The Elephant in the Rooming House

by Todd Mercer

The ones who make it through the endurance tests.
And everybody else. The night watch and the sun worshipers.
News sensations and the people absorbing t.v.. The ones
who make it and those who fall trying. Push, pull,
cart or carry in the broken-down one. They’ll knock
a bit off the next payment book. Plan to keep paying.
The various crazies and the rationals. Internecine
cold wars, the social casualties. notable faux pas
with consequences. The mountaintop, the shining city
on a hill. The retired bridge-builders and the ones who fell.
The flawless idea versus how things tend to play out.
The lazy and the near-sainted. The elephant
in the rooming house. Paper-thin walls make for awkward
breakfast table conversation, later. Knows that knows,
but no one says so. Pass the motherfuckin’ syrup,
please. Thanks. Those who finally get with the program,
and those delight in messing up. The shiny people
you wish you were, and the people who want to be you.
There are some, actually. The bliss of partial information.
Greener-grass syndrome, a slow killer. The urge
to stir the pot. Don’t rock the boat, baby. Bring it in.
The national test, the global arrest record. The moment
in the sun and spots from scorched retinas. Floaters.
The long, tough climb. For the poise of an iron-walker.
For self-certainty. For a shining bridge over big water,
prayer for the bones in the concrete caissons.
Watch your luck. Keep your head together.

Elwood’s Apartment

by Todd Mercer

Because it was the very cheapest option. That’s why
the year spent holed up in a broom closet
off the stairs’ landing. Because of convenience,
immediate proximity to public transit. Rats learn
to sleep with these monsters barreling through
a couple feet beyond the window. They let the shake
take them, they don’t resist. You could reach out
and touch that southbound Pink Line Express.
Don’t do it though, you’d lose a hand,
the train would keep moving. Because he aged out
of the orphanage only to pull years in prison,
Elwood is suspicious of spacious spaces. Give him
a basic base, that’s good enough. Because the mission
is what matters, not the stock of real estate,
not these thought-erasing interruptions
every few minutes. Because if it’s a hovel,
at least it is his hovel. “How often, really?”
Jake asks, as trains blow by full clatter,
both directions. Elwood’s rippin’ zzzzzzs.

Gustatorial

by Todd Mercer

The kite was carried away
by updrafts into May afternoon. The string
snaps or slips on every kid, once, at least,
and sails the square of color to where
you can’t spot it. But your brother
who has clearer vision says he sees a speck
that’s smaller than a bird. It’s just below the sun,
lurching leeward into the next township,
bound to flutter-fall, a mess of snapped sticks
and nylon shredding, as the Spring comes on.

Letter Between Dimensions

by Todd Mercer

I became lonely, with you gone
on social tour. Didn’t maintain                                  
the level, spiraled
into secondary complications, sleepful wakefulness.
Learning how to let go—the perfect plan
for holding on. You solve riddles
extemporaneously, faster
than I can record solutions.
These gaps in the bubble
teach how to wave goodbye
with savoir-faire, to detach
when detachment is imminent. You
do me a favor, slant-ways. The bubble
will reform at reunion, the level
is achievable. All this is truth,
but I get lonely. I’m not made of stone.

404 Error

by Todd Mercer

I can’t get amnesia when it would mean relief,
but it sure sets in while driving, or when it’s time
to reassemble a six-cylinder engine, a lawn tractor,
sewing machine, gas furnace, computer in reverse of the order
it was confidently broken down. Good luck
forgetting the few items currently preventing
this stay on earth from being a slow summer idyll.
A memory has its own neurotic ticks.
It isn’t much at co-operation. I’m the dummy
with eyeglasses perched on the forehead,
tearing up the domicile to find them. I don’t mind
to waste an hour I’ll never have back
hunting for car keys while clutching
said keys in my non-searching hand.
I had wisdom to share on amnesia,
but I’m drawing blanks since you’re asking.
It’s here, give me a minute. Where is my coffee?

Temperance Union Blues

by Todd Mercer

Some blame the whiskey, as if liquor
could drink itself. Whiskey, if you ask it, blames society
after Happy Hour is over. Hundred proof enough
times sixty minutes, and that product raised to the power of
who asked you to count to count drinks for me?
The strapping specimen tightrope-toes
the sidewalk, supreme concentration evidently
thus far preventing the face-fall, cuts and bruises,
the end of a routine circus routine
that no one bought a ticket to see. Whiskey
finally finds a vehicle for self-delivery. Not
his own car, but one with keys in the ignition, conduit
to the wreck he’s spoiling for, short cut
to the crime beat write-up, courthouse
melodramatics, the infinite duration
of Unhappy Hour, hash-marks
scratched on cellblock concrete. Whiskey blames
his folks back home, his background,
cites various and sundry disadvantages.
Whiskey passes days until next whiskey.

