Chris Siteman, born in Boston, grew up in a blue collar, predominantly Irish-Catholic, family. He’s traveled widely in the US and Europe, and worked extensively in the trades. Chris received his MFA from Emerson College, and since August 2010 he’s been pursuing his JD at Suffolk Law. He has taught in Boston University’s Undergraduate Writing Program, Lesley University’s Humanities Department, and Suffolk University’s English Department. His work is forthcoming in The Worcester Review, Poetry Ireland Review and The Potomac, and has most recently appeared in 5 Poetry Journal, Poetry Quarterly, PostPoetry Magazine, The Tattooed Poets Project and Anomalous.---------
Crayfish
for T.T.
We called them
crawdads, craw-
fishes, creek
scorpions,
creek lobsters,
mudbugs &
yabbies— On
the shed roof
on our backs
we named them
to ourselves
and the clouds—
***
First they seemed
plated in
pebbles, red-
brown-green-gray-
blue— Crosses
between arm-
adillos
and horseback
knights— Feathered
gills bristles—
Galahad’s
vizored beard—
***
Like the white-
faced hornets
we dropped in
webs— Just to
see who’d kill
who, what trumped
what, fangs or
stinger— Black
mirrors shone
in sun; both
scored venom—
Shivered, done.
***
Shivered, done.
***
In French class
I, palm-faced,
sat window-
staring: rain—
The fields spilled
brown & green
paint on slate
sky, the board—
Voice to my
ear: E-cre
-vis-se— Now—
Ecrevisse—
***
Our teacher,
belt over
belly— Shirt,
tucked armor—
Staring through
microscopes
at slides, their
cells, until
we knew all
the names, knew
them by heart:
Decapods—
***
I thought them
brood of two-
pounders grand-
father loved—
He’d pause to
cough, lift one,
snap the tail
off where it
met thorax,
so he could
suck down green
tomalley—
***
Tree-lined banks—
Bellies down
on the foot-
bridge over
the brook— Sand,
sediment,
shimmering
leaf-tossed sun—
Shadows longed
toward them
as three stones
shifted shade—
***
Reaching through
water, hands
bent by light,
we moved like
time, until
we almost
held them in
tender grasp—
Two tail-flicks—
And they slipped
away as
clouds of silt—
Bottomless Hole Appears in the City of Man
Sitting in shade, sipping tea,
listening to the mocking
birds, looking across
cobblestones bleaching in sun,
shimmering a mirror that
spills ground into sky—
***
My friend, a lawyer, discusses
my several options as regards
the nature of my inheritance.
He talks property rights:
…a bundle of twigs as
claim good against all the world.
Think about the way
in which property’s retained
and transferred.
For instance, say one has a life
estate interest— That’s determinative
of the nature of one’s rights—
***
As he speaks I think of my mother,
a clump of hair, bones & goo
in the ground, & I watch
an old man & boy walk hand
in hand in sun. They too shimmer
trails of water dancing away
like tails on kites—
Just then the birds stop singing—
The ground groans.
Old man & boy stop still.
I look— The man’s eyes
meet mine— The earth turns
a wide gash beneath their feet,
and they hang as to rise
into the sky—
Collars almost pinched
between invisible fingers—
And they're gone.
Fact Pattern
a horizon dawned in her eyes. You ran—
Fact Pattern
I.
It started when you saw her standing there,
blue flowers in her golden hair, & a
shaft of light tracing her sheer silhouette—
It started because something in you was
wild as dimpled strawberries in her cheeks,
wild as your heart felt throbbing in your hands—
You reached out to touch her curls, unable
to still your hand, & she felt the tug, gasped,
turned— Your blues met hers, she smiled, but far off
a horizon dawned in her eyes. You ran—
The ghost of her on your hand, a lead glove,
fled down an alley, sat in a puddle
and nursed your hand next to a dumpster, that
it touched such golden hair in such a light,
and there you sat, feeling her in your hand—
Then on, whenever & wherever you
wandered, to coffee shops or bus stations,
she went with you; you reached for your wallet,
you could feel her— So, you found a hatchet
and struck your hand off at the wrist, & threw
it in a trashcan beside a storefront
display: pictures of gold hair girls in white
sundresses dancing in a ring, looking
into your eyes, your face trembled to let
tears flow— They overcame you. You cried out,
your stump bleeding into your coat pocket,
down your leg; puddling on the sidewalk.
