Poetry by Ron Cooper
Ron Cooper is a native of South Carolina and currently a Florida resident. He is the author of four novels, the latest of which, All My Sins Remembered, was a Florida Book Award medalist. The Washington Post called his novel Purple Jesus "a literary event of the first magnitude." His poems, short stories, and essays have appeared in publications such as Chattahoochee Review, Blue Mountain Review, Deep South Magazine, Texas Review, and Bronze Bird Review. He received a BA from the College of Charleston, an MA from the University of South Carolina, and a Ph.D. from Rutgers University. Cooper teaches at the College of Central Florida and is an amateur bluegrass musician. He challenges anyone to play and sing worse than he does.
The Exegesis of Engines
Hands folded on the grille,
head bowed over the engine,
my father would search for a sign
in that metallic tongue
of rumbles, knocks, and groans.
Stationed in the driver’s seat,
stretching to peer over the great wheel,
fighting the temptation to bump the horn,
I would wait for a hand to float above the hood—
finger pointing up: give ‘er gas;
open palm; hold steady;
thumb down: ease off.
And it would come to him,
And he would rise up to obey:
Set the timing, replace the starter.
Summoned to the junkyard,
We would walk among the broken and abandoned.
“They never really die,” he would say.
“They just wait for another chance.”
He would salvage a part,
cradle it in cupped hands,
and would know from the weight, the balance.
And with every repair I was led
through another mystery,
each beginning with the Great Analogy:
In the battery sleeps a spirit
that is awakened by the ignition.
Gas is bread.
Oil is blood.
The carburetor gives breath.
In the block pumps a heart.
The purpose of it all is motion,
for we are restless.
And so I learned this divination
to feel the pounding prophesies of pistons,
to hear the grinding gospel of gears,
to read the message in the machine.
Come, lay your hands
upon these vitals,
make them whole,
and you will be transported.
Rabbits
We believed they are drawn from their warrens
by the full moon.
Late, cold nights we waited for them to break the treeline
to head towards the cabbage and us.
Rabbits stop for beams,
their eyes as bright as moons,
as if expecting something to be revealed.
We were long into our Falstaffs,
by the time we turned on a flashlight,
and our .22s would miss their marks.
We laughed, cussed, and
retold the old lies that we believed made us men
who wait for death like rain,
who have no bigger dreams
than sharing a dark field with rabbits.
We grew silent,
lying between the rows,
staring at the moon.
The Buried Alive Man
No shoots pushed through
The drought-choked April fields
That rushed past the Fairlane on our way to
Fresh Air Pentecostal Church and Drive-In Theater.
A tongues-speaking preacher had danced atop
The concession building that morning,
Calling God to fill bellies and pockets
And bring new brogans to all.
That Sunday afternoon my father paid
The three dollars Mama said we didn’t have
For us to see the Buried Alive Man
Dig himself out of the ground.
We sat on the hood in the third row and
Could see, near the screen, the canopy
And mound where some filed past to bend,
Touch the warm dirt, mumble a prayer.
A voice from the window-hung speaker called,
“Attention, the Buried Alive Man is rising up!
Please return to your cars.”
Assistants crowded beneath the canopy,
And we strained, not quite seeing,
But he emerged, khaki with dirt,
Climbed atop the concession building
As all horns honked and headlights flashed.
“Friends,” came his voice through the speaker,
“I have been below and have come back
To tell you. I am here to tell you
About descending and arising.
“Friends, the Earth what held me in its bowels
Turnt me loose a new man.
You seen me claw up from the very ground
Where I laid for three days like a dead root.
“Friends, I am here to tell you
That I was planted deep,
But now I walk the Earth just like you.
In this time of need, I am here to tell you.”
We rode home with the windows down.
The dry April air filled the Fairlane
And stung our faces like gnats.(no stanza break)
On that cloudless day I smelled
The parched dirt in the plowed fields
Like ours, where beans, corn, lay buried,
And saw my father driving, still worrying
About what the Earth would give up.