The Agricultural Report

by Todd Mercer

The wheat’s heavy on the back-eighty,
and the baby’s coming before snowfall.
The reaping machine needs replacement
parts. The cows are singing lamentations,
bovine mothers of the disappeared, stuck
in the milking service. Ferrous oxide
sculptures dot the slope behind the barn:
the pickup truck that died in ’99. The hay rake
with snapped-off teeth. Cherry shaker that shook apart,
they all shake apart with use. The car
that died in 1986. The farm’s seen better days,
but the house has vitality. A kitchen garden
still lush with fresh herbs though frost’s coming.
The baby’s nursery smells of new paint. The farmer
is on the floor in there, screwing
myriad crib parts together. The farmer’s wife
is glowing like a minor saint, she’s still
working hard. Next year no wheat crop.
Half that acreage should be set in corn,
the rest left to a fallow year, regeneration.
Cycles and cycles, not only the fields,
but all of life here. These arcs of boom
and bust and boom, they’re barb-wire strings
pulled taut by the earth’s rotation,
making tension through the farm story
of ordered things and entropy.
Food for thought, it’s food for livelihood.

Tierra Del Fuego

by Todd Mercer

I.

Charles Darwin on the original Fuegians (1833): “…when pressed in winter by hunger they kill and devour their old women before they kill their dogs”

Captain Robert FitzRoy
of The Beagle, at sea,
12 September 1830:
“…under my command, four natives of Tierra Del Fuego:
York Minster, 26
Boat Memory, 20
James Button, 14
Fuegia Basket
     (a girl), 9”

Peter Nichols, in Evolution’s Captain (2003)
“…his experiment had been a total disaster because they had reverted to savaging; their civilisation had been a gloss.”

Dallas Murphy, in Rounding the Horn (2004): “Boat Memory’s real name was never recorded.”


II.

Benny’s Chevy Blazer taunted death. The mechanic favored euthanasia. Instead Benny sold it

to Guatemalan migrants. He asked a C-Note,
scrap price. Low enough to avoid guilt,
the proceeds covered burgers, beers,
a cultured excursion
to the nudie bar.

Six weeks later,
Benny then flat broke five weeks, his clap
lingering,

received mail, a snapshot
of said Guatemalans,
and the Blazer,
on southern-most blacktop.
It ran perfectly.

Benny arson-ated his building, snapped
a Polaroid of the flames, posted it
to Argentina. He was ten thousand miles
from his road’s end,

but there’s more than one
land of fire.


III.

Miles from the southernmost town, Ushuaia, Argentina to:

Buenos Aires—1473
New York—6584
London—8303
Beijing--11,381
Guatemala—4953

Google Maps sez: “Sorry, we could not calculate directions from 76 Auburn Avenue NE, Grand Rapids, MI 49503 to Road’s End, Ruta Provincial J, Tierra Del Fuego, Argentina”

Average distance a Chevy Blazer lasts after Benny’s mechanic gave up hope, besides Benny’s: halfway to the gas station.

Distance between this barely fictionalized incident and the present: 23 years, 1 felony.

55° 58′ 48″ S, 67° 17′ 21″ W
-55.98, -67.289167

The Iconographer’s Junction

by Todd Mercer        

The idiot boy, now a man,
mans the railway station bench
in vigilance. He’s fed up. He filled
a pillowcase with keepsakes
to take on the train which stopped
stopping eons back, the tracks themselves
pulled up for scrap in the Seventies.

The odds against the nine-fifteen express
pulling in to the depot
are astronomical but not
wholly impossible. This is the son
of one who monologues her particular
despairs to angels, and to her friend
the Virgin Mary icon on the
living-room’s door-facing wall.

Mary made it bearable, the burden,
raising such a sedentary runaway, on lucid prayer
and stories of the trains that used to pass. The mother
keeps immaculate, in case of The Rapture, saving
herself for a linked string of life events
that haven’t run this country route,

yet. There’s her aging boy-child
out on the departure platform,
choosing belief over facts, hearing
a steam whistle shrieking. Mother says,
“Tea kettle.” Mary
pours the boiling water
over leaves.

S.T.F.U.

by Todd Mercer

If none of us talk,
we all walk out free,
on our own recognizance.
Don’t take the deal. Don’t blink
when they say your partners
betrayed you first, i.d.’d you as ringleader.
Police make things up,
they’re allowed to lie, to psych you out.
You must’ve seen a TV cop drama. So show sense
and invoke that Fifth Amendment.
Or better, answer, “I don’t recall,”
to the Bad Cop when he slaps
the cup of coffee from your hand,
and say it to the Good Cop also,
when he calms his fellow actor,
when he pours you a fresh java,
says he can relate.

Inside an Ongoing Prayer

by Todd Mercer

The string of days are holy to me. I fumble
for the edges, hold a bead
with the least pressure that it needs not to slip,
slide it down to count with the others.
I’m fending off the past and future,
the nature of the garden ethos
very much a Be Here Now theme.
I’m barring hungry ghosts from this place,
bulldozing re-developers,
keeping these days sacrosanct,
threading them to string.

