Reaping Wheel
That was our arrangement. I would look at you. I would see that you were
beautiful. From far away. This is a story about distance. You were beautiful. I
couldn’t say anything. Living entirely in my own head. This is easy, this is
heaven. This is perfect. (I didn’t say anything.) I wanted to come home. I didn’t
know anything. Like a river that fights its own bed. (This is heaven, this is easy.) I
tried to do it quietly. (I put a plaster on it: a poultice, a redness, a narrative
spiraling down through years.) O old friend. He couldn’t walk, couldn’t take it, he
rode it out as long as he could, and it was in my hometown, the year that
everything went wrong: the blood pooled on the sidewalk, the smoke and cinders
from the burned theatre, the railroad depot where the chateau once stood, the
motorcycle overturned in the creek, the ever-loosening grip. (And I kept wanting
to send it to you, but I couldn’t send it.) I’m writing it down, in the wrong
window, in the wrong language and decade, I’m writing over music (my little
whimper). When you touched a friend of mine, I thought I would lose my mind.
But really I was not ready. O death, o death, you’re cruel and you are constant.
He’s all lost and everyone is gone, it’s a ghost town, and really I was not ready,
but now, now. I wonder . I miss you, that slow accent harrowing your crooked
mouth.
Tell Us About Yourself
My childhood nickname was "Tor," short for my toddler pronunciation of "monster."
I am related to Simon Bolivar.
For a brief period during my childhood, I answered only to the name "Pinocchio."
When I was six years old I asked for and received an ash-blond wig for Christmas.
My mother's father was murdered, and her older brother was probably murdered.
I am great at putting things together and fixing things.
I get bored when I have to drive a car with an automatic transmission.
I started college three months after I turned 17.
My first beloved was the cartoon character Astro Boy; when I despaired of ever meeting
Astro Boy, my father promised to build me one in the basement.
I used to be a superb water skier and almost (but not quite) taught myself to ski barefoot.
I was born with one leg shorter than the other and wore a leg + torso brace as a baby.
The first poems my mother ever taught me were Blake's "The Tyger" and "The Lamb."
I sometimes get weepy when I listen to the verse of "The Little Drummer Boy" in which
the little drummer, having no other gift to bring, plays his best for the baby Jesus and
the baby Jesus responds by smiling.
I cannot and have never been able to sleep on my back.
Last year I saw three shooting stars, one an amazing shade of mineral green.
I used to have a small, dark birthmark on the left side of my left thumb, then one day I
just noticed that it was no longer there.
I am related to Simon Bolivar.
For a brief period during my childhood, I answered only to the name "Pinocchio."
When I was six years old I asked for and received an ash-blond wig for Christmas.
My mother's father was murdered, and her older brother was probably murdered.
I am great at putting things together and fixing things.
I get bored when I have to drive a car with an automatic transmission.
I started college three months after I turned 17.
My first beloved was the cartoon character Astro Boy; when I despaired of ever meeting
Astro Boy, my father promised to build me one in the basement.
I used to be a superb water skier and almost (but not quite) taught myself to ski barefoot.
I was born with one leg shorter than the other and wore a leg + torso brace as a baby.
The first poems my mother ever taught me were Blake's "The Tyger" and "The Lamb."
I sometimes get weepy when I listen to the verse of "The Little Drummer Boy" in which
the little drummer, having no other gift to bring, plays his best for the baby Jesus and
the baby Jesus responds by smiling.
I cannot and have never been able to sleep on my back.
Last year I saw three shooting stars, one an amazing shade of mineral green.
I used to have a small, dark birthmark on the left side of my left thumb, then one day I
just noticed that it was no longer there.
Hereditament
There are, for example, houses: most no longer standing.
There are old cars and animals, stained linens and steeples.
There are stairways and worn-out clothes. In addition, there are cancers.
There is cardiology, there are shock treatments, there is a very full basement.
There are scratched corneas and high arches, a great-uncle who drinks.
There are shutters and there are blinds and there are graveyards in pastures.
There is infestation, there is black mold, there are moths and destroyed carpets.
There is dry rot, brick, mortar, damage to roofs, lives, bones, people.
There are mouse and bird skeletons sifting dust behind plaster, carcasses of pets
Wrapped in towels beneath the deep sod of various yards.
There are shadows weeping in bedrooms, there are shut doors, there is keening.
There is the beloved’s grave collapsing inward one fine June day in 1966
Which brings the daughter home from a birthday party before the cake is served.
