Jeremiah, Ohio Read online

  Jeremiah,

  OHIO

  Jeremiah,

  OHIO

  a novel in poems

  Adam Sol

  Copyright © 2008 Adam Sol

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or

  transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including

  photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system,

  without permission in writing from the publisher.

  This edition published in 2008 by

  House of Anansi Press Inc.

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  House of Anansi Press is committed to protecting our natural environment.

  As part of our efforts, this book is printed on paper that contains 100%

  post-consumer recycled fibres, is acid-free, and is processed chlorine-free.

  12 11 10 09 08 1 2 3 4 5

  LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION DATA

  Sol, Adam, 1969–

  Jeremiah, Ohio / Adam Sol.

  Poems.

  ISBN 978-0-88784-791-2

  1. Jeremiah (Biblical prophet) — Poetry. I. Title.

  PS8587.O41815J47 2008 C811’.6 C2008-901231-3

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2008922791

  Cover design: Bill Douglas

  Typesetting: Laura Brady

  We acknowledge for their financial support of our publishing program the Canada Council

  for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Government of Canada through the Book

  Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP).

  Printed and bound in Canada

  CONTENTS

  Invocation

  Essen

  Chillicothe Was the First Capital of the Ohio Territory

  At the Flea Market

  16% of Peebles Residents Report German Ancestry

  Song of Sixty Days

  Communion at Bruce’s Apartment

  Confession During the Failing Buzz of the Post-Game Wrap-Up

  Three Months Earlier

  Jeremiah at the Outlet Mall

  Athens Has Been Called One of the Top Ten Most Haunted Places in America

  Lament for the Girls of Mt. Gilead

  Modus Operandi

  Stephen Hibbs at the Snell Street Luncheonette

  Tutorial at the Corner of Wolfpen and 143

  Driving Past a Broken Down Pickup Full of Migrants Late for Work in Willard

  Due to Lighted Arches on High Street, Columbus Was, for a Time, Known as the Most Brilliantly Lit City in the Country

  Doom Again on U.S. 36

  Ohio Portrait in 5-Syllable Road Signs

  Right Lane Must Exit

  Elegy for the Truck

  Ashland Radio

  Aftermath

  Waking and Hearing the Call of the City

  Slopping in the Rain Between Wadsworth and Poe

  Akron’s History Is Colorful, Painful, Diverse, and Inspiring

  Bullfrog Jeremiah

  Jeremiah’s Wounds

  Jeremiah at the All Saints Cathedral, Youngstown

  Jeremiah Plays Chess

  What I’ve Got So Far, Approaching Youngstown and September

  Hitching a Ride Out of California, PA

  Swedish Immigrant Carl Eric Wickman Began Transporting Miners from Hibbing to Alice, MN, in 1914

  Ponderosa Confession

  Villanelle for Jeremiah’s Son

  Jeremiah, PA

  Pay When Boarding

  Psalm of Scranton

  Jeremiah Defaces a Roadside Shrine

  Jeremiah at Beis T’fillah of Teaneck

  Jeremiah’s Blues on the GW Bridge

  Manhattanville Expansion Raises Questions About Aesthetics

  Church of the Intercession

  Hananiah

  Redemption of the Field at Broadway and 88th

  Gentrification of Upper Manhattan Is Not Yet Complete

  At the Converted Bank

  Our People. Our Work. Our Values.

  Sprinting Through the 60s

  Quickly Find Our Upcoming Events

  Acrostic Lament

  Come Spend a Great Day Downtown

  Declaiming from the Wreckage

  Post No Bills

  Sgt. Ebediah (“Eddie”) King

  Incidental Music Is Often Background Music

  Fingerprinting

  Song of Repentance

  Support the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers

  In the Holding Pen

  Religious Song

  Items in the Prisoner’s Possession

  Emotionally Disturbed Persons May Be Released into the Custody of Family Members at the Discretion of the Commanding Officer

  We’re On Our Way

  Newark Local

  Forty-Two Percent of Greyhound Passengers Are Between the Ages of 18 and 34

  How I wanted to see a vision then

  Last Words

  Song of Leaving

  Acknowledgments

  INVOCATION

  These are the words of Jeremiah, the son of Hank,

  of the failed farmers and short-order cooks

  who tilled and tore the soil of Southern Ohio

  in the days that became years that became confusion.

  These are his words, poor bastard,

  who roared himself ragged

  during the reign of Soandso and his Valiant Pals.

  Hear the summons, o wanderers and worriers!

  See me pulling the planks from your porch!

  Woe unto ye, corporate communicators!

  Behold the oily ends of your extended lunches!

