Reckoning

The Man said, he's dangerous, Miss.
And Joe smiled,
A yellow-toothed smile, chicken fat yellow.
The Man said, if I take these cuffs off him . . .
And I said, take them off.
When Joe put his two uncuffed hands on my shoulders,
He was laughing like something was really funny,
With the Man saying, he ain't like a human being.
And me saying, what's wrong with him,
And wondering what Joe-now dangerous
Because some woman the state paid
$200 a month to raise him
Kept him seven years in a chicken coop-
What was Joe going to do next?
I'm going to put those cuffs back on,
The Man said, before we all live to regret it.

On the Day before Joe Silver Was Made,
There Was a Train Engine Out of Control

Two trains: a black chicken,
A black cat without shadow.

The train is the body of Joe Silver
Without hope of resurrection. Car after car, it multiplies.

The train's conductor is blind, revealing
Destinations and Joe Silver's dumb cargo.

Who is Joe Silver that comes out of the wilderness
Like pillars of smoke with all the power of love?

Who is this barren chariot?
Joe Silver's bed ready for war.

Plains and grasslands, farms of Ohio, tell me:
Has the train I want come this way?

Train after train, travel's endless recurrence.
It's a lie to say I never wanted to board.

A train wreck, Joe Silver is created from hope,
The crash of impending bodies.

My beloved is mine. A train engine
Out of control, brakes pushed to floor.

JEANNE E. CLARK won the 1997 Akron Poetry Prize for her book, Ohio Blue Tips, chosen by Alice Fulton.  She was born and raised in Northwest Ohio. She teaches Creative Writing at Arizona State University and for the Arizona Commission on the Arts as an Artist-in-Education. She was the winner of the 1995 Loft Prize in Poetry.

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