So Many Miles, So Many Deaths
(after Carolyn Smart, Careen)
for the Bruce I never knew
and the Bruce I know now
Blood and bone, heat and cars.
And the dead are after me.
Bonnie and Clyde, the Barrow Gang—
so young, no glamour,
just hard-scrabble subsistence,
the future careening away.
Reading about them, I’m riveted, reeling
from a visceral punch in the gut,
having discovered a family connection,
and I have to know, have to care.
I remember that the grandfather
I never knew had written
about being in the thick of
teenage action at Reelfoot Lake
one Tennessee summer when outlaws
cruised the highway, the summer
after Bonnie and Clyde exploded
in a springtime storm of red,
when sullen-faced Ray Hamilton,
who rode some with Clyde—
hated him too— was also at the lake,
holed up in a cabin for a week
with an unwilling passenger in the trunk
of his V-8 coupe. My grandfather wrote
that no one at Reelfoot knew until later
and no one was surprised.
Bonnie and Clyde, Blanche and Buck
and the others, so young, but older
and stronger than anyone that age
should have to be, not much older
than my grandfather at the time
and I keep going back to their dates,
their years so short, lives too brief.
Bonnie dead at 24, Clyde at 25.
Ray Hamilton, just 22, died
in “Old Sparky” the chair.
What was the point? And I wish
I had met my grandfather.
Blood and bone, heat and hopelessness.
And the dead are after me.
* References from Careen (Brick Books, 2016) used with permission. Italicized line from “Outlaws” by Bonnie Parker.
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