In lieu of a biography, Bob Bradshaw submitted the following:
"I have stood in front of a Kandinsky painting and listened as a mother explained to her child how a blue spot was water. I have heard others talk about the wooded landscapes in Pollock's drip paintings. The farther a familiar landscape recedes from us, it seems, the harder we look for it.
American poetry relies more and more on fantasy and humor. We see the world more through the eyes of Klee and Miro than we do through the eyes of Grant Wood. On the whole this has been a good thing.
But we can never distance ourselves too far from where we came. Sooner or later the sea, as if tired of us, or perhaps disgusted with us, pushes us back to land.
Place inevitably regains its importance in our lives, if briefly. We can never imagine living without it. Our life as a brain in a gurgling container in a lab somewhere has little appeal to most of us. Place, at any rate, has some importance to the characters below."
Bob Bradshaw's poetry is also featured in the 1998, 1999, 2000, and 2001 editions of The Central California Poetry Journal on pages 8114, 9116, 0010, 0112.
Water flooded across my room,
and I waded to the doorway
in wet shoes. Father
was yelling. He carried Mother
in his arms. Out, out
he gestured and my sister
and I ran outside. A chimney
was wobbling above a roof
like a stack of plates
carried by a staggering waiter.
Bricks broke
as they hit the streets.
Our neighbors had rushed out
like us. No one
was embarrassed by their nightgowns
and pajamas.
Swarms of fireflies
had turned into sparks.
Mother had a blanket across her knees.
Her feet, bound, peeked out
from under it.
Dad, worn out, placed her down
carefully. The street was filling up
with furniture;
it was as if San Francisco
had suddenly turned
into an attic. Nervous horses
whinnied in protest
as neighbors threw belongings
into their wagons.
Clouds darkened like smoke
from a grease fire.
The air was scented
with burnt toast. Someone said
that South Of Market was burning.
Smoke rose in the distance like genies
from dirty lamps.
Soot floated across the sky
like black birds.
Teak chests and tables
Were lining the yards.
The neighborhood had become a wharf.
It was as if a ship from China
was due. Uncles bringing gifts
and news of aunties
would soon be greeting us.
That's the way it felt.
Everyone was excited.
I didn't understand why
Mother wept. My sister
and I thought it was grand.
But then Father lifted us up
among the chairs and beds
into a creaky wagon.
We waved goodbye to our neighbors
as if we were on a ship
leaving The Bay. Bye,
we yelled.
Bye!
Why is he standing in the middle of that field
dirty and ragged like a scarecrow
and frail like he's just endured a night's storm?
His shadow's as thin as a knife's.
He's never had a sense of direction,
of where he's going.
He'd probably stand there all season
till a tornado lifted him up
or his stuffing sifted out of his sleeves.
Straw man, I want to yell.
But my nagging leaves him as stoic
as ever. How can a man have such little ambition?
He'd stand there and watch the sun brush
against that shrunken lake and marvel
at colors as common as any paint store's.
I don't know whether to laugh at him, or shake him.
But he's too frail to lose any more straw.
So mostly I just lead him home to dinner.
Maybe it was the adrenalin of flag waving.
But when he walked into that room,
the dance floor as crowded as martinis
on a tray, I saw
him. Like spies we traded notes,
our friends running them back and forth
like couriers with news
from the front.
Would I dance with him?
No, would I marry
him?
It was crazy.
I felt like a sixteen year old beauty queen
on her first
float.
Maybe I should have felt insulted.
Impulsive buying, my mom said.
But I felt beautiful.
And he was more beautiful than any flag.
Buoyed
with love, we married
a month later
on the stage of the bandstand
in Golden Gate Park.
Thirty years later
we'd still be trading
notes.
1946
My baby rubbed
her heels on my belly.
We lived in a curved
space. I'd whisper
back to her,
giving her the world's
news.
Daddy had a promotion.
The bees were wearing
yellow trousers.
Daddy was winking
at her.
The horses were clattering
up and down Market Street.
A dragon was roaming
Chinatown.
Firecrackers were going off
at peoples' feet.
The funny Lion dancers shook
as if infested with lice.
Evil spirits had been driven off.
It was a lucky
year.
1964
A young man lifted
the veil from my daughter's face.
A murmur broke through the room
like incoming surf.
The room blurred.
Tears leaked
from my rust-red eyes
all afternoon.
My husband joked about renting
my daughter's old room out. My stare
vetoed that
idea.
1996
My daughter and her husband
want me to move to Pleasanton
with them.
I have no history
there, I argue.
I'd rather have tort lawyers
lined up at my door
like the destitute
queued up at St. Anthony's kitchen
than to move
from San Francisco.
It's dirty,
they say. "Yes?"
I ask.
And there's crime,
they argue.
"Oh?"
We'll discuss this
another time, they say,
as if I lived
in a county without running water,
without indoor toilets.
Yes, I say, another
time.
I jumped out of my car.
Maybe she was a college student
There, in the middle of the road, lay
a young woman. Shattered glass
from the windshield flecked her face.
She lay sideways.
Her coat was dotted with blood.
I looked around. Silence,
as if we were on a floe of ice.
A sliver of moon. A patch of stars
no bigger than the scrapings
of windshield glass on the road...
There might not be another car
on this road for hours.
I picked up her limp wrist.
There was nothing that could be done.
Headlights raced through the trees.
There was another road a ways off
that ran parallel to this one.
Headlights were coming down its slope
But here
there was only the two of us.
Her yellow hair flared in the wind.
Her car's door hung open,
as if waiting for her to get
in.
driving home for the holidays.
Who would tell her parents?
My boots were frozen in that icy road.
Headlights probed the skies
as cars went up the neighboring slope.
The headlights would pick out
the snow perched in the high branches
of the sequoias that lined
the highway. I rubbed my wristwatch
furiously, as if angry with her.
It was a whisker past midnight.
Who would call her parents?
They were no doubt concerned
that she was late.
I moved her back into her car,
laying her across her back seat.
She looked exhausted.
It was hard to leave her there,
alone. I felt as if I was abandoning her.
I drove off, to find a phone,
to call the police. I left her
emergency lights
on.
All text and images in The Central California Poetry Journal are copyrighted. Copyright by © by Scott Galloway2002. All rights are reserved. See main Journal page for copyright information.
Authors and poets submitting original materials to this journal retain all rights to their original work, except those rights specifically assigned in writing to Solo Publications including the right to publish the submitted work in The Central California Poetry Journal. The poems on this page are copyrighted by the author. Copyright © Bob Bradshaw 2002 All Rights Reserved
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