1 2 to Jon, in whom I am well pleased 3 A Cellarful of Nose Essays by Mike Finley 1975-2010 4 5 Table of Contents A Melting Pot......................................................................11 Guatemaltecan Prayers.......................................................14 Jacobs Hill Forever.............................................................23 Good Dog...........................................................................37 The Late Great Franklin Ace..............................................44 It Was Going to Be a Long Day..........................................48 In the Year of the Deer-Christ.............................................58 They Died Off the Walkway...............................................62 The Three Strikes of Life....................................................64 Couvade and the Cloud of Unknowing..............................68 Piece of Thanksgiving Pie..................................................91 A Death in the House..........................................................94 A Mending Tree .................................................................97 Canine Wisdom ................................................................103 Death, Hell, and Santa Claus............................................106 In the Sauna......................................................................112 Together at Last................................................................115 6 Age of Edison...................................................................118 The Pears of Cupertino.....................................................121 A Jar in Tennessee.............................................................124 Atlas & I...........................................................................128 Bing Cherries....................................................................131 The Greatest Arcade Hero Ever........................................134 Bathtub Madonna..............................................................138 Paula Kelly........................................................................141 Brain Games.....................................................................144 Following the Fox.............................................................156 Florence McCready..........................................................158 'The Lightning that Doesn’t Stop......................................164 Rain and Rudeness............................................................170 Curbside............................................................................172 Correspondence with an Autoresponder...........................175 Black and proud ...............................................................179 To a Dog, Pooping............................................................182 Scottish and Irish Besides.................................................188 Go Deep............................................................................193 7 George...............................................................................198 Don't Bother Me ..............................................................200 Goodbye Tim Hardin My Friend......................................204 Inside the Canine Head.....................................................217 I Met Charles Manson (I Think).......................................221 Bag of Rocks.....................................................................228 Empty Places....................................................................235 At the Renaissance Festival..............................................258 Nincompoops....................................................................260 Red Fruit ..........................................................................268 Rosie's Place.....................................................................271 'A Son of a Sea Cook'.......................................................274 A Spectacle of Oneself......................................................280 'The Skin Over a Young Girl's Wrist'................................285 The Pickwick....................................................................291 Tusk Town........................................................................295 'The Unnatural' .................................................................303 Gee Whiz..........................................................................307 I Was a Sixties Protester...................................................310 8 The Last Turkey................................................................315 Driving to Amherst...........................................................319 Two Onetime Poets...........................................................325 Let’s Play: Celebrity Brain Tumors!.................................327 Saluting the Army Corps of Engineers.............................333 Morte d’Urban..................................................................337 Red Wheelbarrow.............................................................342 Basement Toilet................................................................346 Reunion Tale.....................................................................350 The Alien Corn ................................................................362 My Feud............................................................................373 All Valentines Eve ...........................................................379 Friends and Tumors..........................................................384 Maxims for Marriage........................................................391 Shook Foil ........................................................................394 My Conversation with Officer Bennett............................400 John Henry........................................................................403 Jacob the Crow.................................................................406 The Giant Dirtball.............................................................415 9 The Blue Bicycle..............................................................420 Serpent .............................................................................424 The Christmas Lion..........................................................429 A Rose in December ........................................................435 The Coach's Daughter.......................................................439 The Opera Thief................................................................442 Xmas Eviction..................................................................446 The Return of the Runaway Bunny..................................451 When We Were Beautiful.................................................455 Oddfathers.........................................................................460 Against Heartbreak ..........................................................473 10 A Melting Pot My mother's father didn't come over on the Titanic. A bad- tempered violent man, he lost his ticket in a pub fight. Or so I am told. He took his coffee with whiskey in it. Once he named a calf after me. Two years later he slaughtered it. I was one of his pallbearers. My father's father was a diabetic most of his life. I remember watching him pinch a skinny shoulder and slipping the needle in. He was sweet by nature. A neighbor's son ran wild with a Model T once and killed my grandfather's favorite riding horse, a saddlebred stallion. Grandpa paid to fix the broken car. I remember when I was a boy and dropped by toothbrush into the toilet, he picked it out for me and washed it off. I dreamed of him once bursting into a fountain, his life shooting out all the holes he'd made. In 1959 my mother is driving home late from her waitressing job. A stag bolts from the roadside into her beams. That night I hear voices, see a deer hung from an apple tree by the heels. Bread knife in hand, I see my father make the downward incision. The great heart tumbles onto the fallen fruit. My father and mother's first baby was sick, and the two stayed together until she died. My mother went a little mad, in advance of the loss. My father went out, for a drink, or a dance. Sometimes he came home drunk and the two of them shouted. One time he hit her, and I hugged her leg on a bunched up carpet and cried. 11 My father told my mother that her mother was an imbecile, but that is not how I remember her. I see my grandmother's hands zipping open pale skin, and with one hand pulling the unborn egg into the light. Inside the hen the shell was still soft. On television men are spading up other men from a California peach orchard. My mother says my uncle John was one of the dead, he had left home and lost touch. Two thousand miles away my father stirs his ice. He is looking at album with women and girls in it. Their names are Grace and Ruth and Rose and Mary, more beautiful than any I have seen, the way the light and shadow plays on their faces, the rosy cheek turned bronze, their hopes and smiles, gone into time. Someone ought to tell the story, says my father. Somehow it ought to be all gotten down. A dozen families flee from famine to drought and depression to Michigan, Wisconsin, and Ohio. The branches of the trees intertwine in the pure product of our broken household, the girl upstairs, coughing in her sleep, the woman fretting to put things right, the man slipping through the boards like spilled water. My mother's father, deep into Michigan, who married old and knew no more