The Mutable Wheel

Poetry by Okla Elliott
Images by Brian Zegeer

ISBN 0-9729679-0-7, $28, 44 pages, 8.5 X 11

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A collection of poems by Okla Elliott, illustrated by Brian Zegeer--some color--this book was funded by a Central Piedmont Regional Artists Hub Grant of the United Arts Council of Greensboro and the North Carolina Arts Council.

What a Vulgar Moon

A boy studies the strangely
three-footed rabbit tracks,
tries to reproduce them
with his gloved thumb,
forefinger, middle--or,

another winter,
the three shallow holes
and blood in their center.
He followed, crashing excited
an awkward field.

The snow lay dully, lethal white
under the moon's gray-glowing sky,

until he saw the thing,
its face torn off

--one eye hanging.

The guilt.
That it was his fault
because he was so eager to hunt,
though he didn't know
what that meant.

Now, however, he isn't
thinking of that winter.
He is trying to emulate
the lightness of the rabbit's gait,
the way it moves so fast
that two of its feet
merge magically
into one.

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The Day I Cooked Catfish For The Blues

 

The smell of frying catfish and butter
the warm flatness of beer
the tightening of the skin on my sunburnt back--

--these are what it boils down to,

the entire summer, reduced to a day,
and that day sweats itself to thin impressions.

It is so swampy and sad here that the blues
have come to eat at the picnic table,
forgetting what manners they know
ringing themselves like rag laundry
in constant sorrow.

They drove in on Dogtrot Road,
thighs sticking
against the hot plastic seats.
The dust cloud they created consuming them.
Then emerging slowly
from that motionless brown ball.

I flip the catfish over--
its hot stench encircles me
like giant invisible whiskers,
tickling my nose and settling like
gravel in my gut. Butter sizzles
against the orange-black coals.

A blunted sandpaper voice tells of loss
a high, jubilant guitar whines his pain
a back-up vocalist reminds us
that not everything is always so blue.

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Fractures

 

From the flavor of metal on my tongue
to the melting sun-splashed water,
I come daily to meet with you.

When, in the center of my ninth year, I heard
your cough crack phlegm from the recesses of your chest,
I stood against the back door--my face pressed to the screen.

The taste the grainy half-barrier left
and the breath it let inside and out
made me want to walk in and tell you, it's okay you're dying.

My awkward and private vocabulary was useless.
There you were: caught in my fishnet view:
a man sunken like an empty paper bag.

I ran to the barn (my dark orange mirror) and climbed
through carelessly high thin rafters, daring
you inwardly to come and yell about broken limbs.

A puddle from the storm earlier that morning
receded one drop at a time through
a hidden fracture in the heart of the wood

while sharp sunlight glistened and burst on the surface.
I thought, it'll be over soon, and
I hope I never forget this day.