The End of the West Read online

  for good

  in my schoolyard

  sidewalk, blacktop

  afterlife

  My friends waiting at the end of the street

  to beat the shit out of me

  one last

  time

  That’s what I want, that

  or I want to

  fuck them

  One or

  the other

  They’re throwing rocks at the streetlights

  sitting against

  the curb

  shooting heroin

  getting blind and

  calling

  my name

  I can hear my name

  hanging

  in the air

  Not like an echo

  like a moth

  Furious in the

  light

  We won’t be long

  they keep

  saying

  We won’t

  keep you waiting

  I want to tell you a story with my body

  Look at my arms

  What do they look like

  from here?

  Peonies

  Can they look like peonies?

  In this light, at this time

  of day, dusk

  nailing itself down

  inside

  the maple

  My arms

  blooming like peonies

  slowly unfolding

  into their tiny

  colorful deaths

  Heaven

  is what you think it’s going to be

  What do you think

  it’s going to be?

  White people in robes or

  unending night

  Whatever you want

  It’s yours

  At the end of the street

  a choir of trees

  lines up

  in perfect silence

  They don’t say my name

  but my name

  is out there

  When the springtime comes again

  there won’t be anything left

  but ash

  beneath our fingernails

  collecting

  on the tops of our eyelids

  in the pools of our

  eyes

  My tongue

  asleep in ash, my teeth

  beginning to sparkle

  That’s before

  we start turning into shit

  before You

  I want to say that there’s something

  missing

  from heaven

  and I think

  it’s the whisper

  of bodies

  Trees

  Water

  Light

  We won’t do this

  again

  Listen to those stitches

  splitting open

  in the air

  above me

  leaving stars

  in a dark

  I can hardly plot my way through

  Float like a butterfly

  Sting like a bee

  My muscles latch and unlatch

  with little clicks

  opening

  like a door

  into Your house

  You had this shit coming, they whisper

  from the corner

  You’re going to be sorry

  About the Author

  Michael Dickman was born and raised in Portland, Oregon.

  Books by Michael Dickman

  50 American Plays (with Matthew Dickman)

  Flies

  Link

  blueflowerarts.com/michael-dickman

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to the editors of the following journals, where some of these poems first appeared, sometimes in earlier versions: The American Poetry Review, Field, Narrative Magazine, The New Yorker, and Tin House.

  *

  Thanks to the Michener Center for Writers, in Austin, Texas, the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, Vermont, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

  *

  I wish to thank, for their loving-kindness and support of this work, my family: Wendy Dickman, Elizabeth Dickman, Matthew Dickman, Francis Cobb, the Castelluccis, Dana Huddleston, Darin Hull, and Ernie Casciato. And my friends: Carl Adam-shick, Mike McGriff, Dorianne Laux, Joseph Millar, Meredith Martin, Major Jackson, Marie Howe, Tom Sleigh, Denis and Cindy Johnson, Lee Schore, Jerry Atkin, Charles Seluzicki, and the Christensen-Roberts household. Thanks to Franz Wright for his unfailing support and friendship.

  Thank you Phoebe Nobles.

  I love you Duke

  Copyright 2009 by Michael Dickman

  All rights reserved

  Cover art: Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Untitled, 1960. Gelatin-silver print, 7.5 x 7.25 inches. © The Estate of Ralph Eugene Meatyard, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco.

  ISBN: 978-1-55659-289-8

  eISBN: 978-1-61932-085-7

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