  Yea, I have been sent to root out and pull down,

  to lubricate and decimate,

  to build and to plant.

  Who will accompany me on my trail of frustration?

  Who will lend me a button?

  I have seen and will give voice to my grief.

  I will be delivered C.O.D.

  May the words of my mouth

  and the declamations of my fury

  tear holes in the outerwear of the people.

  Let them feel the hot gust.

  ESSEN

  Begin with the wind disguising itself as a rake. An exit sign points out toward the saddest patch of grass in Western Ohio. A man has heard grave announcements from passing radios and resigned himself to a night of wet gravel. He can smell an ambient summer storm gathering its skirts like an expectant mother, and has reasons to expect the worst: his lost sweater, or the thigh bruises given him by an overzealous camera salesman.

  There have been hours of walking and hours of standing still. And his cardboard plea for Columbus may as well read Belgium.

  A blue Buick Skylark pulls onto the median from the opposing lane, as if to let the man know he hasn’t gone unseen in the shrill heat. Hitching his greasepants the man considers an idea of communion, and hopsteps across the empty asphalt toward her chariot. But by the time he has crossed the divide the woman at the wheel has lobbed a paper bag through her window into the hissing milkweed and torn off, shredding roadside wildgrass with her magnificent radials.

  When he looks back west with the package in hi
s fist to offer a gesture of thanks or greeting, she has diminished into a mere blur on the slope, rising then winking out like a last glimpse of the old life he once lived in a town with flax fields and homemade honey.

  Inside the bag: a napkin to wipe his bleeding ear. A plastic spoon to dig for snails. An apple. And printed words wrapped jauntily around a tub of yoghurt: “70% LESS FAT” glorious on the still-cool container in his grip.

  The man sits to work his mouth around the rush of unlikely letters embracing his hammered hand, and contemplates the need for some significant gesture. Another semi wrongs its horn blasting past in a flurry of dust and shattered grasshoppers. The man hoists his tub in furious salute: “I receive your Pectin! I receive your Xanthan Gum!” chewing the syllables, nourished enough to knot his knees toward Richwood.

  CHILLICOTHE WAS THE FIRST CAPITAL OF THE OHIO TERRITORY

  It’s two, and once I’ve dropped off

  my load of loaves and Twinkies

  at the State Pen In-And-Out,

  I can spend the afternoon

  smoking at the Indian

  Mount State Park. Dispatch doesn’t

  need the van till five thirty,

  and each cigarette burns off

  a little of the day’s shame.

  No one’s looking for me here.

  But halfway through my first fire

  I hear a man at the gate

  standing with his arms outspread

  like he is trying to call

  down the rain. He is making

  roaring noises in his throat

  and when the ranger asks him

  to move along, he starts

  yelling, “What unrighteousness

  have your fathers found in me

  that now they are gone from me?!”

  Something like that. The ranger

  is just a kid, probably

  working off student loans, so

  I say, “Listen, buddy, d’you

  need a ride or what?” Right away

  he grabs his army duffel

  and slings it into my truck.

  He sits on the floor in back

  next to a crate of Sno-Balls.

  Then he asks, “What is thy name?”

  I can hardly keep myself

  from laughing, but I answer,

  “Bruce Gray, scholar and bread man.”

  Jeremiah shakes my hand,

  and looks straight into my face.

  His hands are already scarred

  and yellow with calluses.

  “Are you upright and holy?”

  “Sure.” “Can you transcribe the words

  I speak?” “I can type, if that’s

  what you mean.” “Good. I thank you

  for your kindness. It will not

  go unnoticed, if you catch

  my drift.” “I catch it.” “Drive on.”

  AT THE FLEA MARKET

  All along the riverside my towns are breaking down.

  My Delhis and Mount Orabs,

  my New Harmonys and Crowns.

  I lost my heart at Dairy Mart for lack of home-baked bread,

  and blundered into wonder

  and was crushed like a possum on Route 32.

  Will you hear, O my people? Will you heed my bells and whistles?

  Will you teen girls worrying your split ends

  remark on my resonance and tears?

  Where can I go to find solace,

  if even the restrooms are for customers only? Yea,

  the women of Williamsburg

  are selling suitcases at the Sunday jubilee,

  along with ceramic geese and rifles.

  What can they learn from me, except that their villages

  are vanishing?

  Behold, they are sitting on a bowl that has

  been dropped from the table. Like a potter’s toy

  we must be refired.

  They know this well. Their town is an astonishment and a hissing.

  They should know better than to recline on lawn chairs

  and bake their bellies like berries.

  O fair-haired mothers! O mole-chinned grannies!

  Remove your orange sunglasses —

  reveal the squinting of your hearts!

