Archive of New Mexico Poetry – Santee Frazier

Fixations, Leading to the D Fruit:

A flattened walkway appeared under the lights only the state could repair. By a pile
of crumbled asphalt, I stashed a paper, felony convictions, bundled up inside
little red and white balloons. He knocked at my door, threatening me with a
jacket pistol, nine millimeter I think. It was all the way stacked, twelve
rounds. He looked at me with
bullets of sweat running down in his eyes. He was up on a seven-day bender,
in the depths of paranoia, and still a circuiting switchboard. After seven
days the worlds turn against you, cameras are watching you, teams of cops are
following you to the store.
I acquired his services last May at my D’s house, a white lettered Cola
festival. A conveyer belt, assembling, papers, eightballs, sometimes even a pillow’s worth,
plastic wrapped and covered in Vaseline. I saw him just after I ate chocolate covered
Tylenol, little chunks of D in the form. He jumped on for the ride, and we rolled for
miles, day after day watching the grass melt into vapor, watching the allies suck
children into the fences. The children lay against brick buildings cooking D, that glaze
in their eyes gleaming in the sun. That seven A.M. flushed look gathered in their
walk, that shaky walk…. We passed a billboard of Jesus, highlighted in red he was,
standing with his arms open, saying “I can save you from the snow.” Maybe he did in
the middle of the sweet tart dream, when he came to ask me of the Devil.
Jesus wove his hair into my ceiling. He shoved his veins in my fingertips,
pumping his blood into my arms. He started asking me if the Devil lived in my
bed, on my shelves, if I could
hear him on my stereo. This lady kept meeting me public restrooms, making my
nosebleed, pushing me into stalls handing razor blades. She whispered in my ear,
telling me to love her in short straws, railroad love in the idea of snow. I went back
to Jesus and worshiped his Christian eyes, hidden in his room to keep away
from the lady, the white haired lady. He led me around the streets with a chain around my
neck, threw the urine of drunks in my face. He shaved my hair and carved his blue
eyes in the back of my head. I ended up at his billboard that sat in front of his sign:
18 miles to the slums. I climbed up to the catwalk and listened to the passing cars. I
tied a cable around my neck, stood with my arms open. The spikes of the
Devil’s Bermuda bending in the wind; a breeze from the south brushing my
ears. I can hear Jesus, telling me to be safe, and hide in his breath. I
stood with my arms open and jumped into the vapored grass.

About the Poet
Santee Frazier (Prairie Band Potawatomie/Absentee Shawnee) is majoring in creative writing at the Institute of American Indian Arts. He is the recipient of a 2000-2001 Truman Capote Scholarship.