summer in chattanooga, 1989 James Clinton Howell Corvis Whitefield and I picked along the mountain’s slant On fingerhooks and toes velcroed into dirt. His mother packed us lunch, warned us of the dog She’d seen in the woods at midnight. We left To search for grains of truth and run them through Our tongues’ glistening looms, then spin the lightning threads That boys turn into garments, bragging after facts. Where the rock Curved to clouds and traced the skylark’s veer, We turned, braced backs to stone, and unfurled Gloryflags in evening dust: blue-grey canvas thinning into air. We returned in our own footsteps. Before we opened His front door, he shook his hand through sun-blond hair And reaped the mountain’s seed. I peeled away my shirt, Flapped the porch floor clean of airborne dust. We shouted our homecoming up the banister, ran Onto the back screen porch that overlooked the yard. Dandelions among grass charted midnight’s sky in earth. I started Corvis’s Nintendo; we played till almost dawn, Then jumped the high porch rail, slid the wooden columns, Stung our bare feet landing, gnawed splinters loose from palms— And ran into the woods. Among pine and oak, I wrapped kudzu Around Corvis’s crown, fixed a length for my belt, threw Rocks at branches: roosting birds whipped into flight. And at my back a throated engine burned: The pit bull’s eyes, white shattered red, jerked down, back to me, To Corvis with knees on ground, to crosshatched sky, And me again. He dropped head between shoulders, Bore a mouth of crooked ice, and slammed me into Wet and rotting leaves. I threw my hands into his neck, Sought the softness with my thumbs. Hard cuts Of light dozed across his snout. And the head jerked away. My hands slipped. As the bulk crashed to my left, my fingers Caught the jaw. Corvis’s Swiss knife shuddered in the temple. Pastel skin broke a stream of blood. I kicked the stomach, Swung forepaws off my shoulders. While legs dry-fired The brain’s ceding pulse, I clamped my left hand on the nose, Locked grip on the jaw, bore my knee into the ribs, cut a Circle with my hands and snapped. Corvis shelled my hands with his. I dropped back, cried. The pit bull’s head sagged from a rag of neck. We walked back to the house. “Your knife,” I said. “You left it.” Corvis shrugged and broke the kudzu off his brow. |