There are dying fathers, there is regret, there are gunshots and fallen bodies.
There is all of that. There is none of it. This is only the beginning.
There are old cars and animals, stained linens and steeples.
There are stairways and worn-out clothes. In addition, there are cancers.
There is cardiology, there are shock treatments, there is a very full basement.
There are scratched corneas and high arches, a great-uncle who drinks.
There are shutters and there are blinds and there are graveyards in pastures.
There is infestation, there is black mold, there are moths and destroyed carpets.
There is dry rot, brick, mortar, damage to roofs, lives, bones, people.
There are mouse and bird skeletons sifting dust behind plaster, carcasses of pets
Wrapped in towels beneath the deep sod of various yards.
There are shadows weeping in bedrooms, there are shut doors, there is keening.
There is the beloved’s grave collapsing inward one fine June day in 1966
Which brings the daughter home from a birthday party before the cake is served.
There are dying fathers, there is regret, there are gunshots and fallen bodies.
There is all of that. There is none of it. This is only the beginning.
Night Calendar
on the roof
2am sickle moon
whips the wind,
the train whistle
downtown, the cat-eye
parsed courtyard,
fog outside
dark windows,
the shadow-battened
ceiling, heart says
just this, just this,
just this, just this.
2am sickle moon
whips the wind,
the train whistle
downtown, the cat-eye
parsed courtyard,
fog outside
dark windows,
the shadow-battened
ceiling, heart says
just this, just this,
just this, just this.
Into the Silent Land
it was waiting for you all along
there at the end of the shore line
where the first-person ends and
all subjects get pulled tight like a string
there is the vast emptiness, a whistling
of time in the ears, the echo of the tap
of one finger on one shoulder blade
on one night many, many years ago
there are these stories, and you
have told them all over and over
into nights that peel back the face
of the sky and open up into a high
dimmed blue; it is no place to tarry,
no place that anyone would want
to go or be, just a sun to get a glimpse
of, shiver, and leave, knowing that elsewhere
is always the better place, and that time is
for no one, and there is everything to fear
there at the end of the shore line
where the first-person ends and
all subjects get pulled tight like a string
there is the vast emptiness, a whistling
of time in the ears, the echo of the tap
of one finger on one shoulder blade
on one night many, many years ago
there are these stories, and you
have told them all over and over
into nights that peel back the face
of the sky and open up into a high
dimmed blue; it is no place to tarry,
no place that anyone would want
to go or be, just a sun to get a glimpse
of, shiver, and leave, knowing that elsewhere
is always the better place, and that time is
for no one, and there is everything to fear
Sung on the Eve of the Body's Destruction
Out past the I’s
unraveling hollow, you
shadow time, flicker
the screen: your green
hands and fierce skin ghosting
the highways, the darkening
fields, the torched clap
of our quickening.
When I imagine you, starlings crash
the horizon, your hand taps
my shoulder, you say you
want something--
you say you’re resigned, you say
you can’t help it—you flood and
then parch, there, not there,
taut and lingering:
your stone eyes and stone
heart, the drag of your timber,
kilned bones, cupped hands, the grass
strings of your throat.
I never feel you, just the breath
of your passage: a mistral, a night
squall only I and dogs can hear.
It’s a bad sonnet, a sacking,
an ill wind, a ghost town; now lie
there, bed made, o my own phantom limb.
High up on the breakers,
past the bridge you call
someday—our light's dimming
windows, dark clouds rushing home--
she scrolls through your dreams,
her bad art and her country club;
she paints you as Jesus,
her hair wipes your feet.
Out past the beach on our
timbered horizon, there's
the body's destruction, the
last thing I'll see.
And it was never a lesson,
only a flat, blank burning.
When dawn breaks the fields,
when light shreds the horizon,
just let it be over, just let us lie still
unraveling hollow, you
shadow time, flicker
the screen: your green
hands and fierce skin ghosting
the highways, the darkening
fields, the torched clap
of our quickening.
When I imagine you, starlings crash
the horizon, your hand taps
my shoulder, you say you
want something--
you say you’re resigned, you say
you can’t help it—you flood and
then parch, there, not there,
taut and lingering:
your stone eyes and stone
heart, the drag of your timber,
kilned bones, cupped hands, the grass
strings of your throat.
I never feel you, just the breath
of your passage: a mistral, a night
squall only I and dogs can hear.
