{"id":8283,"date":"2023-04-14T18:06:58","date_gmt":"2023-04-14T18:06:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/?p=8283"},"modified":"2023-04-14T18:34:41","modified_gmt":"2023-04-14T18:34:41","slug":"gin-rummies-the-fiddler-poems-by-e-m-schorb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/gin-rummies-the-fiddler-poems-by-e-m-schorb\/","title":{"rendered":"Gin Rummies & The Fiddler. Poems by E M Schorb."},"content":{"rendered":"
\r\nGIN RUMMIES<\/strong>\r\n\r\n\t\tTo find a friend one must close one eye.\r\n\t\tTo keep him\u2014two.\r\n\t\t\t\t        \u2014Norman Douglas\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\tfor Rodney Formon<\/em>\r\n\r\n\r\nFriday nights, a fry-cook, \r\narms scarred by sizzling fat, \r\nRodney bangs on my door.\r\nWe like to drink together,\r\nshoot the breeze, and laugh.\r\nDrunk enough, we sing!\r\nIt\u2019s karaoke with CDs scattered \r\non the table, improvisational\r\nshandygaffs and combinations\r\nyou can\u2019t enjoy with your relations.\r\n\r\nIt\u2019s good to have a drinking buddy.\r\nI\u2019ve used up two already\u2014\r\none who fell down a flight of stairs\r\nand one, who was much older, \r\nwho died of his warrior life.\r\nBut now I\u2019ve got Rodney,\r\nwho is very different from the others.\r\n\r\nThe other two were quite and somewhat\r\nintellectual, and where the one\r\ncould talk history or science, art,\r\nmusic, or just about any subject\r\nin just about any language and come back,\r\nbeing polyglot, and polymath,\r\neven polymorphic, after hooch;\r\nthe other was a man of action,\r\na war hero with many medals\r\ntucked away in drawers locked\r\nby indifference, but still would tell of\r\nweapons, arms and the man, and such\r\nwith fervor\u2014my Heraclitus\u2014\r\nand also with disgust, with\r\nfatalism, believing nothing\r\nchanges in man\u2019s fighting nature,\r\ndisposed to think the worst;\r\nbut enthusiastic over chess,\r\nwhich he played in earnest\r\nas if he were at war again.\r\n\r\nBut Rodney is another sort:\r\nHe knows I write but will not read\r\na word I write, nor much else either,\r\nbut likes the Internet so much\r\nhe slides crabwise in thought,\r\ntoward what depth of cyberspace\r\nI often cannot fathom until zing\r\nI see it for myself, or am I drunk?\r\n\r\nI see with Rodney that the other two,\r\ncomplimented first my young and then \r\nmy middle-aged delusions \r\nof a deeper self-knowledge\r\nthan available to most.  Yes, Rodney\r\nshows me to myself, or shows me \r\nto my youthful ghosts, as ego-fed,\r\nbut did and does this unintentionally,\r\nwhose wonderful indifference makes me shrink\r\nlike a cock in the cold, and chug my drink.\r\n\r\n \r\nTHE FIDDLER<\/strong>\r\n  \r\n                       An Appalachian Tale  <\/em>            \r\n\r\n\r\nPlayed the devil\u2019s fiddle, stomping to it, shaking it out,\r\n   full of corned blood, his boot down down down!    \r\nDays before the corn, his old bitch Lucy lay by his piston heel.\r\n   Said later she smelled it, stayed by it, waiting\r\nfor the meaty bone; said later never done him no harm at all;\r\n   said later not even a ghost of evil but Lucy got it,\r\nold bloodhound bitch like red clay, wrinkled old lady hanging\r\n   from her own bones\u2014could make her moon-howl,\r\npointing his wild bow\u2014do that at dances.  Devil in a Baptist,\r\n   playing the fiddle.   Gradual as the mountains,  \r\nhe found out how the devil got in.  Fiddle under his spiked,\r\n   gray chin, corn jug thumb-hooked and cradled on top\r\nhis elbow\u2014capful for Lucy\u2014then stomp stomp stomp: music\r\n   through Blue Ridge pines!   