HoboEye Poetry:
Benjamin Arda Doty, Minneapolis, USA



ARRESTING MEMORY

Part her legs and kneel between them
              Like a supplicant,
                        Whispering prayers only she can hear
                                   At the end of the day because
You don’t believe in God.

And when your tongue is about to fall out because
              You’ve lost your sense of speech,
                        And your knees buckle under a weight you can’t carry
                                   Wonder if she will crush your head
              Between her muscular thighs

Because
              You don’t trust anyone, especially
                        Yourself.

Pray that she’ll crack your skull
               In half and read
                        Your thoughts like a scroll of
                                     Ancient Mesopotamian script no one has yet
                           Deciphered.

              Or a fortune cookie that will break into pieces
                        And drop a blank strip of paper that can only be read in
                                     the dark.




HAJJ

Between the casing and the brass is the
              Combustion.

Between tire tracks that lead up to the house
                      And the anxiety of coming home are
              Thirty years of bad road.

Run your hands through the red clay
              That’s like mud now,
                                Erosion you don’t remember.

Break the news, gently,
              Like you practiced with your therapist.

Tell them
                      They fucked up,
              But did their best.

Between what you forgive and forget
                      You force the river
                                                       Above the flood plane.

Between the cliff and the cavernous floor
                                That could flatten your face is the
                      Choice to make the annual pilgrimage
              Home again,
Where you will stone the devil.

FUGITIVE

Why can’t you stay in one place
Like a headstone?
Why can’t you sit still
Like your brother?

Your mother’s ancestors traveled
From place to place
Over thistle plains and up
And down mountain steppes
Until they came
From China to Europe
To the end of the world
And built a city by the sea.

Your mother never covered her head
And that’s why she married
An American.

Goetie and baklava,
Everyone drinking Coca-Cola—
It used to be funny when
Your best friend said you looked like
A terrorist.

Why do you need to get away
Like a monkey to the moon?
Why did you come home again,
With a bloody nose?

To bleed for your country?

No, that’s what your father did,
Who was born in
Why? oming, where there
Were only more abandoned
Gas stations than hotels,
Where a position at the federal prison
Was
A good job.

Why don’t you put on a cape
And fly like Superman?
Or, why don’t you put on a
Jacket that’s
A bomb?

Perhaps, they’re right.

Send a monkey before a man
To the moon.
Send a missile before they send
Someone with a bomb.

Why can’t you get on your knees
Like a good Muslim?
Why can’t you accept
The Lamb of God?

You are the new enemy
Boys want to kill.
You are the new enemy
Girls don’t know what
To make of because

You are too quiet.

Leave behind Lands’ End,
Land Rover and memories made in a Landmark theater,
Where protest is a fashion statement for
Boys and girls with tattoos in tight black jeans,
Soccer moms with Sierra Club
Stickers on their Subarus, and
Business men who buy
Bob Dylan CDs at
Starbucks.

Keep moving, like your ancestors.

Forget
The bomb they want you to wear
To kill yourself.

Forget
You came from some place.

Go somewhere
They won’t know your name.

Keep moving because
That’s what you know how to do well.

TO TOP>