Jason Bredle received degrees in English and Spanish from Indiana University and an MFA from the University of Michigan. He is the author of Pain Fantasy, forthcoming from Red Morning Press; Standing in Line for the Beast, winner of the 2006 New Issues Poetry Prize; A Twelve Step Guide, winner of the 2004 New Michigan Press chapbook contest; and A Pocket-Sized Map of My Heart, a self-published collaboration with Leigh Stein. He lives in Chicago and works at a translation agency in Evanston, Illinois.
No Story, Just a Comment on Some of Anne's Poems
I think Anne feels inclined to write poems
about living in a small town, which I don't
during thunderstorms, an orange pickup
pushed into an abandoned quarry, neglected cats
shot in the head, and a tornado tossing a school bus
over a bridge on Wylie Road. I get
annoyed, however, when they go on
about drunken hard-ass fathers, teachers
beating kids, and a dead body in a barn.
You see, too much has happened in small
towns during the last fifty years, and we're
constantly working to cover it all up,
throw some wet leaves and moss over a dead
girl, that sort of thing. Like the Klan: we deny
its existence but know it's there, in some barn
or hollow out on a county road and way
back past some barbed wire fence.
Anne's poems expose everything sour.
For instance, if she had written this she'd have
described the dead girl—slashed at the neck,
cold and blue, missing fingernails, blood
soaked underwear around her ankles. That's where
she goes wrong because it's not all bad,
I've been denying everything for years now.
Anne doesn't see that not every
story should be told, even if it happened to you.
For instance, once I was wasted over at Dave's
while a dog was barking in his driveway.
Dave got pissed, took out his crossbow
and shot a blunt arrow into the dog's
side, making him howl instead of run away.
We got paranoid and hid in a closet, thinking
the cops would come by, see this dog
with an arrow in its side yelping in the driveway,
bust in and arrest us. Instead, the arrow
fell out, the dog disappeared,
and a few hours later the woman across the street
found her husband in the front seat of his car
holding a gun to his head, threatening to kill
himself.
While Anne Reads a Lengthy Poem about Her Grandmother's Funeral and Our Mortality
I'm reminded of some details Bill told me
about his aunt's funeral in Memphis a few years
ago—a paraplegic whose casket somehow
got tipped on its side while being lowered
into the grave during a thunderstorm. The pallbearers,
Bill included, were forced into the mud
in an attempt to turn the casket right side
up, digging and clawing their way in and out
of the hole, slopping around for an audience
of bereft women in black dresses and red
hats. Finally they gave up and left her
on her side, creeping away in their Cadillacs and ruined
suits, the wives angry at the husbands. I once
watched a funeral procession from the window
of a monastery in Valenciana. It was June
and hadn't rained in a while—only a few
men carried the casket past a green
wall that read TODOS SOMOS RESPONSABLES
in white. There were no spectators, only a girl
peeling an orange, selling silver necklaces
which dangled and chimed in the breeze. Death, for me,
has become a bloated and muted thing—a fish
about to explode, even if you die during a rock
concert or in a Japanese execution chamber.
Like TV static, it's foreboding—an 18
wheeler hauling Little Debbie snack
cakes up I-75 late
at night. Anne seems to think death
is more about food and family gathering to mourn
and question our own mortality while eating ham
and deviled eggs on a red and white tablecloth,
but I fell asleep at my grandfather's
service and afterwards ate a cheese
omelet at Round the Clock. I've only thought
about dying on the subway, on the bus in Newark,
or in Mexican taxis with brightly colored pictures
of the Virgin of Guadalupe on the dash. I think
maybe that's what the picture's there for—to repent
right before you die in the mountains. I was always
going to repent just before I died, but what if
I die suddenly and can't—what if I could
but didn't know who to repent to? I'm afraid
of what exactly my final thoughts will be:
all the time I spent by the microwave
and toaster in this empty kitchen, the last time
Sarah came on to me—her hand
down my pants while I had the jingle for Ted's Aqua
Marine in my head, the black and white cat
that rubbed up against my leg at the Lincoln
Cabin, a sign on US-41 reading
PRISON AREA, DO NOT PICK UP HITCHHIKERS.
Anne's poem has ended and I give up
on death, I only want to mention a survey
I got in the mail a few days ago
which asked this question: Do you believe
in immortality, if this is taken to mean
the continued existence of the individual soul
after the end of organic life?
Both poems first published in Green Mountains Review
