Free 2000 Deciduous Trees : Memories of a Zine (9781937316051) by Nath Jones Page B

drank beer. Lots of beer and the
short guy and his sister seemed to fight with the giants in the
window for our attention.
    I would have left hours before if it hadn't
been raining.

 
    YOU’RE SIERRA
LEONE
    You're Sierra Leone. But just a child hiding
out. Did you know there is a cottonwood tree here, too, young sir?
Mine stands with roots tangled in dark Indiana soil, leaning over a
river made simply when a strand of God's hair touched the earth by
accident. It's in the little ravine behind my house where the
vulture likes to swoop-beat slow and rise again on warmer air. I've
known that tree my entire life. With its shivering leaves and its
snow tears. Charming. Peaceful. My constant refuge of
hide-and-seek.
    And now, God, now, I hear about your
cottonwood tree. On its red soil. Where you must be afraid even of
its immutable peace. Because the leaves are your only witnesses.
Irretrievable when they fall.
    Can it be possible? Who is
stopped listening to that? Can the world be so cruel? I had hoped
not. But there you were, finding God's grace in a plane full of
bombs. Saved from your own execution by so many others. And now
these photographs. Coming to me between ads for push-up bras and
cellulite cream in some Vanity
Fair.
    These photographs of soldiers wearing blue
flip-flops with their camouflage garb. Where bloody smiles point
victoriously to severed heads. Where the man from Chicago, the good
doctor who wanted to return for his family, lies watching death
approach as if on a beach gazing at the gulls pass. He knows. He
knew what I wonder. Who are these fucking murderers?
    You wanted to explain. So you began with
your careful midnight matchsticks. Huddled close. Writing with lime
juice ink. Waiting for someone to wet your autobiography with their
own tears so as to be able to read it.
    But as you come running from the bombs with
your new cache of these horrid photographs and you huddle with the
cottonwood which shudders itself in fear, who do you meet? Are you
looking for an accomplice? I only know how to play. Are you looking
for help? I am only a child on a river bank. And if you are looking
for someone who understands your hideous fear I am not afraid—don’t
have to be. What would I fear in my cottonwood? I am only hiding
from a friend. And you, oh God, you are hiding from the same kind
of immortal accident that made my hairline river. From his shifting
feet or leaning elbow. Trying to anticipate his tired movements so
as to avoid his weight.
    God is careless, I recognize.
    And I begin to cry. You look at me, scared.
Realizing that we're not hiding together. That your photographs can
only be part of my game. I scream at you in my own defense, "Look!
Look where your pictures are! Look what else came with them! Movie
stars? Technology moguls! Shiny pages and pretty colors!" And I'm
so sorry. In a thousand ways. Because if it weren’t for the movies,
I never would have known. And if I never had known, maybe your God
behind the cottonwood has no purpose.
    But now what? So many barriers between us
keeping me from understanding or helping or from just giving you
hand-holding hope behind that tree while you wait. Divisive
realities.
    It's hard to be friends sometimes.
    So now here we are together for a moment
behind our cottonwood trees, one on each side of the world, one on
each side of twenty years. And all I can offer, all I can give you,
is that I know what it feels like to be waiting there. Those
moments under the cottonwood tree where the leaves chop sunlight
into rain. And the wind having fought his way through the chatty
leaves reaches your skin simply as a sigh-puff.
    To be there quiet. To be there alone.
    I know that, young sir.
    But I will not wish to share your anguish.
Ever. Or to be hiding in that bloody kind of soil. And I don't know
what to do, now. With these pictures on my late-night bed. You are
gone, now. I suppose. And the cottonwood leaves have fallen.

 
    PAY DAY
    She sat with her shoulders