Highway or Belief Read online

  buy primer or not? he responds

  abstractly. There is a moment

  when, frozen, they remember

  Baghdad: paint chips

  covering them like confetti did

  decades ago in Times Square,

  only with no nurse back

  from the Middle East—

  no pretty girl to pick up

  shoulder-high and French kiss.

  What is the legacy of war, after it,

  except this?—two men standing in line

  minutes later to pay for whatever

  they’ve bought with no need

  for talking—one of them touching

  the other briefly, walking out

  with the paint in his fist—

  denting slightly the can

  for a reason his fingers

  will never tell him.

  Elegy for Soldier Who Returned Without a Voice from the War in Iraq

  As I walk through the Wal-Mart now in Marble Falls, I think about the question,

  ask myself, What could you do after the fact of what was done to you but die?

  In my head, you’re alive in the beer aisle still with that fake ID stuck in the back

  of your pants when the Wal-Mart man grabs a hold of you to ask, How many kegs?

  You’re the underage kid who used to cut every person you could in the high school

  lunch line, back when nothing was done to you no matter what you did. You took

  apart the team golf cart, then put the pieces back together on the roof of the school.

  No one cared. You smoked a joint in the bathroom each day, and no one punished you.

  You had so many fans as the varsity back. The whole town worshiped you. I remember

  your chinstrap buckled tight and your helmet’s t-bar crossing over your face—the thick

  shadow of it. I remember the eye black and sweat stuck to it, the way you went to school

  all week for the scared looks you got on the field Friday nights from behind your face-

  mask. I remember the pads and spandex stretched over new teenage skin. I remember

  the day we had to bury you in them (how the whole town showed up) like the night

  you slid off the slick bridge on a dare to the river of catfish and black gar below.

  Seeing your broken body bleeding out and bent in the shape of an L, I was reminded

  of the football field just then, of the capital L in the center of it that made you

  what you could not be years later, two tours in you. You came back from Iraq

  with a new brokenness and stood out on the grass of that field once again, where

  you knelt down and cried, finally, like you wanted to so many times but could not

  in Tikrit, Basra, Mosul, Baghdad. When the checkout man asks me for ID, at first

  I don’t hear him. There’s a second or two before I realize I’m standing in line

  with a beer in each fist—with my hands in my pockets as deep as they’ll go.

  Getting lost in my head tonight, I think of you being spoken to—

  whatever war must have said in those daily huddles before each precise move

  of your tan, M-1 tank. I ignore everything around me except you—mustached

  version you left stuck to that fake ID—how we laughed about it every time

  we bought booze. I like to think, Before you fell, leaving the pavement

  of the bridge, you heard the crowd cheer and were swept up by applause.

  Bull in the Ring

  Playing football at fourteen meant getting called a pussy, girl, or faggot

  for not hitting teammates

  hard enough, being yelled at constantly—

  the legal, car-crash huge bruises covering our arms

  after stunts

  & blitzes, the time our free safety bear crawled for staying home

  with diarrhea instead of practicing

  with his own shit staining his legs

  —but also the brotherhood of coming together & hating our coach

  after he gave Jake a concussion

  during bull-in-the-ring, & the many times

  Ben’s singing voice eased our heaving stomachs

  before Monday practice—

  not to mention the day we learned Carlos had sex before any of us,

  in the eighth grade, boasting

  there was no way he got the girl pregnant,

  because he knew what a condom was—after which our coach gave us

  a detailed speech

  about cutting Viagra in half so our dicks didn’t stay hard

  too long when we married like him.

  Giving the cruelty we faced then

  more thought, I think we accepted his daily abuse on account of respecting

  each other’s silence.

  It was easier taking what we took huddling together.

  Though it also had something to do with pleasure we weren’t willing

  to claim, at least not readily.

  Power-less, we felt ugly, fearful, proud—

  masculine—dangerous every game day that year. Our girlfriends kissed us,

  called us gods,

  waved back eagerly at us from up in the stands before coach

  gave his get-your-head-ready pep talk. Hit your man in the mouth. Damnit.

  Knock out his teeth.

  No one ever asks, Who first taught you to do this? Instead

  they accuse us, saying, Men hurt women. You are ruthless, brutal, acting

  from your natures.

  To which we answer—fists in blue-jean pockets deep as each

  seam reaches—Yes. Yes, we are. Now that you mention it, we’re violent.

  Sighting Ourselves at the City Dump Site

  after Yusef Komunyakaa

  Attention clicks, blinks,

  focusing—chambers clean

  on each gun as it’s fully

  loaded: marks at 50,

  100 yards, 200 yards.

