Floyd Collins Interview, Sand Cave, 1925
1.
This don't bother me
like it does you. I'm used to caves.
I'll crawl into any old hole.
I like to lie in weeds
and watch. I like to see what happens
where no one looks.
One time I think an angel
came at me--all different colors
and fading fast.
I'd like to see that thing again.
I got this gypsum flower gives off
spark and light. I keep it in a jar.
It might be a piece, you know.
It might not all come back at once.
2.
I'm hung up bad
but when I think I'll smother,
quick I think about I'm walking
down a road, sounds of bugs.
Sometimes I talk out loud
just to hear myself. My gold tooth aches.
I got a compass needle in my pocket
and more magnetism than most.
I bet you didn't know I can find my way
out of a cave in the dark.
Used to scare them tourists half to death.
I made a good cave guide.
I got Indian blood in me.
Some caves is full of old Indian bones--
big with jawteeth all the way around.
3.
The way this one breathed
I thought I was on to something,
but inside and it ain't like my Crystal--
it's dead, like it ain't going nowhere.
Somebody feeds me and I figure I can live
two weeks. I dreamed I was eating ham hock
and beans. I dreamed an angel with no face.
I dreamed I was trapped in a cave.
4.
I want them to come and cut
my goddamn leg off.
5.
I got nineteen hundred dollars in the bank
and could buy me a whole farm
if I wanted to. I got to get out of here.
I had to piss on my leg.
6.
They fetched me a crowbar
and jacks, and rigged a harness
and a tube of grease--
hasn't nothing worked so far
and sometimes I don't care
so long as I got bodies
heating me I won't freeze,
so long as they stay here
close, but every time
I think this time I'm free.
I get my spirits up.
I can't remember if I'm me
or how I call my name.
7.
It plays tricks on you--
couple of times I thought sure
I heard Johnny coming.
Wasn't nothing, probably water
tunneling. Me and Johnny
was boys together.
He'll get me out if anybody can.
8.
Tell me how you said people was pulling
for me. Tell them to keep on praying.
My Daddy is a Sunday-go-to-meeting man.
Tell him I found the Lord
in this hole. Tell him I am struck
with tongue. I've made my peace.
Death don't frighten me none--
but it's so long sometimes
I get a flickering
like when my coal-oil's running low
and there ain't flame enough to light this hole.
Natural Angle of Repose
She asks me to hold what of my childhood
Fades like moonbow on that night we missed it,
Clouds grey as fish above the Falls:
Her pet peacock, how Lizzie tossed him
Cornbread in the snow, called him Prettything
(a name that stuck), how he'd strut and fan
His tail. Remember? Later, a letter says she's sewing
Prom dresses, the house flecked with sequins--
Not since her father cleaned a mess of sun perch
In the kitchen, scattering their scales along the walls.
She spreads the pattern, smooths the taffeta folds,
Constructing, dismantling, remembering fingers
Raking out the entrails, a crisp and watery smell.
Spring Storm
Then a rending, like fabric flapping loose,
and I am awake to the whole house--
cats in the breezeway, the great sides crimped
and stapled with aluminum, my familiar room
flashing with thorns. Even the timbers
are shuddering--poplar joists squared with a broadax
when Great Grandfather was a boy.
Tonight in the river bottoms, something
is moving, something is born.
Out back, the windmill's gap-toothed wheel
tests the air, the orchard behind it falling
to the river's dark Caesarean.
When the two o'clock train arrives, the crickets
clustered near the root-cellar door will scatter
as if someone slipped the dark with body heat,
passing through their eyeless world.
I am afraid I am afraid of nothing.