Scrambled Eggs and Whiskey

Hayden Carruth

Scrambled eggs and whiskey
in the false-dawn light. Chicago,
a sweet town, bleak, God knows,
but sweet. Sometimes. And
weren't we fine tonight?
When Hank set up that limping
treble roll behind me
my horn just growled and I 
thought my heart would burst.
And Brad M. pressing with the
soft stick and Joe-Anne
singing low. Here we are now
in the White Tower, leaning
on one another, too tired
to go home. But don't say a word,
don't tell a soul, they wouldn't
understand, they couldn't, never
in a million years, how fine,
how magnificent we were
in that old club tonight.

From Scrambled Eggs and Whiskey, Poems 1991-1995, published by Copper Canyon Press, 1996. Copyright © 1996 by Hayden Carruth. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA 98368.

Coming home with the last load I ride standing on the wagon tongue, behind the tractor in hot exhaust, lank with sweat, my arms strung awkwardly along the hayrack, cruciform. Almost 500 bales we've put up this afternoon, Marshall and I. And of course I think of another who hung like this on another cross. My hands are torn by baling twine, not nails, and my side is pierced by my ulcer, not a lance. The acid in my throat is only hayseed.

The first chainsaw I owned was years ago, an old yellow McCulloch that wouldn't start. Bo Bremmer give it to me that was my friend, though I've had enemies couldn't of done no worse. I took it to Ward's over to Morrisville, and no doubt they tinkered it as best they could, but it still wouldn't start.

Masters, the mock orange is blooming in Syracuse without scent, having been bred by patient horticulturalists To make this greater display at the expense of fragrance. But I miss the jasmine of my back-country home. Your language has no tenses, which is why your poems can never be translated whole into English; Your minds are the minds of men who feel and imagine without time. The serenity of the present, the repose of my eyes in the cool whiteness of sterile flowers. Even now the headsman with his great curved blade and rank odor is stalking the byway

Poems

Scrambled Eggs and Whiskey

More by this poet

Emergency Haying

Regarding Chainsaws

Of Distress Being Humiliated by the Classical Chinese Poets

Poems

Page submenu block

Scrambled Eggs and Whiskey

More by this poet

Emergency Haying

Regarding Chainsaws

Of Distress Being Humiliated by the Classical Chinese Poets

Newsletter Sign Up