Song of a Reformed Headhunter

Last night, went with GH to the National Black Theater to watch Sancho , written and performed by Paterson Joseph. Brought from the Caribbean to London by his master, Ignatius Sancho rose from servitude through education and patronage to become an author, composer, and letter writer in the eighteenth century. He was even painted by Thomas Gainsborough as an English gentleman. No Moorish prince or spear-shaking warrior for him. The talented Joseph, whose parents also came to London from the Caribbean, from St. Lucia, showed a vital connection to one whom he considered legitimately an ancestor. The first half of the play was well conceived and written, dramatizing his birth on a slave ship, the theatricals at his mistresses' London house, his education by the powerful Montagu family. The courtship portion fell a little flat and the opening of a grocery shop at Westminster felt anticlimactic. But the writing brought the one-man play to a suitably triumphant end, which I won't give...

Nebraska Banged-up Chevy jitters past Wenzl Hardware (closed), Pioneer Theater, (shuttered), Western Outpost (cowboy boots for sale) to Long Home Coffee Company. Inside, three men rhyming with Cezanne mutters about Walmart. A schoolgirl is excited on her phone about a college on the coast. The tablemat plugs a play (New!) about two ladies who lock themselves in a closet and pray when America elects a Democrat. Over the brown sink of the Missouri swoop tiny white-bellied insect-eaters in lasso loops.

Montana Little was lynched here for organizing the miners and lumberjacks and speaking against the war. German was forbidden for a time. Further back, a general asked for the bison to be slaughtered to starve the Indians. In these rich valleys between sky-topping mountains, a river runs through the last best place, and by the river roamed families of triceratops, plucking at the palms with their beaks.

Missouri He came into the world with Halley’s Comet and went out with it, as he fore-said. He trained as a steamship pilot and studied the river’s every swirl and snag. He nicked his penname from an old sailor, an old river cry, meaning, mark the two fathoms that give safe passage. He changed his mind. He decried the domination of the Philippines and praised the Chinese Boxers. He was against slavery but made his masterpiece, Huck, struggle with the common prejudice, terrified he was going to hell for freeing Jim. Have I read it? No… I’d rather float with this boat downriver and think of his dark last years when his daughter Suzy died, and then his wife Olivia died, and then another daughter, the youngest, Jean.

Mississippi Good levees, once built by slaves, then poor Irish, taken over by the state, funded by the Fed, make good fortunes until they don’t. (The wetlands, endemic sponge, are vanishing.) The river sleeps while it runs the manmade course and once in a while wakes up, like an epidemic or a riot, into flood.

Minnesota Get on the green bus. It stopped when the plane on the way to the funeral of steelworker Martin Rukavina crashed into dense forest, but the bus has started up again. Ignore the jeers that you’re hopping on the bandwagon, some wagons just have the better music, Bob Dylan i s playing, and anyway the bus is passing some nice bits of water— Minneapolis, city of water, Minnetonka, big water, Minneota, much water, Minneiska, white water, and, Dakota for waterfall, or curling water, Minnehaha. In memory of Paul Wellstone, United States Senator from 1991 to 2002.

Maine If the Old Sow, sucking whirlpool, with treacherous troughs, standing walls of water, boils and spouts, and that natural impossibility, the reverse waterfall, is the American Charybdis, Scylla is the exposed trail of hikers making their endless way through Acadia, up the mountain, with their packs and in their good- grip shoes, to the glacial erratic called Bubble Rock, which they threaten, in so much photo evidence, to push off and crush who- ever is below, smiling for the record and showing all their teeth. Massachusetts There is a Quality, so familiar, to dismay in social media. The table is set for us to be quotable, be thunderous. Time to slip away from our chair and parley— with the Air. Michigan Five died building Mackinac Bridge— one fell into a caisson, one of a heart attack, two when the catwalk collapsed their first day on the job, and one ascended  too quickly from the straits and died fr...

Louisiana The state produces the most number of vampires. Imprisoned by their immortality, disdainful of science— how can it stand up to sorcery— perversely proud of their hue and cry, the music of hurricanes, the undead are figures of corruption. Don’t go near them or you will catch their fang and feel their half- throttled angst and turn in a funk into one of them.