Floating a Reunion Plan

by Todd Mercer

Dusty Springfield singing Son of a Preacher Man
inside the clock radio, between queens
in a two-queen special at the Ramada.
The day began with idol-smashing, smoothed
to ritual, to sacraments. It sweetened.
She said Let’s come back
after ten years. Future talk
is healthy for you. Clean up
whatever you’re predisposed to
muck-up repeatedly. Stop
serial stupidity. Don’t rip
head-boards from their moorings
out of enthusiasm. The desk clerk,
that jaded atheist, will smirk
and add sixty-nine bucks and tax
to the MasterCard. Before they split
he over-tips the maid. It’s justice
for the muss left. Dusty wraps the song,
the one that makes this woman
in the future wonder
what became of a pastor’s son, the one
who reached her, here.

The Great GreenTree Mortgage Oscillation

by Todd Mercer

Nikki from GreenTree
called again and again called to say
the same as yesterday, the same
as she’ll say tomorrow.
It means nothing, it’s a tidal
oscillation for telephones,
back and back and gone and gone
a daily metronome
the calls that say
we’ll take your home
and pay your mortgage,
deadbeat,
the note that you’ve
always paid.

Nikki from GreenTree
speaks but her ears don’t receive.
She offers a way out, a settlement
that shape-shifts if you
dare to touch it,
it rolls out leaving you
in a hold loop
on mud flats,
it evaporates.

Nikki from GreenTree
rings in around Elevenses,
always has and always will,
impervious to facts or satire,
to your answers,
to your perfect record
of sustained and timely payments.

You just missed her
but she’ll be back
every morning every morning,
machine with a human voice
with a deal that’s not a deal,
with a reason that defies Reason.
She says, pay your note.

Didn’t Miss a Light

by Todd Mercer

Me and Ingenue
cross the distance of the city
on the surface roads. A couple blocks,
then stop, we roll
a couple blocks more.
This ain’t the speed round.
Don’t waste worry,
we’ll get there when
night falls from under-slung clouds,
while you tap your watch’s face
certain of superiority, while you vent
and stew, Ingenue and me
are living better, cataloging
truth on the ground you’ve missed
from the vantage of the
sometimes-efficient toll thruways.
We’re a mile out, in-bound,
humming with soul, seeing all
and blessing the details.

Time is Lumber

by Todd Mercer

The roof of his house collapsed
as the pumper truck pulled into the drive. He paused…
then called out the strategy, the Fire Chief
rolled hoses from the hydrant hookups,
as if it were any other house. The training
takes over, but time is lumber
and this residence was fully involved
when a neighbor phoned it in.
After the embers of a total burn-down
are doused, bulldozers and actuaries
come through with their tasks. The man’s
bunking at the station, just for now/indefinitely,
charred hair, stoic, smoldering.

On a Line Too Lightly Drawn to See

by Todd Mercer

The fire in the hearth dies down
so the small talk ashes over.
Delia fights her tendency
to spiral intellectual,
to unwrap the hour,
defeat the mood by
shifting into the role
of omniscient observer.
Delia’s cursed with heavy knowledge,
field studies of Game Theory,
she breaks down behavior mysteries,
can map pedestrian plans
of conventional men
with If/Then diagrams.
Anyway the coals glow orange,
and ahead is slumber before long,
or else insomnia,
a float in anomie,
an anesthetic fog.
Delia realizes
what happens next
is not of epic importance.
“Bring it.
Go home,” she says,
malaised,
ambivalent.
“Go, go,”
she murmurs
from some incredible distance,
“Go, go, bring it home.”

Entendres in Very Small Towns

by Todd Mercer

My lover loves the cock-
a-doodle-do of bucolic country settings
when the sunrise tries to pry her thighs
from spoon-lock, peels back the overthrown arm.
After racy dreams she wakes me
going down the root
cause of our stray voltage connection.
City girl in a rural village,
her hips humming invocation,
a pastoral prayer.

That old saw: they don’t go back
after they’ve had jet black
skies; the other saying: shit smells
like money to farm families—
they don’t teach those in the urban schools
where rock-hard Truth and endless concrete
examples came from nuns slapping hands
with rules, coercing obedience,
causing reveries of retaliation,
or stray notions of marriage
to the ultimate groom: Jesus fucking Christ himself.
A natural kneejerk reaction to
insistent men hell-bent on prying
good church-going girls’ mouths open, legs asunder
planting Grade A seed stock,
fertilizing fallow soil
broken open by first plowing,
more plowing to follow,
harrowing, discing.

My girl eats it up—every inch
of the long drive from town, invites me
to ease myself with her,
slow the persistent slapping noise
of tires on highway, almost almost,
sure we’ll make it,
up dirt roads the Christ-brides don’t take
where the green’s meadow, not money.
She asks if I’m up yet, if I’m finally awake, she asks
how I tune out birdsong chorus, roosters
bragging of their rooster manhood,
blessedly innocent of cocksureness’s comic cognate
to the wakeful within earshot.
“Are you up?” she asks once more
even though we’re spooned like this.
She knows full well I am.