Brian Barker
—
Metaphysical Detective Story
My Shadow wanted to go back to lowa, circa summer 1981. Something about her childhood. Something about rope swings and swimming holes, holes in the night owls hoot through, the heat a wet tapestry sagging with lilacs and gnats. Something about cattails and sugar tits, that feeling of time being fat with flatness. So here we are, standing in a field of corn, staring at a dead boy sprawled sunburnt in the dirt, a smudge of blood thumbed across his cheek. "That's you before Before," my Shadow said. I scowled, mopped my brow. "Come again, Plato?" But she didn't answer, just spread through me smooth as smoke. A cloud of grasshoppers scissored dizzily. I knelt and touched the dead boy's hand. The corn ate up the distance. The corn ate up the sky.
War Story
The soldiers have waited since dawn for orders to attack, but the General is indisposed. A maid wielding a swan's feather chases him through his palace. Red- faced and giggling, he sprints long hallways, hides in gold bathtubs, behind velvet sofas. He leaps and rolls and writhes in bed after bed, tangling himself in silk sheets. He zig-zags through the kitchen, bellyflopping on a butcher's block, where laughter saws his breath in two. Meanwhile, the soldiers kneel in mud, cradling their guns, smoking or picking their teeth with knives. And in the village, no one dares light a lamp, though someone peeks through a crack into the frozen dark. Someone shushes a crying baby. Someone moves their lips in silent prayer, as the maid lifts her skirt with one hand, tiptoeing toward the General, waving the feather like a sword. He crouches in a corner, hiccupping with laughter. An epaulet dangles from one shoulder, his mustache glistens with spit. A lock of slick, black hair drapes over his face in a question mark. He's gasping for air. Hes hugging himself. Hes crying out to God, begging for mercy.
Oral History: Early Rock-n-Roll
I made some pomade out of tractor grease. A black lock scythed across my brow. I called my guitar Roberta or Barbara or Debbie Sue. When I cradled her, I thought of a canoe packed with dynamite drifting across a pond at dusk. Mama said my hips had extra ball bearings, extra rivets and springs. Everywhere I stepped I felt vibrations shimmy like grass growing up through the bottoms of my bare feet. I said, let's take it down a couple of notches, fellas, let's cool our heels, then made my voice a soft flour sack ballooning into space. I teetered on a bale of hay, blowing kisses to God. My hands were two wilting roses I pressed against my lips.
Brian Barker is the author of three books of poetry, Vanishing Acts, The Black Ocean, and The Animal Gospels. His poems have appeared in such journals as Poetry, The Gettysburg Review, American Poetry Review, TriQuarterly, The Washington Post, Indiana Review, The Cincinnati Review, Blackbird, and Pleiades. He teaches at the University of Colorado Denver, where he is a poetry editor of Copper Nickel.
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