Oil and Dust on a Shop Floor
We pawed at a set of schematic plans
below the John Deere owned by my father.
I swept the floors and coaxed the pan shy dust
until he’d call for me to use my hands,
to tease fittings loose, threads releasing oil
because mine, smaller than his, fit the space.
To him I’m a speck floating, lost in space.
While he stands below, stoic, drafting plans.
Beside stale graphite, his hands hold dried oil
pooled in each fingerprint trough. My father
his mind in gravity, held in the hands
of numbers, formulas, counting the dust.
The water rig’s stream hushes the dry dust.
We watch, leaned against our trucks in tight space.
He draws ovals in the dirt with his hands,
even mowing can‘t happen without plans.
A cloud leaves the field behind my father,
ovals on my mind while I check the oil.
I care more for the way light catches oil,
or the way patterns form in streaks of dust.
This idleness is strange to my father
where absence of equations is dead space.
What could one produce without measured plans?
What could one produce without grease stained hands?
He grips the “chuck” and twists it with his hands
dabbing the spinning bit with cutting oil.
I read dimensions aloud from the plans.
Our coveralls stained with metallic dust,
the kind that slow crawls into any space,
while iron ether clings to my father.
A welder’s arc, the eyes of my father,
metal bonded to metal by his hand.
Between us is no bead but widened space,
blood, no thicker than the hot viscous oil
spilled on the shop floor, the pool eating dust
soaking into the corner of his plans.
My father is nothing without his plans,
my hand reaches to save a speck of dust
the space between us both filling with oil.
The Three Fallen Branches of a Salinas River Willow Lay
Golden sand gut arroyos cut through sprawling valley floors,
to eye them from a Gabilan Range vista would show the river
twist and writhe into itself. Tucked tight within bank clefts, the willows
stretch to reach bronzed clay, the subterranean roots, aquifer bound.
There is one, outside of Soledad that in searching has fractured
not once, not twice, but three times surrendered tendril limb for wanting.
Myth lied through perfect teeth, about title, you won’t hear it weeping
because if it could, it would have kept salvation songs for quarter.
I’m reaching for my own scattered pieces, adrift, somewhere in time
when the droughts that fractured my parts had me standing as witness,
planted in whimpered prayer that would shift like sand and conform like clay,
nothing but birdsong and what is that for a man to anchor to?
I could do nothing but stand limbless to meet the next rising sun
a tepid current, coward “should have”, flowing northward, underground.
I begged for grafting, for savior with any kind of sapling salve,
but I was given a quiet gift, a river bank, soledad.
The three fallen branches of a Salinas River willow lay
below it, now half buried and rotting in wet shoreline returned.
The Salinas River willow grows three more branches in their place
the silent hum of their chords touching moving water, singing low.
Fishing with My Dear Hawaiians
Those local boys would take me out at night
all packed into Oni’s old rusted truck.
The high island moon broke on wave-face bright.
a dirt path guiding us, a test of luck.
Nowhere to be except holding the spear,
the group all wades with floats and harvest bags
beyond the machine shop junk yard, out near
the cliffs edge where sand mixes with smooth glass.
I never once had thoughts of fear off-shore,
anchored to native sons, born to black rock.
Below, the lobsters, fish, all catch my torch.
The boys surface and shout all taking stock.
Our burlap sacks are hauled out full, dripping.
On shore, we smoke, no breath left from diving.
Lerdo Highway Sunrise
lay me down reckless
dragged to slow,
kicking up that ancient
sea bottom dust,
that will calm and cover,
my body prostrate
my body facing west,
each day will bring more
each day it will grow heavy,
but I will have the America
falling over itself to look at,
do not feel bad for me
the son of the white diaspora
a dust pile somewhere sleeping,
for in time I will settle
for in time I will disappear,
no more suns to track
no more weight to (pretend to) carry
Lunch at The Jensen Avenue Carl’s Jr.
sitting in a Carl’s Jr.,
the one in Fresno off Jensen
you know
the one from 18 years ago
the mountain bound pit stop
our two families eating and laughing
Joanie’s dead now
has been for awhile
the last time I was here
I ate meat
God’s light shined
like a smiling star above a hot parking lot
I don’t eat meat anymore
but the parking lot’s still hot as hell
They Stand in Congress
Those I love
see that sun
breaking through
and scream HOLY, HOLY, HOLY!
They stand
in congress
with praying hands
rubbing away at calloused doubts.
All this breathes
over the body
of my dying grandmother
and I feel that boiling shame.
Because that sun-ray revelation
hand of god
reaching through
that black-gray January canopy,
that awe-cause break
in the storm
could be, I guess
the gaze of god.
But maybe it is, other?
The gates of opening,
the breath of shiva,
allah illuminated,
the buddha doing
whatever the buddha does.
Or flaming hair
of feminine divine,
or answers to pause,
or something, anything.
But I fall
to it being
a simple
poetic intersection
of time and place.
And lay my bet
with what little
I have left,
that it is
nothing more
than the view
during my grandmother’s
passing.
Clarke e. Andros is a writer from the small western town of Santa Margarita, California. He currently lives in Los Angeles where he teaches literature and works as the fiction editor for The Dry River.
High Horse 