phillip crymble

ALT Phillip Crymble LTD The Brougham with metallic paint. Champagne. Or so your old man claimed. Each year in spring and early fall he'd wash away the road tar—dry the finish with a chamois—smooth the wax on in the shade. For 40 years and more he drove a forklift―ate bologna from a black Aladdin lunch pail—stuck his timecard in a wall rack—did his job without complaint. On weekends—clad in vinyl slides—he'd fix what needed mending in the tool room—clean the bedknife on his push reel—mow the lawn in guileless solitude. Come evening— with a can of ale—he'd cool off on the stoop and smoke a Player's—sit and think a while. The LTD beside him like the child he couldn't save.

ALT Terminal What if, past a certain point, it weren't so bad to die? What if it were like lying on a couch at 3:00 a.m., the mind aloft and quiet, given over to a few piano notes finding ways melodically through predetermined loops in Brian Eno's Music for Airports? That's what you'd be listening to, music for those places where we go to go away, the music of going away, and you just disappearing into it without effort or pain, finding peace in knowing to obey means at its root only to listen.

ALT THE PALLBEARER The coffin I bore swung between us like a battering ram against the door to heaven. My friend was heavy carried by handles. I listed. The plod was slow (no dirge). The cherrywood cover got pittered with rain, glossy with swirls in the grain as with great red rivers risen to flood. I too was flooded. My eyes brimmed the green world blurry, though my face stayed flat. The rhythm of walking took all my thought. Later the shovels of dirt fell splat on that cover, and they left a nice mound like the start of a rose garden. When I stretched on my narrow bed that night I almost felt the strong hands heave me up; my body swung through the dark like a child's. --MARY KARR

ALT And the Fish in the Tide BY PHILLIP CRYMBLE Come find me on the bench behind the lighthouse-- on the back slope of the south pier wall. The place we came to share a codfish supper--where the packet to the island lists and knocks against the rollers and our shadows played on rock the builders blasted from the harbour floor. Come find me on the Schlossweg in Tirolo--where the alpine valley meadows sway in parables of sunlight and the breezes from the basin are as cool as air from mountain caves. We'll linger over haselnüsse gelato. Buy speck and German menthols. Make love until our bodies ache. Come find me at the Seaport Farmers' Market. I'll be waiting by the water at our table in the shade. Remind me of the hilltop. Of the maple where we carved our names. Come find me. I'll be waiting. Come find me. Help me on my way.

ALT OBEDIENCE What is your [master] doing--I don't know. I'm not privy--Is your [master] making war-- I don't know. I'm not privy--Maybe he is making [money]-- My [master] does not need [money]-- What does your [master] need--My [master] needs obedience--What does your [master] do with obedience-- I don't know. I'm not privy--

ALT they ask me to remember/ but they want me to remember/ their memories/ and I keep remembering/ mine. LUCILLE CLIFTON, "Why Some People Be Mad at Me Sometimes," Next, 1987

ALT LUCILLE CLIFTON note, passed to superman sweet jesus, superman. if i had seen you dressed in your blue suit i would have known you. maybe that choirboy clark can stand around listening to stories but not you, not with metropolis to save and every crook in town filthy with kryptonite. lord, man of steel, i understand the cape, the leggings, the whole ball of wax. you can trust me, there is no planet stranger than the one i'm from.