Live Encounters Poetry & Writing Volume Four November-December 2024
The Deed, poems by Michael Simms.
The Deed
Mart, Texas 1908
Someone who knew him called
His name and Chester came out
To the dog run between the two halves
Seeing no need for his shotgun leaning
Against the stones of the fireplace
And the man who used to live near
Didn’t say his name and Chester didn’t
Remember his name and the man
Told him to bring out his mother
And Chester did holding the thin arm
Of the old Cherokee woman who
Rarely moved from her rocking chair
Beside the fire even in summer
The man held up a deed
You need to sign he said
What is it Chester asked what
Trouble are you bringing
She ain’t done nothing he said
While his mother stood staring darkly
At the man her white hair braided
Are you working for the judge
Chester asked the man he’d known
From before but didn’t know now
She gotta sign the man said again
This for her land near Spindletop
Chester asked The land Sam Houston
Deeded to the Cherokee forever
Chester asked The man shrugged
Don’t matter what’s it for the man said
She don’t sign Sheriff’ll come
Chester remembered his shotgun
A .410 he used for squirrel leaning
Against the stones inside he looked
At Blue and Tick the hound dogs
Sleeping in the dog run shade
They must’ve remembered the smell
Of the man from before cause they paid him
No mind They gonna pay her
For her land? Chester asked
But the man looked away at the field
Of cotton Chester and his 12 children
Farmed for somebody else then the man
Looked at the pretty roan grazing
In the far field Chester had given
To his oldest daughter Zelphia
They called Red for her hair
It’s best your momma sign the man said
All the Indians are signing And if she don’t?
Chester asked casual-like as if making
Conversation not trouble
If she don’t the man said
There’ll be hell to pay the man looked
At Chester remembering when they
Was boys I’m real sorry about this
The man said but these men
Are serious and they’ll send hard cases
Out here you’ll be lucky if they just
Send her to the reservation
As the men talked the old woman
Squinted at the man remembered
Feeding him corn pone and molasses
When he was a boy who ran
From his father And Chester now
Remembering the bruised hungry boy
Watched his mother scratch her mark
And return to sit beside the fire
And wait for death to come
Bloodroot
Palestine, Texas 1932
For her all roads lead
To the shack beside the bayou
Her father glancing at his hand
On the wheel the girl watching
The man’s worry the healer
Waiting for them somehow knowing
They were coming her father
Unsurprised by the knowing
The girl in her green wisdom
Accepting the men’s faith
In old ways Without greeting
Her father held out his hand
Palm down the warts
Spreading on his brown wrist
The healer took the offending
Appendage muttered maybe
A prayer maybe a spell
Common in the bayou
Woods and farms The healer
Rubbed the warts with his right
Thumb cupping the man’s hand
In his left fixed his eyes
Speaking tenderly whether
To enchant or merely to pass
The time the girl couldn’t hear
Then the healer let the hand drop
Refused the dollar the man
Held out The man and girl
Drove back to town the girl
Pointing to the black smudge
On his wrist Her father
Shrugged it’s the old way
And years later the girl
Now a grandmother recognizes
The curvy lobes of Sanguinaria
And harvests the fat red
Escharotic roots near the bayou
Chops carefully grinds
By hand the blistering
Blood-like sap diluted with
Oak ash a drop of olive oil
Like the remedy book says
As her granddaughter watches
Clutching a baby doll named
Serena against her chest
Red River
Bonham, Texas, 1963
She’s returned, the woman
He killed twenty years before
He saw her in the face of a child
Who looked up at the tower
Of the church spire that seemed
To rise from the past in that city
Where he lived like a drunken monk
Writing every morning, drinking
Every afternoon until he passed out
He loved her and wanted nothing
But a tender moment of understanding
But she mocked him and he struck at her
Only once, his hand closed in anger
Shocking him and she fell back
Hitting her head on the edge of a table
Where they lived as a couple.
He hadn’t meant it. He’d meant
To love her and somehow the passion
Turned ugly and he had become
In that single act a monster
And he left their home and became
No one, sleeping in alleys, beneath bridges
Below the traffic of ordinariness
Passing above and now thinking
Of her, he walked beside the river
Dark with insolence, unresolved
Weather breaking above him
And he came to a dead animal
A possum its belly open
To the flies and worms
Its tongue eating itself,
Returning flesh to earth and air
And he waded into the dark
And swam to meet her
Author’s note on these three poems: according to family legend, my Cherokee great-great grandmother whose name I never knew was visited at her son’s cotton sharecrop in 1908 by two agents who made her sign over the rights to the land in East Texas which Sam Houston, the first president of Texas, had given to the Cherokee “for all time.” Spindletop, the first oil gusher in Texas, had suddenly made the land valuable. She signed over the deed because she was afraid of being taken to the reservation in Oklahoma. Her daughter-in-law whom I called Maw-maw was Cajun and her family relied on folk remedies for healing. And finally, the poem Red River is fiction based on actual incidents in East Texas. When I was a boy, I read newspaper accounts of Dean Corll, aka the “Candy Man” who raped and murdered at least 28 boys and buried them on shores and banks of various lakes and rivers in East Texas before being murdered by one of his accomplices. These stories merged in my mind with that of Jennifer Harris whose murdered body was found floating in the Red River by fishermen on May 15, 2002.
© Michael Simms
Michael Simms is the founding editor of Vox Populi and the founding editor emeritus of Autumn House Press. Ragged Sky has published three collections: American Ash, Nightjar and Strange Meadowlark. A fourth collection Jubal Rising will be released by Ragged Sky in May, 2025. His speculative fiction novels published by Madville include The Talon Trilogy (2023, 2024, 2025) and Bicycles of the Gods (2022). His poems and essays have been published in Poetry (Chicago), Scientific American, Plume and the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day. In 2011, the Pennsylvania Legislature awarded Simms a Certificate of Recognition for his service to the arts. Originally from Texas, Simms lives in the Mt Washington neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with his wife Eva and their kelpie Josie.
Thanks to Mark Ulyseas for publishing these poems!