Three Letters to E.
Letter to E. from the Driver Seat of My 2004 Jeep Grand Cherokee
Dear E., I sleep in the passenger seat of my old jeep grand cherokee now.
America’s forgotten memories evicted me. Here’s one: my machine
is named after people who endured ethnic cleansing. I can’t afford
rent or the bones homes are built with. I went west as a young man. I went
north, south, and east, too. Self-imposed exile is the only destiny worth
manifesting. No GPS or compass commands me. There are no prairies left
to put a little house on. I’m native to nowhere except maybe Caucasia.
I fill my tank with my belly’s bile, cleaner than burning gasoline.
Even better: it’s completely free. Plenty of rhyme. No reason. Rather,
rhyme is the reason. Boston rhymes with brooding. Nevada with nausea
and radiation-induced leukemia. Indiana? My birth place. My father’s.
One grandmother’s. The one who loved counting deer on road trips.
Kentucky, when the sky’s as gray as limestone and mutton is on the barbecue,
rhymes with Kerry, Cork, or Clare. That’s why my ancestors stayed there.
Plus, tobacco tastes good, and paid formerly famished Irish farmers pretty well.
California is where the west ends. Yes, there’s Hawaii. But Hawaii is not really
American. Just a high-value target, I’m told, for Russia or China. Not to mention
Japan. Don’t try to map my movements. It won’t make sense. I’ll write
when I can. I won’t tell you everything. Your ears will burn. But, you’re no stranger
to flame. I know about your fireman fantasy. I’ll shed water
where I can. Stomach acid is good fuel. Combusts emission-free. Will.
Letter to E. from Boston’s Deer Island Wastewater Treatment Plant
Dear E., After another bender as a blizzard, I am runoff again. I was still
hot when it got cold. Weather fronts collided. The wind kissed my bare skin
just like you did. Then, it froze, panicked, and ripped itself free. Like you
refused to. I started spinning. I thought liquor couldn’t freeze. I was wrong.
Whiskey. Withdrawal. Whiskey. Withdrawal. A water cycle of sorts. Once
I’d drank enough, I snowed and snowed. Shut schools down, killed drivers with bad
tires, nudged everyone closer to fires. I was pretty and clean until I hit concrete.
Oil, gas, dog piss, anti-freeze. No powder is pure anymore. The sunlight pouring
through the iron bars of the sewage grates finally melted me. They tell me I’ll be
free to flow again after they rehabilitate me through pipes too old to make code.
Once they remove 85% of the pollutants I picked up, they’ll call me clean. Good
enough. No one is perfect. Not even drinking water. Alcohol and other industrial
toxins stole most of my memories. Except for these: the quiet, temporary peace
when your sins are buried in heavy snowpack, 6 feet deep. Soberly, Will.
Letter to E. from the Sierra Nevadas, After the Flood
Dear E., Spring never came. She merely arrived looking for a merry
ploughboy or two to take a tumble in the tulips with. There were no
tulips. The ploughboys were too busy plowing snow in sunless southern
California where schools would have had to close if they hadn’t already
for spring break. Everyone blamed the cows instead of the corn they
replaced the grasses with, shoved down cow throats, and compressed
into piss-colored syrup to sweeten our delusions. Instead of steak,
cowgirls rode into town to stock the saloons with cheese, yogurt, and
craft ice cream. No one listened to the baby-faced preacher – not even
on Easter – when he suggested that just because you can capture winter
in fridges and freezers, it doesn’t mean you should electrify everything
for camembert, brie, or vanilla bean. Jesus came back to peddle paradise,
which Spring knew was a tried and true bribe. It turned merry ploughboys
into tightlipped altar boys who pretend to hate tulips while begging God
for a chance to eat them. So, Spring rolled her eyes, mounted her high horse,
and cleared out before her hot brother, Summer, drowned town in runoff,
spoiled stinky cheese, and melted ice cream. I’ll follow Spring. Giddy up. Will.
Will Falk (he/him) is a poet, attorney, and community organizer. He writes poems while traveling across the US to offer free legal services to communities fighting against extractive projects like mines, pipelines, and clear-cuts. His poems have appeared through Chapter House Journal, ONE ART, Sheila-na-gig Online, Two Hawks Quarterly, and Wayfarer Magazine, among others. His first poetry collection is When I Set the Sweetgrass Down (Wayfarer Books, 2023).