Thunder Road

Thunder Road

On Thunder Road
I lost my virginity,
but there no thunder was heard.

Of what is there to tell?
Truth? Rumors:
Fact, fiction— so much lies between

...magic unfolds from a black-top hat
that is night, two hundred years
of little white lies (told to girls
to keep them "nice’) fly...

Iniquitous...inviting—
the kind of place every hometown
knows, Thunder Road zigs
over the land to lick
at the mouth of the lake;
a snake, a great serpent of old:
drawing lovers to neck, to play, to rumors
make and find-out all.

Rumor has it: when the right two
"make-it’— thunder rumbles,
a storm follows,
rains pelt-out metrical rhythms
of a strength and beat
of hearts in cars.

Tough one to follow?
Greek mythology’s got nothing
On the stories mom and grandmas told:

a piece... "You have to do IT even if you
don’t want to," ...another... "I never
let a man touch me there in my life— not
even your grandfather!" ...weave in...a flannel
nightgown, a curse if a man sees what’s
under it...paint a picture...a white dress
moving toward a faceless man...you have
an idea of what I knew.

Not very much.

But that didn’t stop me.
I wanted to know of Thunder Road.

Like a birthmark,
unsightly or not, blotched or beautified,
the memory is something a girl never loses...

I smell rain;
I remember...

...he is a tree over the road,
on me a shadow— limbs, leaf-fringed,
hover over us. Enticed by their sway,
I reach for them, pull them down
to block pain flowing forth
like wax from a candle— hot, burning,

instantly hardening soft, enveloping
what it has touched, making it
numb— bursts womanhood— not of blossom— but
of something withered like the ground
below on Thunder Road.

I break from the encasement,
the entanglement.
Free and nestled like a bird in that tree
outside the car, I imagine looking down
on girls all over the world
who are just like me:

a scarfed girl of Hamadan’s Land
shakes as she lowers veil, enters
the hall of womanhood half-cocked; in a land
of black forests, a fraulein blinks at some
Hans; a girl of Crete, before a mirror,
practices wiles; a Russian gymnast bites
her lip and wonders if it will enlarge
her breasts; a Spanish senorita saves
face by keeping a certain place from
being touched while her chaperon
looks away; a Libyan lovely looks
downcast because she must keep
her place and wait; all like me...

...the leaf
of some limp flower falls,
brushes against me;

I listen and am surrounded by silence
and the swaying of some unseasoned tree
on Thunder Road.

I hear nothing.
I feel nothing— except...a shadow move
and a drop of dew that is sweat,
not of mine, I can’t even taste the salt
of sweat on my own lips.

After that, for almost a year...

...I walked the house like a timid mouse
whose entrance to its store of hordes
had been blocked.

How could they do it— Mom, Grandma— when
it was so little fun, so much pain?
Not a bit like the fresh rain of rumors.

I was a rocket—
powerful, ready— next time,
I wasn’t going to be left
on the ground or have my head
stuck there or up— anywhere.

I started a countdown: read books,
talked to some friends, then on ten
and counting-down...I met him.

If she had been wood
like some sturdy
oaken door,

he’d have knocked
on her until she
let him in,

but she was glass
so he broke her
just to see

how much he could
pick up without
getting cut.

When he had picked
up just enough, he
made from her an

hourglass: she
told time by the turn
of his hand;

entrapped and momentary,
she was sand for this man.

I talk to myself;
I sit in rooms alone,
without music or anything else,
and I sing songs to myself— strange
songs— songs that play themselves.

Foddling in fabricated fogs,
adding thoughts upon thoughts
like to a fire— firelogs, I
stare at white ashen pages
and sometimes blow on them
until dawn.

Sometimes I fall
asleep humming last words to
some poem, and I leak ink all
over the carpet like some
bleeding thing, wounded, and
needing to be put to sleep.

I curse a hoarseness
I notice in my voice
and move to the bed
where I start again.

Either I have something
to say,
or I’m just plain vain.

Either way— artist or insane— I
love the nothing, the pioneering
plight of searching through the night
and filling pages of white.

I want to be a ghost
that haunts library shelves.