II.
How many faces you’d been. You thought you
could move beyond a ghost hand, a golden-
haired girl & memories of your crowded
ride hurtling home from the hospital—
There in the tunnel, swaying in the dark
you thought perhaps you could go on, perhaps
in such places such light in darkness, such
darkness in light, could pass as mere shadows.
But you knew no escape from the mirror—
You carried your thoughts in a bleak sack, rain
your deeds. You knew why you reached out, & so
you left every thing & one you knew—
Running so, even your legs refused you,
to take you further, until you didn’t
recognize your sad faces anymore—
But there was always you, & you always
recognized you, with your stump-wrist, so you
kept running, knotted arches, thighs & calves,
until you reached a wide shore, & running
no further put on a suit, got a claw
for a hand, took work at a t.v. store—
And no one else knew it was all a sham.
So long it lasted that way, you shilling
dream-boxes, putting everything to sleep
where you lived hundreds & thousands of days
staring down reflections in gray-black screens—
Nights you took up drinking the nights away.
III.
A keeper of the watch— You stood atop
your watchtower waiting for what would come,
sails over seas, that which would undo you—
Out the window stood a crabapple tree.
The apples, swollen, dropping golden-green—
You closed your eyes & could taste bittersweet.
There was a creak of the floorboards that sent
an electric blue crackle down your back;
you turned quick to see who was at the door—
You’d been a soldier in the war, you’d been
a butcher in a market, a buyer
and seller. You’d been taker & breaker—
Born in a small town, you left the small town.
You wandered between farms & factories
eating dirt, drinking rivers. What you saw—
Deserts & sky, cities— With their towers
of glass & steel ringed with workers’ hovels.
You’d been beaten stupid-wise by life. You
sat with your canned beer that smelled of old corn
on the front porch, half watching, half waiting,
and you grew old, you began to see ghosts,
began to see the lights of every life
you’d ever snuffed, dancing in the front yard
under the bare branches of the oak tree.
You were a mere boy with a broken toy—
You were a mere boy with a broken book—
You were a mere boy with a broken brain—
IV.
At the heart of all this there’s a body,
neck broken, arms & legs twisted, outlined
in chalk— Behind yellow tape, flashlights scan
asphalt. And you’re a detective looking
for what’s there & what’s absent. You don’t know,
can’t know, but you’re hunting yourself, & you
really can’t remember the night you went
back to find her— How you watched her as she
stood under white lights, behind wide windows
of the gallery before a canvas,
with an eggplant in a bowl beside her,
staring at a canvass of a woman
in a gallery, before a canvas
of a woman staring at a canvass,
with an eggplant in a bowl beside her—
When she shut the lights you followed her home.
You stood in the shadows among the leaves.
In mind, you’d already raped & killed her—
When you got off her, you felt disgusted
with yourself, a hairless chimp who can’t stop
whacking off all day behind the zoo bars.
With your intact hand you threw her jacket
over her— When you heard her cry was when
it welled up in you: like a harpy’s screech—
All your lightning bolt thoughts ached to silence—
You grabbed her jaw & crown until you heard
her bones in the night, the bright-clear-cracking.
V.
There’s a mob; angry neighbors at the door;
they’ve thrown torches onto the roof; the flames
lick the darkness of the third floor windows—
Like a dream, or a Hollywood horror,
where the town suddenly realizes there’s
a monster next door, & they act from fear—
Yet, in this take on the tale, you’re the one
they want to hunt down in the night, the one
they want to turn to ashes on the lawn.
They’re yelling your name, & there’s a woman
up front, you hear her voice crackling above
the flames— Actually screaming for your head.
You remember a red ribbon flash, how
the street corner looked certain summer days
when you learned to ride a bicycle, &
the sand so bleach-white in the sun— Your mind
turns a string-filled box as the scene unfolds.
The body you raped & killed: you remember.
Your need to take her the way she took you—
You, her nothing, you looked into your gut
and all your nothingness to give was death.
Turning to run out the back door, you hear
them breaking down the front, the smash of glass
as they push in the living room windows—