Ohio Connections Literary Exhibit
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Ohio’s Literary Landscape: A Triptych
By Rane Arroyo
1. Poem With a View
James Wright, I drive through
your hometown where newlyweds
stick their heads out of their limo
and scream with joy and terror.
They have learned long ago not
to see the giant factories around them,
monsters nearer than millenniums.
This river is a vein to a dark heart.
The rusting takes on the color of
a perpetually rotting apple. I wave to
the lovers who are not thinking of you.
Even small towns survive poets.
2. Cabin Fever—Minus the Cabin
Never lock yourself up during a blizzard
with just Hart Crane poems as your table
tennis partners. Cabin fever takes over
the meal planning. Honey, I tell Hart,
these aren’t sailors. They’re snow shovel
in heat. Meanwhile, a red soup meditates.
Has your quick Caribbean death guaranteed
a permanent sun? Do you miss imperfection?
Why are the dead never rescue parties?
3. The Burrito King of Toledo, Ohio
for Maggie Anderson
My father worked in a factory
that had no windows. For years,
he sweated in the bottom of this
abstract ship, never seeing ports,
but always returning to our bills.
He hasn’t worked at summing his
life, hasn’t worked at titling
his imaginary Selected Poems
as I have: Midwest Matador,
or perhaps, the Country of
Scarecrows. I’m addicted to dawn
to light, to vision. I always carry
a notebook with me should anyone
say, this isn’t work, this isn’t work.
Look, I’ll say, I’ve pages of notes,
most of which will become nothing,
most of which isn’t money in the bank.
Perhaps in years, when my poems,
Burrito King of Toledo, Ohio, is
published, labor will be honored:
mine, my father’s. Many days I’ve
walked into a sea of grass, just
outside of a factory, and have watched
men vanish during shift changes.
It’s Dante, imported, more efficient
(no morally exact rhymes to “I’m
fucking tired.”). I get to go home with
clean hands, but this worker’s shadows
dirty many pages. I’ve arrived here,
Papi, to this inland embassy, for us,
for when there was an us. Now,
you and your eye-seeing dog try not
to get lost in your Puerto Rico, while
I select new short cuts to get home fast.
The tombstone only offers us breathing
space on its permanent hyphen, island
floating between heaven and hell. It’s time
to go through the Taco Bell drive-through,
car blasting Sharkira’s Laundry Service
I give my notebook, and myself, a day off.
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