  Be not worse than your uncles who sowed wheat

  and reaped thorns in this asphalt pasture!

  Save your old yards with their hopeful black-eyed susans

  and their weary black-eyed Susans.

  16% OF PEEBLES RESIDENTS REPORT GERMAN ANCESTRY

  Way back before his heart broke

  I suppose Jeremiah

  was just as crazy as all

  his neighbors. But that was long

  before I met him. By then

  he’d been seen cursing dumpsters

  in Lynchburg, scolding billboards

  and McDonald’s customers

  even as far as Peebles.

  As for me, I’d been feeling

  embarrassed, knowing full well

  that even my loneliness

  was common, that my profound

  despair was a tired cliché.

  I’d dropped out of grad school and

  disappointed my mentors,

  because I can’t see myself

  fitting into the role of

  Expert in Po Mo Flim Flam.

  If only I could yadda

  yadda instead of blahblahblah.

  And then, to top it all off,

  I fucked up the closest thing

  I’d had to a family

  since I left my sad mother

  to her lists and memories.

  I was in purgatory,

  delivering faux-baked goods

  to gas station groceries,

  mini-marts, and convenience

  stores in Southern Ohio

  from Athens to Columbus.

  Of course I thought he was nuts,

  in a harmless hobo way,

  and when I gave him a box

  of Ho Hos, he nearly cried

  from gratitude. It had been

  a long while since I had done

  something good for anyone.

  So I invited him home

  for a shower, an old pair

  of pants, dinner, and a couch.

  Why he made the decision

  to promote me from chauffeur

  to secretary and aide

  is a mystery to me.

  Maybe because I said Yes.

  The “Baked” painted on the side

  of my cab had been scraped off

  by some bored schoolboys in Clark,

  so the side of the truck just

  said, “Goods.” That, too, may have been

  enough, desperate as he was

  for signs that the world had not

  completely abandoned him.

  SONG OF SIXTY DAYS

  It is true I went to see the Mayor

  in his office of plaques.

  And true he showed me photos of himself

  with notables local and spectacular.

  True too that though I held his elbow and begged him

  to abandon the chase and submit to his fate,

  to kowtow to the clowns for the sake of the town,

  he held his haughty head high

  and frowned.

  The man is in the full sway of hand-sets,

  biceps and fudge,

  and though he nodded,

  his very chin was not his own.

  Sixty days I have wandered these hills,

  and I have seen little to lighten my heart.

  Tables are still set without trembling,

  and salesmen thumb scales from Damascus to Defiance.

  When will my people learn

  that their china is made of their own bones?

  Who will tell them that their city was doomed

  from the start to test products and poisons?

  Why have they cast aside my teachings,

  and erected
rapacious billboards

  like so many weeds in the fields?

  Yea, they are a city of cash cows.

  They will be slaughtered for cut-rate soup stock,

  and their labels will shout judgment

  from the shelves of mini-marts

  from Waco to Tungsten.

  COMMUNION AT BRUCE’S APARTMENT

  Two men on a cracked couch, shiny with pizza grease and the inarticulate reflection of the Reds in a close one against the Cardinals. The silent understanding of passing over another bottle of Bud. And the resonant syllogisms over the health of Griffey’s shoulder. It’s going to be a long summer. J exhausted from baring his head and chest to the winds and passersby of Chillicothe. B too glib to understand himself — his words make sense, but they aren’t true. Boone hits a lonely two-out double off the right field wall. It amounts to nothing — Dunn whiffs in three pitches. There is a small spiritual truth in their shared sadness and frustration. Is this enough? Tonight it is enough.

  CONFESSION DURING THE FAILING BUZZ OF THE POST-GAME WRAP-UP

  I lied earlier. I’m not upright or holy.

  I turned the volume down, and we watched Joe Morgan equivocating with his eyebrows.

  All are holy in the eyes of —

  Well, not upright, then.

  How have you slouched?

  There was a touch of glee in his voice, as if he’d been waiting all night for me to speak. Or as if I had something stuck to my nose.

  I feel as if I’m in the process of failing as a person.

  The smirk disappeared then, and he turned to me. His eyebrows turned up, and he was listening with a strange, blunt attention. Who had I ever talked to like this?

  First off, I sort of got between my best friends’ marriage.

  The commercials were loud, even with the sound off. Each frame cut flashed and glittered until the tv strobed. J leaned back and rubbed his grizzled chin.

  I see. And you seek redemption.

  I guess.

  From your God.

  I don’t know about that.

  He stood up and unbuttoned his shirt, draping it over the screen. Underneath was a faded black T-shirt that said Caleb’s Grill.