THE BURGALOOS

I will tell you a story about a black virgin glove.

Shy glove.
Shy glove.

Never a hand in the glove.
sunset + love = good kind of glove.

But we were robbers.
We were burgaloos.
That’s what we called ourselves, me and Tom.

Tom liked to press the belly of the Happy Chef.
I liked to place a blade of grass between my thumbs and blow.

I cut my mouth once, so hard did the grass reverberate against my lips.
That’s why they call it a blade, asshole, said Tom.

We let the glove lay tenderly on the dash while we robbed banks.
While we robbed army surplus stores.
While we robbed a house with orchids in the windows.

Next to the orchids was a harp and next to the harp
a framed poem called “The Load Star.” It began

I don’t know how. But the neck of the harp was womanly and soft
like a stilled northeasterly wind. Movement glinted in the fiber.

Tom wrapped his arms around the harp and lifted it to his chest.
I did not open the door for him.

Instead I examined the orchid, the deep purple color in the center
fraying and scattering as the color moved up the petals.

I thought of my mother and the cancer in her chest.
I thought of the log we split open in the woods and then
the leg of a man we shot and how it kept kicking.

With my mouth I made no sound.
I went back to the car and put on the glove.

Tom, I said, let’s drive away from here.

My hand was warm inside the glove.
Greatness reared her head in front of me.



poem by Kaethe Schwehn

see A Sing Economy