Reviewed by Leslie Friedman
Red Camaro: Poems
by Dwaine Rieves
The Portage Poetry Series
Cornerstone Press
January 2025, Paperback, 102 pages, ISBN-13: 978-1960329721
This poetry comes from deep empathy for other beings, writing that layers subjects, and close observations. The author may have grown up in a small town in Mississippi, but nothing here represents narrow thinking. It is not quaint, rustic, or dull; the particulars of the author’s family and friends are lively and sometimes tragic. There is life outside of big places.
Good and evil are plentiful and shared. In “One Theory,” Rieves “suggests evil exists because free will demands it, freedom/to hunt and hurt, choices hulking like animals above.” p 18
“The Animal, Table 1” suggests situations. Far left column: “The animal wants to be alone” Choices appear in the next column; one may choose “in suffering” or, below that choice, “in dying.” In a smaller square, “No,” is next to “in suffering.” Below that is “Yes,” the answer next to “in dying.” The answer square to the reader’s right has “it’s pointless,” on top; the answer directly across from “in dying.” is “The privacy in it, apart by choice.” Below those squares a question begins, far left, “The animal craves discretion:” choice on top is “in concluding” answer to the right: “No” and then, “It’s pointless.” The lower row offers “in healing” and “Yes” with the statement to the right. “To crawl beneath the porch and watch.” All the top squares have the final answer: “It’s pointless.” The lower row points to hope. “The animal wants a mother” “to cover” “Yes” “Heart like a wing, rubbing.” p 19
In “Ole Dog,” p 63, that dog crawls under the porch, too. The author wonders if the dog is happier, more comfortable, under the porch than the person who is standing on top.
“Tarzan” demonstrates Rieves layering subjects. The first lines describe a scout outing.
I
Daylight revealed our bodies, our troop showering
wild among trees and improvised plumbing. p 20
Then, his attention focuses on his penis.
No scout laughed or pointed, but my feature felt
Flawed from the beginning, my penis shrouded
Like a loser in stark naked comparison. Weird
in its standout, wrinkled in a hoodie, fear clingy p 20
His mind and body rejoin the activities.
as great vines our troop leader cut
with a machete. We redressed before grabbing
the vines, worshiped in covenant of high-leafed
muscadine and Tarzan imitation, …. p 20
He introduces the Virgin Mary, and, without using the word, circumcision.
II
Legend says Mary preserved the holy prepuce
in oil, the concoction making its way
years later to another Mary, the sinful one
who had no idea why the oil smelled special, just
that it did. So when a famous Jew came
to visit, this second Mary anointed the Master
in a tincture of his own genitalia.
Back to Tarzan and the troop:III
The other scouts push so every guy might swing
higher. Tarzan roars as soldiers make him p 20
surrender. Mary falls to her knees before
the anointing. I smell all the skin I remember p 21
Jesus, camping, wet leaves; similar subjects layer into “Jamboree.” He refers to the scout manual.
Can’t help but smell
and remember….
…. Evolving, the manual says.
God simply reworking his promise. Over
and over, the hymn a dirty angel sings, wet in his
Heaven.….II
…. explain
why rain contains so many sounds a post can’t
make out loud until ropes come off….
….Rain makes earth talk deeper….. p 22-23
Rieves knots subjects together: moments of closeness, lack of friendship, learning to tie knots, rain, what the Bible says, pitching tents, sounds of rain. Thoughts do not happen in isolation; one leads on to others concerning a gesture, an action, a sight. In Rieves’ poetry, the reader’s mind travels with him. Is this “free association?” It is an exploration of a poetic mind, a mind that observes objects, places, people, and itself.
The title of the book, Red Camaro, comes from “Overdrawn.” It reveals the author’s father and the father’s love.
My father never mentioned
Nixon, nor the draft, a cringe-worthy word
for called-up or a chill, a banker’s take
on a payback plan. He never mentioned
a letter saying low is high, my draft number like lust
for a red Camaro, base price bare bottom in a 1970… p 34
The poem reveals something about my father, too. A red Camaro, what a car. It was wasted on me at first. If I could buy a car, it would have been a small Honda that would get good gas mileage. This Camaro was so gorgeous: red with a little orange in that red, a white convertible top, chokes me up thinking of it. I graduated college. He never said it, but now I think he was proud. I always knew in my heart it was the car that he would love to drive. He bought it against my mother’s inclinations, though there was someone who said that red convertible would attract guys. “She would be married in a year.” That was a faulty prediction. My mother, father, and I drove it from Missouri to California.
I do not know what finances my father went through, but it was The Car. When my parents left California, they left me with the car. Rieves learned a lot about his father’s abilities.
Never thought he’d work
out a draft on his account, a bank
statement in the mail, one column red monthly.
A stick shift no less, a chrome C
on the hood, a C as in Cambodia or
college, a fine ride though he never said
the draft had anything to do with those
six cylinders in a need I never guessed
we shared… p 34
It is true; my father needed those six cylinders and, surprise, so did I.