It’s a bad sonnet, a sacking,
an ill wind, a ghost town; now lie
there, bed made, o my own phantom limb.
High up on the breakers,
past the bridge you call
someday—our light's dimming
windows, dark clouds rushing home--
she scrolls through your dreams,
her bad art and her country club;
she paints you as Jesus,
her hair wipes your feet.
Out past the beach on our
timbered horizon, there's
the body's destruction, the
last thing I'll see.
And it was never a lesson,
only a flat, blank burning.
When dawn breaks the fields,
when light shreds the horizon,
just let it be over, just let us lie still
Up In the Air
Somewhere over
Colorado, George
Clooney tells the ingénue
that everyone dies
alone: someone has been
drinking whiskey
and is by now
maybe, just possibly,
a little drunk:
lights blink out inside
the plane, outside
the night slides
out of purple into black
(you can still see
outlines of the clouds
but just barely);
for the past 90 minutes
a woman two rows up
has been lifting pieces
of her hair, strand
by strand; every fourth
strand she yanks
with a little intake
of breath; by the time
the sky has gone
dark, the screen ingénue is
crying, and someone
is saying, "A nice smile
is all. A nice smile
might just do it."
Close Reading
In our book of sins, night falls fast.
The letters stand for something.
We are showing great restraint.
The flesh is a rope bridge to something called ‘finally’:
the body trapped in its skin,
a flashlight passed back and forth in the dark.
Time can spool forward, more and more loosely strung.
I want and I do not want what I want:
a mouth organ, a six string, a soul flapping in your hands,
your hand holding hard, reaching slow enough to last.
I am sitting up straight. The afternoon stretches endlessly.
I’ve contracted your dreams like a fierce storm, a disease.
A measure for distance, a shot in the dark.
All of this is more tender than I would have imagined:
the flesh pulls you toward it; it scrubs you with salt
in a town and a landscape at the edge of the world:
a self, a text, the granite face of the soul.
The body lifts off, flailing, parsing light into nothing.
What I would like to know now
is how to know, then how
to bear it.
The letters stand for something.
We are showing great restraint.
The flesh is a rope bridge to something called ‘finally’:
the body trapped in its skin,
a flashlight passed back and forth in the dark.
Time can spool forward, more and more loosely strung.
I want and I do not want what I want:
a mouth organ, a six string, a soul flapping in your hands,
your hand holding hard, reaching slow enough to last.
I am sitting up straight. The afternoon stretches endlessly.
I’ve contracted your dreams like a fierce storm, a disease.
A measure for distance, a shot in the dark.
All of this is more tender than I would have imagined:
the flesh pulls you toward it; it scrubs you with salt
in a town and a landscape at the edge of the world:
a self, a text, the granite face of the soul.
The body lifts off, flailing, parsing light into nothing.
What I would like to know now
is how to know, then how
to bear it.
Emergency
the body fights time, keeps
making its plans, and all
the while death ticks on in the calendar –
the vitals cart’s ping, little moments
of slippage, the catch and the whir
of my mother’s sick breathing –
honestly hospitals don’t bother me
much – I grew up in them, loved the clean
endlessness of the hallways, the cafeterias’
small containers of jello or soft beans –
and already this sounds like a poem
that is moving toward a clever though
difficult and hard-won cohesion – the kind
that makes your mother, who likes Billy
Collins, feel safe – the kind that makes us
believe in redemption, and thus in lies –
they give my mother one of the “big rooms” –
they hook her up, make her comfortable –
they remove her soiled clothing but leave
the shit smell – I tear pages out of a kids’ book
about a child bear to write this down –
making its plans, and all
the while death ticks on in the calendar –
the vitals cart’s ping, little moments
of slippage, the catch and the whir
of my mother’s sick breathing –
honestly hospitals don’t bother me
much – I grew up in them, loved the clean
endlessness of the hallways, the cafeterias’
small containers of jello or soft beans –
and already this sounds like a poem
that is moving toward a clever though
difficult and hard-won cohesion – the kind
that makes your mother, who likes Billy
Collins, feel safe – the kind that makes us
believe in redemption, and thus in lies –
they give my mother one of the “big rooms” –
they hook her up, make her comfortable –
they remove her soiled clothing but leave
the shit smell – I tear pages out of a kids’ book
about a child bear to write this down –
Eight of the above poems first appeared in Talisman: A Journal of Contemporary Poetry and Poetics. 'Into the Silent Land' first appeared in New American Writing."
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