. Yearned for roadhouse girls and to buy rounds of tequila and cold beer for a blind bluesman at the bar. But then again, I never did believe God doesn't give us too much to bear.

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Tie-Dye Flavoured Nicotine
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A week after Suzi’s father jumped off the Newburgh-Beacon Bridge, I waited for her like a Dollar Store Romeo outside Carlini’s Bodega. Dreamed about her becoming a Rockette, marrying me, and us both calling it a day. But first, we had to go back to Suzy’s house where her mother failed to learn she better white-knuckle the wheel because Jesus ain’t grabbin’ shit. The same house where Suzy’s mom paid witchdoctors to roll bones and burn sage throughout the master suite, Suzy and me listening behind Suzy’s bedroom door to echoed pagan chants like sewer-rain sounds to our not-so-innocent ears, our not-so-virgin hearts. We smoked tie-dye flavoured nicotine and planned for a place to make a stand. Prayed for her father’s yesterday-curse to be lifted today, and hoped we’d find grace enough to not be too sentimental. At least we recognized no dead were coming home for dinner, regardless of an extra table setting, and that we better get the hell out of Tombstone while we still can. Ride hard over some hidden hide-out pass before the supper bell rings, and we can’t escape the now, or even saddle the horses.   

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William Teets, born in Peekskill, New York, has recently relocated to Southeast Michigan. He misses New York pizza, the Hudson River, and Fran, Remember the Good Times ’68. Mr. Teets’ work has been published in numerous journals and anthologies, including Ariel Chart, Drunk Monkeys, Impspired, and New Feathers Anthology. A collection of his poetry, After the Fall, was published by Cajun Mutt Press in February 2023.

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