Kansas The ghost, cowboy hat, curtain moustache, sidles up and chuckles appreciatively, howdy, boys, welcome to Kansas, and slips into the bar. The street is deserted, except for the pale sheriff with a five-point badge, walking a skeleton horse, who glares at us, spits near our feet and croaks, liberal elite. When we turn the corner, a tall woman, hooked to translucent wings, is giving out flyers that say in red, What Would Jesus Do? and show a pair of rainbowed hands letting fall a bloody fetus. There isn’t much else to see. For more than unfunny cartoons, we will have to follow the flight to the cities. What’s this? A terrier, hair gone white, sniffs our penny loafers, crawls away, muttering, Dorothy, we’re not in Kansas anymore. Kentucky Not our place, not anyone’s, although we name the caves Rotunda, Grand Avenue, joke about Fat Man’s Misery, even mythologize the stream, calling it obviously the Styx. Bats, with their livid cr...

A break in the alphabetical order to take in the news of the day: Maryland O say can you see by the dawn’s early light, what so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming, whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight, o’er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming? And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air, gave proof in the night that our flag was still there; o say does that star-spangled banner yet wave o’er the land of the faith and the home of the Ba’ath.

Friday night, watched "God's Own Country" (2017), about a young Yorkshire farmer (a very credible Josh O'Connor) who numbs his frustrations with binge drinking and casual sex until a Romanian migrant worker (Alec Secareanu), joining his family farm for the lambing season, shows him how to be himself, a gay man capable of love and connection. The film brings to mind "Brokeback Mountain" except that "God's Own Country," directed by Francis Lee, is much better. It actually shows the blood and death of newborn lambs. Some survive, some don't, a visual comment on the dangers and pitfalls of coming out in this day and age still. Not in love with the title, though.

Iowa What’s the line around the barn, a viewing line for some dear leader? Oh, it’s the line to see the butter cow, 600 pounds of U.S. Grade AA salted butter, or else it’s to see the butter Elvis, or the butter Obama, or Grant Wood’s bony couple in butter. Barbara Ehrenreich writes, “I’m not going out of this life without butter on my bread. I’ve had so much grief from people about butter. I like a glass of wine, or a bloody mary, too.”  Oh, look, this year, Norma “Duffy” Lyon tops herself. She has sculpted with 2000 pounds of butter a life-sized The Last Supper.

Indiana Open cockpit, open wheels, writing an O 200 times in dust and smoke, on the oval track, plotting ahead, jostling for position with other high- strung vowels, every zero, slightly different, always imperfect, if it is not erased in flames, every event a non-event, going nowhere fast, despite the hundreds of thousands of diehard fans randy for memorabilia, just for one, just one, to lift at finish a bottle of milk.

Illinois It is called Little Egypt because of its rivers and the fertile land. Because of starvation’s trek for a handful of meal. Because of slavery and its deliverance in uncivil war. Little Egypt is not in the south of the state, it’s everywhere, its boundaries the boundaries of the promised land, its capital the capital creamed off of labor. It’s make hay while the sun shines, it’s the massacre—mass acre— at Haymarket.

Idaho You have come to the heart, division and double, of the matter, the deepest canyon, a fall higher than Niagara, but more secret. The sun comes down on potatoes and semi- conductors. The river is called Salmon, or No Return. Neither in Mountain Time or in Pacific Time, O my governor, O my private, is there a highway between Boise and Coeur d’Alene.

Hawaii My myth too—home, the underworld, an ancestor who returns as a sea turtle when he is not the naval officer who died at Pearl Harbor. From the school, which trained the black president, my aumakua took the name of Steve McGarrett. Hawaii Five-O  was sometimes shot in Singapore, do you know? How do you know a man would die for you if you don’t sleep with him first? Under another trademark, he took up with me in New York where we were happy-unhappy for two years until he was recalled to the spirit world, reappearing under the world-class surf a shark.

Florida This evening walk around Lettuce Lake begins on the planks of good intentions. Palm fronds droop, like fingers over railing, over land sliding below wetland, and weeds yielding along an indeterminable wave to duckweed, a false green carpet to the door of the lake. Bald cypresses, wearing beards of moss, sit surprised in water, their grayish knees breathing above the rootless bladderworts. Here, the wading bird is king, the Great Egret picking its way between land and lake, spearing the temporary frog to an unexpected hump of ground. Here, the roseate spoonbill swirls the mud. Even the osprey, which nests in feather- tips of trees, must bury itself in the lake, wings held up like an archaic angel landing on a gravestone, before rising with silver in its beak. And here, reads the sign in stainless steel raised by park authorities, is Alzheimer’s Walk that travels two feet above the bog, two feet from the leafy stink, but does not ...