Rieves‘s poems show true empathy. Two poems speak about deaths of young women. The first is “Nona.”
Too far was never too much
with Nona at the wheel….
….Chauffeur diva, designated
driver, …. her answer
to a distant god’s calling. Years later I’ll learn
a Roman deity was also
named Nona, Nona the mover and
shaker when it came to destiny…. P 36
Nona’s destiny – if one believes destiny – may have been in the origin of her name, in the “robotic/arms arising and rubber arching” putting up the top, or chance. Rieves writes there is
Something indelible
about chance in a Caddy’s wild ride, blown
shocks that set you flying into storms you know you
can’t handle.
The author’s empathy means he feels Nona as well as feeling the loss of Nona.
Hold on—
the goddess shouts within me now, our Nona
winking as if she knows all we ever wanted was the ride. p 36
In “Class Update,” a disaster may have been Matthew’s mistake.
Caught on a curve, his
body was tossed
free, ringed by officers. Wheels
in the air. A total.
You can say Matthew paid
for a crime, though I have no idea what
the books cited. p 15
It was a car culture. Rieves was attached to his high school cohort and thinks of them, good luck or bad.
It interests me that the “chauffeur diva, designated/driver” was a woman finishing high school. That was who Nona was. Next to “Nona,” is “The Girl.” Learning she is pregnant, she hangs herself. Rieves shows what she could do or had to do.
II
some say once impregnated the girl must bear it
hey non nony hey ….
——————-
III
the girl had a name some say everyone knew
——————-
IV
some say time heals ========
… even as every moment bequeaths
a memory…. The Girl, p 36
A quote under “The Girl” is, You speak like a green girl, unsifted in such perilous circumstance. Polonius, the father.
V
nameless is a need visible from the street
as a girl hanging her body, my Lord
say what it will nature of custom holds
unbearable stuff we leave down
where the willow grows askance, my Lord
by fear as by love our bodies hold words
kind Lady, as unto us they say they’re able The Girl, p 36
The Elizabethan view returned. This reader does not understand the concluding verse. “custom holds/unbearable stuff;” that is true. Do we look “askance” on our bodies? The words our bodies hold are only what “they’re able.”
Rieves’ parental relationships are touching. In “Smart People,” he tries to soothe his mother.
It will be better, I told my mother
though cancer staged four is, as smart
people say, beyond good
weapons.
Sub Q Neupogen didn’t
help, red cells only hurt….
I kept telling her,
It will be better. p 9
As student and doctor, his observations of patients merge with his empathy. His hope and dedication buoy up beings from his father to Jack, an ass. “Six-Step Validation Elegy for Monroe Garment,” teaches how to lay out a corpse. Step 3. “Tilt the heads so every chin appears determined.” Step 6: “Open the lids in every parlor, each face displayed, all music light gospel.” p 61
Rieves recalls the parents’ scene, in “Pageant.”
….the night he almost slapped my mother,
God damn! No wife of mine smokes cigarettes! Like smoking’s
against the law on wives in Mississippi.
————-
A Salem or two before he gets home.
I use fly spray to clear the air before it’s too late. p 40
Rieves quietly helped both.
In “Jack,” Rieves’ father couldn’t feed Jack, the ass.
Hand-cupping
crushed corn before Jack’s
barbaric mouth, my father would tip
the bucket, his soothing just
so for the horny old
bastard, a brazen patience I feared
I couldn’t repeat
when the time came.
Together, his father liked to watch TV’s Vanna in her strapless dress, and his mother would guess the vowel.
But, Vanna, I held the bucket until
big Jack was done, and I
patted his brow, that spot
my father would touch with a word I always
guessed was Good. Like love
when you can’t figure it
out. Or monstrous braying, where it comes
from. How you know.
About the reviewer: Writer and dancer/choreographer Leslie Friedman’s writing has been published in France, India, Poland, and the US. Her dancing and dances have won applause from audiences and critics on four continents. The US State Dept. co-sponsored her with host countries on historic “Firsts:” performance tours to Russia, China, Egypt, Poland, Hungary, Spain, England, many others. She received her History Ph.D. from Stanford, taught there, Vassar, Case Western Reserve, and left academia to write and dance full time. She received the Fulbright Lectureship to India and Senior Lectureship to Bulgaria. She published two natural history books: The Dancer’s Garden, a garden memoir, and The Story of Our Butterflies. She has written 6 plays awarded Best Play, Best Director, Best Actor. Audubon, Stories of the City (SF), and Berkeley Selected Poetry published her poems.Tupelo Quarterly and Compulsive Reader have published her reviews. The Wall Street Journal, San Jose Mercury News, St. Louis Journal of the Arts, others have published features, op-eds, letters. In Mountain View, CA, she is an activist to save trees and open space.