Lake Borgne

We smoked under yellow light
in Mark’s bedroom. Mark sat on the bed,
Anais sat at the desk
and I sat on the floor.

We watched documentaries
in the living
room. We watched a man throat
sing by a river. We watched
a horse go free.

We went haywire in the winter.
We laughed and smoked
inside. They heard me cry
on the screened in porch
in a deep Iowa winter.

Mark painted the porch
green. We left our butts,
ashes and empties
on the ground and table.

I felt sick from how smart
everybody’d become. I felt
like I got more hurt everyday.

Every time I left the house
I searched. Acne grew
on my chin and cheeks
same way it had forever
it seemed. I was always covered
in this thin sheen of grease.

It was so cold
I couldn’t help but get mad.
I wanted to call the police
on my friends.

Mark’s mom got sick
and Anais’s dad was dead
and he didn’t like to talk
about him. Random birds

woke me up late in the afternoon
a lot of days. I bought some drugs
downtown one night I didn’t trust.

I would leave the house at night
and get home early in the morning
and hear this woman sing
in my head as I went to sleep.
It was the same woman every night
and she sang about a car wreck
she survived over the Singing
River one night between Pascagoula
and Gautier in the eighties. The song got longer
and longer the more nights I heard
her sing it in my head while I laid
in bed at night until one night
she visited my head for the last
time and never came back.

I would wake up
and the light would come in
through plain white linen
curtains. I could see the snow
on the cobblestones below.

I quit running completely
and we smoked inside
at night in Mark’s room.

I watched white fall
from the sky a bunch of mornings.
I quit cutting my hair.

I liked to go see Rachel
at Phil’s. Her hair was the color
of pecans and she smelled like
a mix of cedar smoke and cold
water. She was always
nice when I went in for a drink.

We expanded our operations
to the basement. Mark
started gettin worried
about the rent. Anais
moved out but still came over
everyday to visit. He got real
quiet.

I kept the money I saved
from the deliveries I made
in a pinewood box
under my bed.

I had this dog named Jake
who wouldn’t cross the threshold
of a doorway unless
I gave him a treat.

Mark suggested we leave
the house and head south. Anais
said he was out but I knew how little
was in the box and I was so damn tired
of the cold I said why the hell not?

I sold the Impala my dad got me for college
and me and Mark pawned
most of the stuff from the house. I put my books
in a storage unit and packed two suitcases
and bought a big bag of dog food
and a new dog bed
and put it all in the back of Mark’s van.

It rained as we drove south.
We woke up in a grey morning in south
Arkansas. We saw a sign to canoe
the Ouachita.

We sold the van and broke
our stuff down to two backpacks and a sack
of dog food. We got a ride
to the canoe company
and they let us take the dog.

We floated past
the spot where we were supposed
to stop and headed south
on the Ouchita.

We camped on sheets
underneath the stars
on a sandbar near
where the little river
met the Mississippi.

We woke up under baby
pine trees. Mark was up
and pointed across the river.
Those are all red winged
blackbirds, he said.

I followed his finger
and saw all these black clumps
it seemed like thousands
across the river in the limbs
of the oaks and pines.

We sat in the sand
and listened to their songs
and took it as a sign
we should continue south
and give more of our life
to the river.

Mark had packed a little
whiskey and we had it for breakfast
along with some Vienna sausages
and saltines we’d bought at the canoe
company.

We floated into the big river
and it was like a long sea.
We passed great big grain silos
on the banks through Louisiana.

We pulled the canoe up on a bank
where we saw a town in the distance
late in the afternoon. Mark
came back with a bunch of chips
and beer and hot dogs. I made a fire
and we cooked and drank and ate
and swam in the river in the black night.

The deer flies made it impossible
to sleep very long so despite the hangover
we were up and moving pretty early. My head
felt fried and I filled my water bottle
with water from the river. Mark
wasn’t sure if it was such a good idea
and he drank another beer.

The river seemed to really speed
up. The sun broke through the clouds
and it got hot. Mark said he wondered
if Satan lived on this part of the river.

He is a grim man,
I said. He probably calls
these quarters home. The trees
hung thick deep green and shadowed
the edges of the river.

Only the trees and the chocolate brown
water as the sun lowered. Where are we
goin to sleep? I said.

We are gone,
said Mark. There is no one left. I looked
at him and he was smiling staring into the sun
with his eyes closed.

The heat was killing me and even
though we mostly had just floated
without much paddling
for most of the way my arms
killed me and the deer
flies killed me but I still felt good
to be outside and sun burned.

Let’s go this way,
Mark said and we pushed
the canoe down a little creek
as the sun was down
and creek and the sky
and trees all shaded purple.

We spotted a little fishing dock
and tied the canoe
off to the bulkhead and let the dog
go up on the shore.

A trail lead further into the woods
and we let the dog pee
and Mark slept in the canoe and I slept on the pier
after a few beers and the last of the whiskey.

I dreamed a dream
I was sailing the river
in a company of men lead by a man named
Captain Forrest. He drank purple
whiskey he called plumshine. In the dream I said shine is white,
Captain Forrest. He said, moonshine
be damned Able—this here is God talking, radios
too. In the dream we hunted
in these black rubber masks
until Captain Forrest’s Leftenant

Jake told us to remove the masks
and “hunt with the high beams
on.” This riled me up and
I crept through the cypress
and the man to my left whispered,
welcome to the rainbow dragoons.

I woke in the dark on the pier
and my back seized up
and I rolled over and stood
and ran and puked in the forest.
I woke up Mark
and told him we had to get off the river.
South is the only way out he said.

We rowed through the dark and then floated.
I kept getting sick and fell back asleep and woke
and sat up and saw the trees part
and open as the first light
broke pink in a light blue sky
over the wide Gulf sea
and felt nothing on our backs
as far back as Iowa.

We harbored in a camp
in a cypress clearing
and came upon a circle of men
at their morning fire.

We ate breakfast
with the fisherman
and passed sausage, biscuits
and eggs around the circle
and ate from our hands
as the stars faded overhead
and the pines turned from black
to green along the coastline.

The skin of my arms lay scalded
by the sun. I slipped off
and swam in home
waters. Salt mixed in my eyes.

The next day
I got up before the rest
did to see the sun
come up through the shade of the pines,
to walk the mudbank with the dog
and a coffee and a cigarette,
to watch the fish and pray
in an unseen life

at this lost
camp at the end of the river.
I tasted the saltwater.
and remembered the knife
in my hand as I rowed
and kept rowing.

The next morning we saw the river’s
mouth. The men lead us out
in a flow between the barrier
islands and the grass.

Logs and limbs
churned like slow chopper
blades in the brown
water. Leaves drifted
on the topwater into the Sound.
We made the markings
taught to us on our maps.

Mark sipped his water,
smiled a wet
smile. We turned
in short, back
to camp. But I keep

on in this dream,
where fyces are asking me questions,
and science fiction is here,
taking pills around a campfire,
and we walk into the desert,
holding hands and talking about our dead
friends,

and as we navigate,
their biographies, our dead
friends begin to join us.