Person of Interest

Brown, black, tan, red, yellow
Waiting for
Christian, Muslim, White Supremacist
Waiting for
Anti-gun, anti-religion, perhaps he doesn't like runners
or children, or cats. 
Waiting for a description
a motive, a creed
Waiting to find out who we should hate
this time. 
some wait to gloat.

When I was a child, at the back of the garage
was a mystery, forbidden, a dark
room where film turned into photos
my father sat at the nexus of chemistry
carefully crafted images, he showed me
how to use a pretty filter,
just the right amount of light,
bring the image up. 
This was his vision, what he saw through the camera's lens
to begin with.  Before anyone else. 
"Can I use your picture for a story?"
My face, an eight year-old, in negative.
the story, on child-abuse;
no one would recognize me.
White was black, black was white
my pupils glowed from the gray pulp-paper. 

Wildfires, car wrecks
dead whales on the beach, earthquakes
tragedy, inspiration, crying people, a flood
a spider's web outlined in dew
lightning storms over the city, over the ocean. 
My childhood view of the world,
horrific, fascinating, awe-inspiring, beautiful
at a professional distance, like chemicals
in the dark
filtered
dot-matrix images on gray-pulp. 

Person of Interest:
white male, black male, Asian male, Arabic
Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Mormon, Janist
waiting to hate
Two-inch high type, gray-pulp, cell-phone videos
Boston Marathon
bright red blood on the pavement, explosion in realtime, and screams
Person of Interest
I see from a Distance. 


Kathlean Wolf
16 April 2013

In the Same Coin

I want to be vibrant—

multicolored and excited, dancing

in my leather and feather and wild

feel alive, ferocious

heart pounding, hands

beating an African drum. 

I looked into their eyes and remembered

What color was; is. 

Heard the drum, the pounding of hundreds of

Rhythmic feet against the dirt

Feather and wild in her hair, in her walk

Ferocious. 

“I’ve made new friends,” I told him, all excitement. 

“How do you know they were friends?” he asked. 

Gave some answer; later, realized.  He was out of context.  Or I was. 

Friendships are small economies. 

Wet lands, dark soil, cold winter.

Pale people come, they stay.  No reason to leave. 

Grandfathers baled hay together, 

favor piled on favor,

like the paint on the old oak barn. 

Everyone knows everyone;

same schools, family names, small towns. 

Friendships, like barter. 

I’d thought that I was the one

who’d lost my color, no friends,

trying to buy friendship with foreign coin.

Where are you from?  What High School did you go to? 

My answers are all wrong. 

There are dry lands to the West. 

White soil covers rock; no reason to stay. 

Travelers, truckers; wanderers. 

Airstream trailers, RV’s in the desert. 

Semis are sailing ships,

Carrying goods across the ocean of the Great Plains,

long, lonely miles. 

Lonely.  Restless. 

Friendship; small investments

Variable interest rate, easy credit

High yield.  Dividends, bonds;

Day traders. 

Nebraska, truck stop, empty; 11 a.m. 

Broken, lonely eyes; roll-over stomach

sitting in a cab all day, blotted with sweat. 

Waiting for his shower number. 

“Mind if I sit with you?”  I put down my tray. 

Pretty girl, he with a roll-over stomach. 

Life’s story in forty minutes:

Driving out of Los Angeles, cross the Mississippi,

south to Georgia. 

Wife in New Jersey.  Three kids. 

Sex with men on the road;

other truckers.  “Lot lizards.”  Homeless boys. 

“Not as uncommon as you think,” I told him. 

He bought me coffee.  Minimal good-bye’s. 

We drove on. 

Floods in Cedar Rapids, I-80, underwater. 

Two hour wait: I leaned against a truck-cab,

talking to a stranger. 

He could have been another Dahmer, I wouldn’t know. 

Road college.  The professor explains lesbians. 

Road college.  The professor explains flood-insurance. 

His family waits for him, evacuated;

2300 miles ’til home.

I walk ferocious. 

Sniff out sex-offenders, eat them alive:

Whither men’s testicles back inside their bodies

With my ferocious Glare. 

GRONK! 

Pretty girl bites hard. 

 

Open-road favors paid forward.  Road justice.  

Windshield-wiper flown off into the dark;

Four hours driving blind;

Black couple driving back to Christian college

Gave me and my gas-can a lift. 

Two years later, my turn.

A man in a gray run-down Honda, twin boys,

I left him with a spare gas-can

and the stuffed bear from my back window.

Road-rage is senseless, leap-frogging across a continent. 

Slick silver sports-car zips around

a bright yellow Peterbilt,

hauling two trailers full of swine. 

