Miles Waggener
SOUP
“…and those messages (God would not damn them) do not even know they are champions”
–Jack Spicer
At baggage claim in Mexico City in 1991
a grade schooler approached me with
her parents and wanted to practice
my language & she asked me do you
like soup? & I told her yes
I did
& that Lee Morgan’s trumpet made me
feel like I was being driven
in an old station wagon
through a rainy park in an
ephemeral city which I knew
she knew meant an old city my city
that will someday go away
one of those cities where I’d
never make friends
where a jade ring pierced
the tender hemisphere
of a beautiful man’s ear
peeking through long black hair
which remained a species of joy
not afforded me until it emerged
one muddy paw at a time
from wet hedges totally feral & unafraid
as if every night of its life
had come to me a man smoking
in a wet suit of clothes at the edge
of a weedy lot late at night
please it was 1991
& when I got home a property manager named Marcos
showed me the smallest apartment
in Freemont Nebraska
& spoke of the nuns who beat him
& made him recite poems every day
how every member of the chamber of commerce
mechanics bankers acrobats doctors
was out there
walking the streets with volumes of verse inside them &
no one would ever know
I had to ask him if he cared about it &
he said the bathroom skylight leaked
& that a man’s understanding
of his shortcomings will serve him nothing
don’t mistake it for humility
& the nail of his index finger
pointing at me was long & yellow
he was also a great guitar teacher
my guitar teacher
all that summer in careful script
on thin sheets of scientific grid paper
the girl who asked me about soup
sent me letters the last one came in
a pale green envelope
sealed with a sparkly palomino pony sticker
as if a message of encouragement or
warning it contained only a photograph of her
unsmiling with black marker
capital letters on the back
spelling out the underlined word:
remember
