Permission

by Sarah Marks

 

Inspired by the style of Ross Gay

 

This road was once well travelled, but now
banana leaves carpet it into a path
soft of sponge
and dead leaf litter and the scent of
wet stray cats
permeates everything.

The bike was trusty
albeit rusty
but rode it I still did
thumping along
what a trooper it was
tired handlebars, seat sucking up water
and spitting it back out between the knobs of rubber, cracks
in the tires and in the faint pavement deep beneath
visible still where the banana leaves won't quite
cover up everything the past had in mind
here on Hurricane Road, what a name! and
sometimes it does indeed storm,
when the wind
flings off the banana leaves, and raindrops ricochet,
the sky looks like a giant ball of yarn tossed to and fro
by a kitten, wretched and wet,
maybe the kind you used to lift up by the scruff
of its neck when you
were just a little thing yourself,
in a storm like this.
rivulets of runoff carve little canyons
into the seat-of-your-pants-staining clay on the sloped gutter sides of this path 
that I am not allowed
to access
not back when it was a banana farm,
not now, in its up-and-coming remodel to glory,
and not ever
since it's land
land that's not mine to own,
even if it's not anybody else's
to own, either,
at least that's how I'd think of it
and I ride on it every day, not once but twice,
the Rod and Gun club to my left, POW POW!
Men shooting!
locked gates
perpendicular to the banana leaf carpet,
cows awaiting slaughter in the field
(not from the Rod and Gun club men)
At least I don't think -- maybe that's how Hanakua Farm makes money
by letting butchering and pleasure mix
which it never should
For blood must be spilled by those who don't want to
and ideally, only those who need to
a tortured livestock farmer is a good livestock farmer
cows looking at me with blank
eyes in chest-deep Guinea Grass patches, that are only
not too prickly to bear
if you're a cow -- and they wait, as little
white birds claim their backs as a perch
mooing at the bicyclist clanking by
and in my head I recite the words gifted
to a friend, of a friend, to me, long ago,
whilst laughing --
Mike Furukawa told me it was okay,
in reference, of course, to trespassing,
this back road shortcut, and Mike may now be dead,
of course
but as long as you say it came to you
in a dream
with eyes that say they really believe it
the ghost of Mike will not come back to haunt you
and you may travel this road with only minor worry

and shelter under a thick banana vine
when the morning monsoon opens daily
and the back tire loses its last breath of air

 

back to University & College Poetry Prizes