Dead Woman's Crossing
the ghost of a night bloom, for Shay
When
the moon was a witchboat small and tossing
in
the fade-time where night can see day as her twin,
down
the rough blacktop to Dead Woman's Crossing
came
the carnival rolling on a dustbowl wind.
They
spindled the midway, freakshow and toss-ring,
before
they spiked twenty ripe melons with gin
for
Harvest Home in the dark of September,
so
the marks can do what they won't remember.
There
was Jacko the clown, stringy as a rat,
Ma's
name and a snake his tattoo valentine,
Rudy
the barker in a ten dollar hat,
talking
apple butter, smiling turpentine.
The
Doll from Philly worked the striped gypsy-tent;
her
brown eyes had just the right mad dog shine.
Then
night seemed to give a coyote-moon cough
that
shook her gold earrings, and Katie showed up
with
her deathrattle tale of carnival past,
how
she, the schoolteacher, met the Fallen Dove
Miss
Fannie, too red-haired, too ruined, too fast,
on
a September midway, bent moon above;
how
love like a cloudburst caught her at last
a
kiss-whisper in place of the stone cold shove,
a
granite fist traded for a velvet hand
and
a five dollar ring for her wedding band.
The
Dove blew out of Texas like a broken
branch
running
from Jesus, Daddy Jim and the law.
When
she hit Mrs. Hamm's Saloon and Hog Ranch
she
knew she had almost no time left at all
but
still more than Katie, hellbound for a ditch,
face
pale through the water where the black crows caw.
Thru
plugged ears Doll could hear the walking night moan,
thru
shut eyes see the bridge where Katie talked on:
The
heat lightning flickered as midnight slammed shut,
Katie
in a nightmare where she was the wheat
waiting
dry in the dirt for the thresher's cut;
too
many whiskey hard times in tangled sheets,
one
scar too many from a cheap White Owl blunt
while
the tumbleweeds wrote her name in the street.
She
put on her bonnet, she packed up her grip,
met
the Dove smiling with her child on her hip.
They
sat down stiff as strangers on the noon train,
the
nights and the men left behind in the dust.
They
got off at Clinton in the quick July rain
with
the last of the wheat burning red as rust.
When
the moon was a witchboat sailing the plains,
as
diamond eyes came home to lily-white trust
in
the carnival night, storm in the willow,
the
teacher slept sweet with her red-haired pillow.
The
next day at midday, two girls and a child
left
town in a buggy to laugh and laugh last.
Fannie
screamed like a bobcat, the wind went wild
when
Katie's man came up through the tall sawgrass.
The
Dove saw the buck-knife draw a cutthroat smile;
all
she knew was to make the scared horse run fast
from
the man who had Katie back, all his, dead.
All
the Dove had was poison and a red dirt bed.
When
the moon's a hook, a witchboat, a sickle
when
the last of the wheat stands brown in the ground
while
Orion runs after Hecate the fickle
above
the dwindling lights of a dying town,
the
Dove does her dance to a penny whistle
and
a dead woman calls her child with that sound.
The
next fall, when Doll's carnival topped the ridge
it
rolled without stopping past Dead Woman's bridge.
~September 2014
This was written as a personal challenge, issued to me by Magaly Guerrero, to write a poem dealing with a carnival taking place during the Autumn Equinox, for my favorite poetry website, Imaginary Gardens With Real Toads. More information about it appears there, and in the notes below.
Process notes: Dead Woman's Crossing, also called Dead Women Crossing, refers both to a small community by that name in Custer County, Oklahoma near Weatherford, and the nearby bridge over Deer Creek where the decapitated body of schoolteacher Katie De Witt James was found in August of 1905. The events (other than my imaginary carnival) described in this story are factual up to a point, with completely fictitious biographical details and explanations of my own invention. You can get the details (as far as actually known) of the unsolved murder of Katie De Witt James and the poisoning of Fannie Norton at the link to real toads above, and also from this
wikipedia article.
'Grip' is an archaic word for a small traveling bag. Prostitutes of that era were often referred to euphemistically as '
Soiled Doves,' while '
fast,' 'fallen' and
'ruined' were terms used to describe women who had lost their virginity, were free with their sexual favors or considered loose morally.
White Owl cigars, including
'blunts' are an inexpensive brand that has been made in the South since 1887. They have about the same place in cigar hierarchy as Swisher Sweets (once my own occasional brand.)
Fannie Norton did use the name 'Mrs Ham,' but the eponymous Saloon and Hog Ranch is a flight of my fancy taken loosely from the life of Calamity Jane, who in her youth is reputed to have been a working girl at the infamous
Fort Laramie Three Mile Hog Ranch, a 19th century 'military brothel' and stage coach stop near Fort Laramie, Wyoming, also said, like Dead Woman's Crossing, to be haunted.
This poem is written in the ottava rima form, with lines of eleven syllables.
Images: Circus arriving in Seligman, Missouri, late 19th century
Public domain
via wikimedia commons
Dead Woman's Crossing, by Nathan Gunter on flick'r
Shared under a Creative Commons license
