Regional Differences

Regional Differences

It wasn’t just that he couldn’t

tell which way the wind was blowing

unless he held his finger in the air.

It was much more than that,

much more than how clouds

went scudding for cover

once the music of the spheres stopped,

like shy girls at a dance who are seen

to be waltzing with each other

when the lights go up and run

giggling for the ladies room.

The drama of the skies

in such a climate is certainly

worth everybody’s price of admission.

All that emptiness in the West

is what makes coyotes howl

and housewives leave the laundry

on the line all winter.

You only have to see one pair

of frozen long johns in Oklahoma

to understand what drives

the Irish and Indians to drink.

America’s moment of truth,

however, is the Midwest,

the location of which nobody can agree on

but everyone knows it’s there somewhere

in the hardscrabble soul of it all:

the rusting implements, the dilapidated barn,

the dogma of destiny, the burden of God –

the bull’s eye at the blind heart of being.

                        Robert Forrey, 2003

 

"KO Mugsy" Forrey (left) and his brother Packy (right)

          Mugsy

                  This uncle, whom I never saw,

Survives in a legend of toughness –

A thousand rounds of violence

To the making of a name

Indelible in tabloid.

A Featherweight, he fought in gyms

No bigger than a church,

From Portsmouth, New Hampshire,

To Cranston, Rhode Island,

The cauliflower trail

Through small New England towns

That led at last to Boston

And the championship.

Then, darker fights took the crown.

An indefatigable Italian

Outlasted him in fifteen.

A Portuguese from Provincetown

Closed both his eyes in eight.

A young Negro knocked him

Senseless in the second.

  Klieg lights in the balcony cracked.

Light escaped from everywhere –

Out of eyeballs,

Through gym skylights,

Under the cracks of doors.

Feints at shadows.

Blind.

Baffled by light.

                                                                              Robert Forrey

Gorbachev

Full-page ad for Vuitton luxury luggage
on back cover of The New Yorker.

How odd

Of Bolshevik

To turn into

Menshevik,

Of Worker

Into New Yorker,

Of Revolution

Into Vuitton,

Of Mikhail Sergeyevich

Into one-of-the-rich.