  Spent shells scatter

  horse flies from our wrists

  routinely. We are

  shooting my dad’s 4-10,

  30-ought-6—my best friend’s

  .308 pistol he bought

  six months after

  losing his last gun:

  an antique Luger

  with a swastika

  scratched out on its pearl-

  smooth grip. (The sheriff

  took it in a drug bust, then

  —rumor has it.) He likes

  this new piece, he tells me,

  even more than the first.

  It’s much lighter—

  but uses the same

  hollow points—takes

  mere seconds to load,

  even with a big clip—

  is concealed easily,

  and can be drawn

  quickly if a situation

  seems to require it.

  “Pure speed,” he says,

  “means everything. And

  don’t you forget that.”

  We are practicing shots

  we know we’ll never take,

  since we rarely lock

  any doors here—just

  gun cabinets, tool sheds,

  sometimes cars that seem

  worth protecting. But

  who’d boost one of ours?

  Mine’s a blue Chevy, busted up

  something awful. And

  my friend’s has a warrant

  or two out on it—I think

  maybe for speeding

  or some other shit—so

  no one will steal that.

  The Gospel According to Addicts in Llano, Texas

  We have chosen to scar our skins here

  in tin shacks where we conjure up

  more than Christ could on hot plates—

  full of chemical psalms now

  and prayer-less waking. We’re the dead

  you forgot. We’re the saved
/>   and the damned in the First Baptist pews,

  where repentance is free but can never save us.

  We buy bottles of Drano we slowly empty

  in the same way we do Duracell batteries

  leaking golden acid: an erasure of everything

  witnessed and felt as the sky opens here,

  sometimes, during a storm—promising

  after rain the good cleansing of church

  or a stiff drink to stave off the feeling of emptiness

  gathering up. We cough ribbons of blood

  with each drug-addled breath. You cannot heal us,

  Lord. You cannot raise us up like you did Lazarus.

  As he approached you from the grave with insects

  clinging to his hands, you could not believe it.

  The first time words became flesh surprised you.

  You understood symbolically you were the Son of God

  until you raised a man. Then you physically did.

  Similarly, the first meth we made surprised us.

  Our homes each exploded. We stood outside them

  in the dark—choirs of sirens closing in, bright red

  and blue light bathing us—and could not believe it.

  Highway or Belief

  He inhabits the windshield & sky

  & the truck’s grill he merges into.

  & though this yearling fawn

  dead on cement, bright in the eye-

  like headlights of traffic, finds it

  impossible to say what he cannot say

  —each path taken a sadness—

  help him enter & exit the truck’s

  momentum as it meets his spirit

  collapsed back to fence posts,

  fresh hoof prints in caliche,

  his breath lessening.

  Let his ending be quick

  as the mockingbird’s speech

  in the oak over him. Watch

  his body rot green, insect-rich

  now anonymously but still full

  of purpose: beetles feasting

  on blue entrails with their pincers,

  pill bugs curling in spaces

  they carve out of skin, nourished

  cockroaches, even, nesting

  near crickets—here where only

  the meek assemble to claim him—

  gleaming with communion.

  Have You Been Washed in the Blood of the Lamb?

  for Daniel Valentine

  Spirit was not wind but the burning sun left

  on asphalt between us. My body was not real—

  neither was your body. We biked to Winn’s,

  the dollar store, to change our bulk of old coinage

  into soon-to-break toys that were made in China.

  Holy was each plastic man with his blue parachute

  dropped so recklessly then from your plywood tree house.

  We bought Super Soakers that were clearly knock-

  offs and said Mega Water! on their porous barrels,

  though we favored dirt clods as our dueling weapons.

  You weren’t a preacher yet out of an obligation felt

  to be the God-fearing leader your parents expected—

  & now you’re not washed in the blood of the Holy

  Spirit you told me was bullshit several years after

  college let out & you wanted to play piano,

  get a record deal, move to Nashville. Did you

  ever arrive, taking 35, 40. . . until you got there?

  I remember your Pentecostal church & the Kingdom

  Hall built thirty-three feet from it, both the last places

  even devout folks set foot given Sunday options.

  You made each dime collected your advance

  on the eschaton sure to reward the faithful,

  & I helped you find them, which was my believing.

  Did we have enough luck to snag three more quarters?

  With some sun, usually: sighting them near the culvert

  we used to play in, catacombs it led to beneath our town’s

  wide streets where the older kids called back & forth

  profane expletives too strong for us—me the Lazarus,

  mostly; you leading, Jesus; sewage coating our steps’

  slow reincarnation as we stumbled concrete-struck

  from each terminus, checking every echo for a sign

  or wonder in that stunning maze navigated finally

  where we learned faith meant falling without certainty

  —darkness & walls the only guides we had skinning

  the green flesh from our knees—before understanding.