Connecticut Wrong, the idea was found in the boats of the Punic Wars,  the idea of inter- changeable parts for building American muskets, delivered only after the death of the contractor by his family left behind. American words were standardized earlier by the great Webster, who taught generations of American children, including the kiddos from Sandy Hook, to spell center for centre, program for programme, and armory for armoury. Delaware Where are the catapults firing pumpkins into the sky? Where are the slingshots flinging the hardiest squashes—the Caspers, the Luminas, La Estrellas— for the longest way without getting pie? Where are the complicated air cannons with the names Big Ten Inch, 2nd Amendment, Old Glory, De Terminator pumping their fists in victory and vengeance? All gone. The World Championship Punkin Chunkin has been canceled. A machine exploded two years ago and hit a female TV crew. We don’t wish for anyone, ...

Colorado After the gold, the silver, it was the turn of the carnations, the precious metals of a rush of colors, the historic medals coaxed from the ground, won and worn on the lapel by queers and presidents— first to grant women’s suffrage by popular vote, first to repeal Prohibition, first to legalize the recreational use of cannabis— you can get high and green just thinking about it.

California Arnie has no more devoted follower than Olympus Chan from Guangzhou. For at least a year, between fifteen and sixteen, he went so far as to put on the Austrian accent. Trained and won Mr. Universe at age 20, same age as Arnie. Moved to Hollywood to be in the movies. Had his big break not as Conan, but Young Confucius, breaking his opponents’ jaws when they did not heed what he said. Grew rich selling herbal supplements, grew famous too. Then the ultimate test, the gubernatorial contest, he loved saying “gubernatorial” with a Cantonese twang, which he won handily against the El Salvadoran, on the back of a huge Asian turnout, and not a few El Salvadorans, at last striking gold as Asian American and universal.

Arkansas for the Little Rock Nine   It’s KAN-sas but it’s AR-kan-SAs, the final “s” is silent. Here you can dig for diamonds—prospect, it’s called— and name them Hallelujah, Amarillo Starlight, Okie Dokie, Superman’s, Bleeding Heart, Uncle Sam, Brown Rice, Limitless, and Sweet Caroline. Little rocks, the markers of the change from delta plain to the Ouachita foothills. Little rocks, the final “s” is not silent.

Arizona Remember “Raising Arizona”? Infertile couple, a convenience store robber and a cop, kidnap one of the “Arizona Quints” and raise the baby in their desert trailer. Daddy’s bounty hunter finds them, and they blow him up. You want to know my interpretation of the Coen Brothers movie? The couple, Nicholas Cage and Holly Hunter, are European colonialists, white trash, Papa Arizona is the Injuns, and Junior is the land. The kidnap is all very fine. When Cage & Hunter return the kid in the end, it makes no sense. Remember the reviews? Technically brilliant. Incoherent story.

Alaska You like the sea? You’ll like Alaska, 34,000 miles of tidal shoreline. Not for nothing is it the object to which the sea is directed. It is something of a marvel, a marriage of extremes, the sea locked solid in an iceberg, the outcrops of rock melting and running over all forms of life, even the hardy shield ferns that cling to these unpromising islands. You like volcanoes?

It's National Poetry Writing Month again, and I've started a project tentatively titled "50 States in 50 Days," as a way of getting to know this country better. Suggestions welcomed. Here's Day One: Alabama Why would you want to see a natural disaster, even if it’s the greatest? Visit the Vulcan instead, cast-iron god holding up his new spearhead to the sun. You can’t see the impact crater, even though the impact rim is intact. You can only walk in the maze of rings of fractured rock, more than 3 miles across, hope to find in the ground a splinter of shocked quartz, which proved this is indeed a star-wound. * PB invited GH and me to a sake tasting last night. Terada Honke has brewed sake for more than 340 years in Kozaki, in Chiba Prefecture, 87.5 km to the northeast of Tokyo. The lecture was by the 24th Head, Masaru Terada, who married into the family, like the two generations before him. The brewing house specializes in so-call...