The Pump - Frank Stanford

There was always a lizard
Or a frog around the pump,
Waiting for a little extra water
Or a butterfly to light.

Jimmy said the pump gave him the worms.
I got the worms under the slick boards.
The pump would bite you in the winter.
It got hold of Jimmy and wouldn’t let go.

The blades of Johnson grass were tall
And sharp around the pump stand.
I had to hoe them all the time
Nobody filled the prime jar, though.

One time, I cut the tongue
Out of a Buster Brown shoe
And gave it to the pump.
It made a good sucker washer.

Sometimes the pump seemed like Jesus.
I liked bathing buck naked
Under the pump,
Not in a goddamn washtub.

Frank Stanford

The Light the Dead See - Frank Stanford

There are many people who come back
After the doctor has smoothed the sheet
Around their body
And left the room to make his call.

They die but they live.

They are called the dead who lived through their deaths,
And among my people
They are considered wise and honest.

They float out of their bodies
And light on the ceiling like a moth,
Watching the efforts of everyone around them.

The voices and the images of the living
Fade away.

A roar sucks them under
The wheels of a darkness without pain.
Off in the distance
There is someone
Like a signalman swinging a lantern.

The light grows, a white flower.
It becomes very intense, like music.

They see the faces of those they loved,
The truly dead who speak kindly.

They see their father sitting in a field.
The harvest is over and his cane chair is mended.
There is a towel around his neck,
The odor of bay rum.
Then they see their mother
Standing behind him with a pair of shears.
The wind is blowing.
She is cutting his hair.

The dead have told these stories
To the living.

Frank Stanford,
"The Light the Dead See" from The Light the Dead See: Selected Poems of Frank Stanford.

The Intruder - Frank Stanford

after Jean Follain
In the evenings they listen to the same
tunes nobody could call happy
somebody turns up at the edge of town
the roses bloom
and an old dinner bell rings once more
under the thunder clouds
In front of the porch posts of the store
a man seated on a soda water case
turns around and spits and says
to everybody
in his new set of clothes
holding up his hands
as long as I live nobody
touches my dogs my friends

Frank Stanford

The Arkansas Prison System - Frank Stanford

Is like a lyric poem
with seven basic themes
first the cottonpicker
dragging behind it a wagon of testicles
a pair of pliers which can fill in
for a cross in a pinch
then there is the warm pond
between the maiden’s thighs
next we have some friends
of yours and mine
who shall be with us always
Pablo the artist
the pubis of the moon
Pablo the cellist
panther of silence
Pablo the poet
the point of no return
and in case of emergency
the seventh and final theme
of this systematic poem
is the systematic way
death undresses in front of you

Frank Stanford

Riverlight - Frank Stanford

My father and I lie down together.
He is dead.

We look up at the stars, the steady sound
Of the wind turning the night like a ceiling fan.
This is our home.

I remember the work in him
Like bitterness in persimmons before a frost.
And I imagine the way he had fear,
The ground turning dark in a rain.

Now he gets up.

And I dream he looks down in my eyes
And watches me die.

Frank Stanford

Poem - Frank Stanford

When the rain hits the snake in the head,
he closes his eyes and wishes he were
asleep in a tire on the side of the road,
so young boys could roll him over, forever.

Frank Stanford

Play in Which Darkness Falls - Frank Stanford

Raymond Roussel
Two girls runaway from the Home. They have a revolver
in their possession. The Sisters Of Our Lady have given up
looking for them, returning in the night with soft candles.
The sleek clouds have thrown their riders, and the bees
are returning to the honey, the clover at the edge of the
cliff black as eyelids, damp as blue mussels flexing at the moon.
The girls look in the stolen mirror, then throw their shoes
in the sea. They take off one another’s dress, posing
on the rocks that jut out over the faded water of the last days.
The clover beat down from their splendid feet, the clover
quiet like a vault. Nearby in a ship named for early death,
I drink wine like a city. Anchored far off the continent of love.
Strange, but bees do not die in their own honey, and how the dead
are toted off, how the sweet moons are deposited in the catacombs.
The clover at the edge of the sea like a chemise, place
where animals have lain. They help one another with their hair,
their dresses blowing back to land. They look over the
cliff, spit on the beach. Birds I have never seen going by.

Frank Stanford

Planning the Disappearance of Those Who Have Gone - Frank Stanford

Soon I will make my appearance
But first I must take off my rings
And swords and lay them out all
Along the lupine banks of the forbidden river
In reckoning the days I have
Left on this earth I will use
No fingers

Frank Stanford

Pits - Frank Stanford

We go on and we tremble.
God says we can screw now.
God says to give up all your lovers,
Time to die.

When I was younger I drove a Lincoln.
God said to trade it in.
A tad lovely, then, and terrible,
And sick of my own kind,
I wanted to become a woman.
I wanted to wash the feet of other women
In public, I wanted his eyes
On me, olives on the ground.

I gave you my hand,
Now I go around with my sleeve
Tucked in my coat.

I climb no trees, touch
One breast at a time,
Hold no hands myself.

I go on and I tremble
With your back in my blood,
The clap my mother left me.

With me no more, and now,
And forever, and even always
The dust of my feet
In the desert
I give you stranger my sign,
My peace,
But God you remember
You fucked me out of my hand.

Frank Stanford

Living - Frank Stanford

I had my quiet time early in the morning
Eating Almond Joys with Mother.
We’d sit on the back porch and talk to God.
We really had a good time.

Later on,
I’d sort baseball cards
Or look for bottles.
In the afternoon I’d shoot blackbirds.

Jimmy would go by the house for ice water
And make the truck backfire.
Oh, I really liked that.
That was the reason he did it.

In the evening the cottontails ran across the groves.
I shot one and put him in the backseat.
He went to the bathroom.
Jimmy said I knocked the shit out of him.

At night we would listen to the ballgame.
Then to the Hoss Man.
Jimmy liked “Take Out Some Insurance On Me Baby”
by Jimmy Reed.

Frank Stanford

Light Blue - Frank Stanford

The white clothes on the line put the man to sleep.
He was sitting on a soda case
Leaning back on the porch.

He rolled down his sleeves with his eyes shut.
He could feel the sun going into the trees.

He wanted to catch the evening ferry
And meet someone across the river.

He dreamed about her
Putting polish on her nails.
He was in the woods and many women
Were walking around him in a circle.
He thought about crosses in their blood.

As it got to be night he could feel the heat in his face.
He was going to open his eyes.
And look up at the moon.
It was like the light blue handkerchief
She gave him to go with his dark suit.

That’s when he felt the hot salt all over him
Like broken glass.
He was afraid to open his eyes.
He wondered if he could use any words on it.
But the big woman in the black dress
Was already in the backseat of the car
Rolling the window up with one hand
And making a sign on him with the other.

She was in the car, too.
He saw her biting her nails when they pulled away.

There was a dead snake on his shoes.
He knew there would be a circle
Of little beating hearts in his bed,
And before he could get home
They would be dry and still.

Frank Stanford

In Another Room I Am Drinking Eggs from a Boot - Frank Stanford

What if the moon was essence of quinine
And high heels were a time of day
When certain birds bled
The chauffeur is telling the cook
The antler would pry into ice floes
Swim with a lamp
And we’d be shivering in a ditch
Biting through a black wing
There would be boats
There would be a dream country
The great quiet humming of the soul at night
The only sound is a shovel
Clearing a place for a mailbox

Frank Stanford