  Backyard Reckoning

  I see him as more of a shadow

  & less as a feathered creature—

  this gray, gristled blue jay. The well-

  house’s door creaks, crushing black

  widows’ egg sacks & garter snakes’

  skins the brown of fading hair

  like my own—thin, unbleached—

  aged now as completely as the oak

  furniture in the house next to mine

  abandoned with green trim the texture

  of flesh sweating out too long today

  in the late July heat. I heard him snap

  open a pecan just before the singing.

  Bedeviled self severed from me, as near

  at hand as the yellow SLOW sign,

  I’ve lost your melody in the weeds

  behind Waylon’s house, Daniel’s clothes-

  line, Sarah Beth’s AC unit that leaked

  antifreeze mistaken for candy, the dog

  path linking all our houses together

  no matter how we each changed

  & forgot in our changing the spell

  cast by all that nothing. What felt

  divisible, matter-of-fact, seems

  so solidly necessary to me now.

  Where can I rest the brief weight

  of my life except deep in this green,

  gridded mesh of clover & choke-weed

  we all loved to roll in? Returning

  may be elegy: a litany place assembles

  in us. Whether or not that much is true,

  I feel a warm necessity rise in me

  similar to each rotting peach pit

  in this ripe grove my father, aging,

  abandoned when I repossess it—

  my own first listening to a call

  comprehensible in youth only.

  Yours, yours, blue jay: the one

  I believed in the way I believe in—

  despite protestations, occasional lapses,

  the weight of your body pressed

  into my palm now—nothing.

  A Conflagration

  My father’s heart

  Burns a pillar of fire

  The size of an oak tree

  Engulfed by lightning.

  I am helpless against

  The procession of it

  Through his chest

  Into mine—

  Which is blind,

  Symptom-less

  The way all disease is

  Before first igniting.

  Love, though, isn’t helpless.

  The flames’ height ensures

  He will be consecrated.

  Each time he tries to say

  My name—riddled

  By tubes that root

  Through him—

  It comes out as, Fire.

  Acknowledgments

  “Letter to the Critic Who Questions, Among Other Things, My Poor Use of Grammar” first appeared in Devil’s Lake.

  “The Last Time I Saw Aron Anderson” first appeared in Five [Quarterly].

  “English 301” first appeared in Cutthroat: A Journal of the Arts.

  “A Body Loves Dismantling” first appeared in Drunken Boat.

  “River Metaphysics” first appeared in Solstice Literary Magazine.

  “Against Allowing Too Much Distance in
Place Poetry” first appeared in The Pinch.

  “Riverbank Elegy” first appeared in CONSEQUENCE.

  “County Lines” first appeared in Mobius: The Journal of Social Change.

  “Homecoming” first appeared in Atwood.

  “Elegy for Soldier Who Returned Without a Voice from the War in Iraq” was a finalist for the 2011 Winning Writers War Poetry Contest.

  “Bull in the Ring” first appeared in Pieces of Cake.

  “Sighting Ourselves at the City Dump Site” first appeared in Pacifica Literary Review.

  “The Gospel According to Meth” first appeared in Birdfeast.

  “Highway or Belief” was a finalist for the 2013 Janet B. McCabe Poetry Prize and first appeared in Ruminate.

  “Backyard Reckoning” first appeared in Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art.

  “A Conflagration” first appeared in The Boiler.

  Thank you Michael Adams, Susan B.A. Somers-Willett, Dorianne Laux, and Joseph Millar (for believing from the start). Thank you Yusef Komunyakaa, Sharon Olds, and Eduardo Corral (for your mentorship and examples). Thank you fellow Localists Matthew Wimberley, Javier Zamora, J.T. Dawson, Emily Yoon, Vanessa Gabb, and Sierra Golden (for your friendship and words). Thank you John and Linda Brownlee (for always supporting me).Thank you Patrick Courtney (for your solidarity). Thank you Ramya Varma (for all of the things—but mostly your love). Thank you Button Poetry editorial team (for the hard work each of you put in to make this happen). Thank you Michael Mlekoday (whose editing made all the difference). Thank you Rachel McKibbens (for giving these poems flesh by selecting them).Thank you Llano, Texas.

  Completing this chapbook would not have been possible without fellowships from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s School of Information and Library Science and New York University’s Creative Writing Program. Thank you to both institutions for their support.

  About the Author

  J. Scott Brownlee was born and raised in Llano, Texas. His poetry appears in The Kenyon Review, Narrative, Beloit Poetry Journal, Hayden’s Ferry Review, RATTLE, Ninth Letter, and elsewhere. He is a founding member of The Localists, a literary collective that emphasizes place-based writing of personal witness, cultural memory, and the aesthetically marginalized working-class, both in the United States and abroad. A former Writers in the Public Schools Fellow at NYU, he currently lives in Brooklyn.