Could choo choo it\r\nso\u2019s you see smoke and steam, hear that wheezy accordion whistle;\r\n   could conjure with it up a trainload of places\r\nor turn you back home to the station of pines and blue smoke\r\n   mountains, bring musical rain, or put the devil\r\nin your heart, winking and drinking and stomping.  Everybody loved\r\n   him and his Lucy, including said devil, as the corn dropped\r\ndown into his right big toe.  Said it hurt to stomp.  But it don\u2019t\r\n   stop the fiddler.  Don\u2019t nothing stop the fiddler!  He was\r\none thing else than music; he was a man.  Take more\u2019n corn going\r\n   through, dropping down in my right big toe, says at\r\nthe May dance, everybody seeing him stomp, ouch ouch ouch on\r\n   his big red gray spiked old corned face.  Devil \r\ngot in through the corn, slick as silk; got down in my boot,\r\n   but I\u2019ll stomp him out; give old Satan a head-\r\nache\u2014stomp stomp stomp!  But that corn went to killing him.\r\n   His bow was flying!  Went on like this, folks say,\r\na tad\u2019s five year, him stomping the devil in the corn and the devil\r\n   stomping back.  Said now he couldn\u2019t play no more if\r\nhe don\u2019t get rid o\u2019 that old devil.  Takes him a broad wood chisel\r\n   out back on a stump, sets his right foot up, sets\r\nthat chisel to his toe, and strikes down with a good hefty hammer.\r\n   When he pulls back his foot, that devil in the corned toe\r\nstays on the stump, says looka me, I\u2019m off!  Has brought him \r\n   some fireplace soot and some gingham.  Sticks that foot\r\nin that black soot, to staunch the blood, and wraps it in gingham\r\n   rags.  Said never done him no harm again, quiet as a bone,\r\nand he goes back to stomping in peace, rid of the devil.  But \r\n   first, he throws that old corned toe to Lucy.  Says:\r\nI knowed you always wanted it.  Now mind the nail, Lucy; don\u2019t let\r\n   the devil get you, you drunk old droop-skinned hound\r\nbitch, cuz I love you.  And Lucy goes to lickin\u2019 that toe, pops\r\n   it in, and goes to grinding up that devil in her old ground down\r\nchops.  And next time we see them,  the fiddler and his drunk bitch,\r\n   they both full of corn, and ready, now, for the dance! <\/pre>\n
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Schorb\u2019s<\/strong> work has appeared in Agenda (UK), The American Scholar, The Carolina Quarterly, The Hudson Review, The Southern Review, Stand (UK), The Sewanee Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The North American Review, Poetry Salzburg Review (AU), The Yale Review<\/em>, and Oxford Poetry (UK), among others.<\/em><\/p>\n
His collection, Murderer\u2019s Day,<\/em> was awarded the Verna Emery Poetry Prize and published by Purdue University Press, and a subsequent collection, Time and Fevers<\/em>, was the recipient of the Writer\u2019s Digest International Self-Published Award for Poetry and also an Eric Hoffer Award.<\/p>\n
Most recently, his novel R&R a Sex Comedy<\/em> was awarded the Beverly Hills Book Award for Humor.<\/p>\n
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GIN RUMMIES To find a friend one must close one eye. To keep him\u2014two. \u2014Norman Douglas for Rodney Formon Friday nights, a fry-cook, arms scarred by sizzling fat, Rodney bangs on my door. We like to drink together, shoot the breeze, and laugh. Drunk enough, we sing! It\u2019s karaoke with CDs scattered on the table, … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[179,808,796,366,754,401,43],"tags":[18,136,3],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8283"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8283"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8283\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8286,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8283\/revisions\/8286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}