Purple-Handed

 WHICH THE PHRASE red-handed, meaning caught in the act, meaning smeared with guilt, out out damned spot, is a bastardization of, given as purple-handed is the result, this time of year, of harvesting mulberries, which Aesop's ant might do with freezer bags or Tupperware, but, being sometimes a grasshopper, I do with my mouth, for that is one of the ways I adore the world, camped out like this beneath my favorite mulberry on cemetery road, aka Elm Street, aka, as of today, Mulberry Street, the wheel of my bike still spinning, as the pendulous black berries almost drop into my hands, smearing them purple and sweet, guilty as charged.

by Ross Gay

From The Book of Delights

This book of "essayettes" - sometimes prose-poems - was chosen as the 2021 Everybody Reads selection by the Multnomah County Library, and will be made available for free to all patrons beginning in early February, 2021.

Street Birds

 By Tyree Daye

We hunt here, I was shown death

at the age of seven, something dead

in my uncle’s hands.

I touched the belly of the black snake

felt its body a muscle tense.

I know nothing

of the baby birds cut

from the sour smell of its stomach,

just as I know nothing

of the sister and brother I watched cut

from the back seat of a flipped over car,

their own little cave.

My uncle tossed the thin-winged birds

into the air; lost

in the overgrown wood forever.

They never flew, never rode

their Huffy bikes from street end

      to street end.

Never raced each other,

never turned a bike into a motorcycle

with an empty orange soda can. The black snake tail

will swirl until the sun goes down,

until the devil comes to get it.

I began to pray

for a new skin for my mother.

Once I cold name 

all the new things.

Mutt puppies, new heads of lettuce,

my uncle’s new car, new red heart.

From River Hymns

[Almost Trued Pantoum]

At last, I have had both tires trued,

tube patched, all broken spokes replaced,

I can pedal abreast of you

-assuming I can match your pace.

Tube patched, all broken spokes replaced

my seat's been raised, my rim's been dished.

Assuming I can match your pace

we can bike as I've often wished.

My seat's been raised, my rim's been dished,

(lowered handlebars, tightened chain)

now we'll bike as I've often wished

-assuming that it doesn't rain.

Over tweaked handlebars and chain

We'll share a smoothie as we ride.

Assuming that it doesn't rain

we'll start whenever you decide.

We'll share a smoothie as we ride

and talk of things we think and feel.

We'll start whenever you decide

-no need to reinvent the wheel.

We'll talk of things we think and feel

as I pedal abreast of you.

Or did they reinvent the wheel

Just when I've, at last, had both tires trued?

by Mr. Daniel Hales

I could quibble that one trues wheels, not tires. But more importantly, the metaphor of the preparation, the ride, and the truth that "true" works so well as a verb. And pretty dang clever.

Daniel Hales is a poet and musician who fronts a wonderfully named band called The Frost Heaves. He lives in Massachusetts, where I assume he also rides.