Middle finger; face buried in a cell-phone. 

Six hours later, he stands by his steaming high-status engine. 

No one stops to help.  Road justice. 

           

Four dogs, two hitchhikers sleeping in a tent

on a Nebraska interchange;

winds of fifty miles an hour, biting cold. 

Dogs in the back of my U-Haul, humans up front,

out of the wind, grateful company for 800 miles. 

Headed for Florida, homeless alcoholism—

No frostbite. 

The trucker who bought me coffee in Nebraska

waved good-bye on the east side of the Mississippi River. 

Wife waiting in New Jersey. 

His youngest son was two. 

He feared he might have AIDS. 

I turned north, headed home. 

            “I’ve made new friends,” I told him, all excitement. 

“How do you know they were friends?” he asked. 

I don’t have to trust everyone else; just myself. 

I recognized them instantly.  Friendship economy. 

We use the same coin. 

Kathlean Wolf

5 March 2013

No Other Gods

Thou shalt have no other gods before me. 

            Nine year-old girls, instigators of mischief;
            Known inventors of gods? 
                        Let’s call one Mithras, one Valhes, one Osiris
                        Ishtar, Astarte, Robyn, LemonCreamPie
            We memorize the admonition.

Vengeance is mine, sayeth the loard. 

            Would I have favored another god? 
            One who did not reserve vengeance to himself, 
            none forthcoming, no justice either 
            Oh fatherinheaven oh father on earth why are you deaf? 
                        Perhaps the goddess Robyn would have saved me. 

                       

He so loved the world that he sent his only sun. 

            Mixed messages: 
            You tortured god. 
            God loves you. 
            My sister tortured me. 
            I am not Jesus.  I do not love my sister. 

And be, hold a virgin.  Bore a child. 

            What mad scheme, male gives birth to a male, who is himself. 
            Male, like one who raped me
            Forever separated by the soft fleshy thing between his legs
            Never again are males human beings
            Monsters, with vengeful little gods tucked into their pants.

Robyn threw mighty lightning-bolts and plagues, if she were real. 


~Kathlean Wolf, 28 January 2013

Waiting for Light

I grow a little smaller every year. 
When December blows in on snow-clad feet,
damping the sun
and all the earth seems to shudder, hunker down
bracing against the snow,
the long dark. 

I grow a little smaller every year.
All the summer sun revealed in me,
all that was kind, outgoing, exuberant,
is hidden in shadows, light-starved
I do not remember my good heart
only all that I have failed. 

Trees entrenched against the cold
wrap the deep earth around themselves,
let loose their leaves to save them from
the deadly weight of snow,
limbs flying free
I watch them from my window,
waving in the wind, limned in crystals of white.
Watch squirrels prancing branch to branch,
bright black eyes, simple lives
Finding food, feeding tiny babies hidden
somewhere. 

I grow a little smaller every year,
Watching out my window, years
Darkness, years. 
Forget, ignore, avoid, distract, make flight;
The dark, the memories, cruel, biting. 
Each December scars collect on scars
And I wrap myself around them,
Holding tight, bound,
to tissue that might burst apart
if I let go. 

Bound, tight; I grow a little smaller every year. 

Kathlean Wolf, 29 December 2012

Sounding Sleep

He takes out his
robot ears at night,
and cannot hear
the sounds of the house;
soft cracks, groans
of pleasure as it
settles into the heavy winter earth.
Cannot hear
the sound of books,
rustling pages, weight and depth
lying all on their sides, in strata,
cover touching cover, like old friends,
whispering
of stories, of time and whimsy, mystery;
thoughts strewn out with pens
held by hands
living, and long-gone. 

And I, with my scarred drums
listen;
shattering booms of
mice quick-stepping inside my walls,
trees tapping rhythms against each other
accompanied by waves of air,
hum and moan of machinery,
gurgling water wandering through
lonely pipes in the basement below;
I with my scarred drums,
sit staring into the clamorous darkness,
hear the fog creeping in gently
between the trees,
sleepy browsing of deer, teeth
rasping against the bright cherry bark,
and envy
deafened sleep. 

12 January 2013
~K. Wolf, for L. Bosworth



Points of reference:

This was written following a visit to the home of my new friend, Lewis, who wears hearing aids.  He is a bibliophile--a biblioholic, in fact, with a home full of books.  Full.  Truly. 

Throughout my childhood, I had ear infections that ruptured my eardrum several times a year.  Nothing remains of the original eardrums; however, because loud noises have always been painful, I've protected my hearing more than most people do.  Now that the ear infections have stopped, I hear everything.