ALSO BY MARK YAKICH
POETRY
The Dangerous Book of Poetry for Planes
The Importance of Peeling Potatoes in Ukraine
Green Zone New Orleans
The Making of Collateral Beauty
Unrelated Individuals Forming a Group Waiting to Cross
NONFICTION
Interviews from the Edge (coeditor with John Biguenet)
Airplane Reading (coeditor with Christopher Schaberg)
Poetry: A Survivor’s Guide
Checking Out
FICTION
A Meaning for Wife
PENGUIN BOOKS
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Copyright © 2019 by Mark Yakich
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Names: Yakich, Mark, author.
Title: Spiritual exercises / Mark Yakich.
Description: New York : Penguin Books, 2019. | Series: Penguin poets
Identifiers: LCCN 2019002878| ISBN 9780143133278 (paperback) | ISBN 9780525505037 (ebook)
Subjects: | BISAC: POETRY / American / General.
Classification: LCC PS3625.A38 A6 2019 | DDC 811/.6--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019002878
Cover design: Lynn Buckley
Cover art: Mark Yakich
Version_1
In Memoriam
Ann Barker
James Yakich
Marjorie Yakich
CONTENTS
Also by Mark Yakich
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
I
Sister Christopher
Son of a Nun
Forms of Love
Post-Confessional
Agape
Baby Daddy Song
Echo
Rosary
from The Book of Hours
Epistemology
Lest You Drove Yourself from Your Own Door
Bound
Things Said to Be Ineffable
Biblical
Why a Perfectly Good, Almighty, All-Knowing God Permits Evil
Circle Jerk
Divine Comedies
II
My Faith
Parenting from Chicago to Abu Dhabi
Autism
Marriage
A Song Means Little Without Separation
Love Poem for Ex-Wife
Object Lesson
You See What You Want to See
Unoriginal Sin
Naive Conviction
Love Poem for Ex-Husband
Antidepressants
Retreat
For My Daughter
Halfway Through Life
There Is No Doubt
Prayer
Mindfulness
Pastoral
Elegy for the Engineer
III
Troubadour
To Dream
Hue and Cry
Seasonal Affective Disorder
Solitary
Meditation
Consciousness
Dayenu
Easter
Empathy
Christ of the Ozarks
Ars Poetica
Kindness
Critical Thinking
Reflection
On My Other Mother’s Birthday
Noble Song
Revelations
Notes
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Teach us to give and not to count the cost.
—IGNATIUS OF LOYOLA
I
SON OF A NUN
There’s the front door
Through which she never came, and the winter
Coat she wore while pregnant with me.
And here’s the mourning I fail
To euphemize. My day-old head clipped
From a Polaroid and taped inside a locket.
I’ve got no pet names, birthday cards,
Or knotted strands from a blond afro
In a black hairbrush. But this
Much is true: Had we ever met,
I’d have kept even her belly button
Lint and ragged toenail clippings.
I have but her habits: hyper-tidiness,
Afternoon gin and tonics, midlife
Panic attacks. I keep meaning to frame
A photo of myself, eyes closed,
Simply to see what she might have
Looked like in the coffin.
But they say there’s no need.
If I want to bring her back, I just have to
Put two fingers to my wrist
And face the heartbeats. I prefer
Hands at my throat, scratching carefully
And hard as one does a lottery card.
FORMS OF LOVE
As if each of us is the sole
Architect of our achievements.
The mind, the metaphoric
Heart, the genitalia—
All our soft animals piecing
Together can-do truths.
Praise be, then, for Mother’s Milk,
Baby Daddy, and busy days
Ahead so easily forgotten.
And praise the body that goes,
That lameness shall also
End. Lovers, dice, edible
Thistle: Be unashamed.
Those selves we are
So full of are full of holes.
POST-CONFESSIONAL
You mustn’t cry. You mustn’t vomit.
You mustn’t blame yourself for getting pregnant.
You mustn’t gorge at buffets
Or swill from paper bags. You mustn’t cheat.
You mustn’t lie. You mustn’t regret
Signing the documents
Giving your infant son away.
You mustn’t not pray.
You mustn’t go numb until numbness becomes
You. You mustn’t get high on heroin,
Glue, gasoline, or whatever is under the sink.
You mustn’t write in a diary with a flimsy lock.
You mustn’t beat your breasts because the left is larger
Than the right. You mustn’t drive all night to cross an imaginary border.
You mustn’t sleep out in the woods in rain or snow or sun.
You mustn’t go lesbian.
You mustn’t become a missionary
Abroad. You mustn’t throw out the rosary,
Urge the father to take you back, or pretend
For very long that nothing happened.
For over the years, you mustn’t let go
Because doctors keep telling you so.
You mustn’t jump. You mustn’t hang.
You mu
stn’t climb. You mustn’t wonder if or when
Your son will search for you in his free time.
You mustn’t orchestrate the reunion.
You mustn’t hope for the day
He finds your grave
And gives God hell for the gift of sacrifice.
You mustn’t trifle.
You mustn’t die. You mustn’t believe
There is or is not an afterlife.
AGAPE
Right before you arrived,
she drew a bath with extra soap, wanting
to make sure her body
was supremely clean.
It didn’t matter because in the hospital
they made her wear two gowns.
When she began to scream
from the pain,
they said to focus on something else
in the room. On the wall opposite,
there was a small horse
in a landscape
she asked who the artist was.
The nurses said they’d never
noticed it before.
When she was alone, she got out
of bed to see. It was a print titled
And the Ass Saw the Angel Kissing.
What do you wish
to hear, my son? She did what she could.
But it was God who painted you
on the world like tears down
the face of a clown.
BABY DADDY SONG
That infant on your chest
Sleeps. No matter the noise
Machine & nest of plush toys,
He’ll soon cry himself awake.
The one you kiss & caress
& sing to. The one who can’t yet
Smile at his own shit. The singular
One who looks like all the rest.
That infant will grow & grow
Until you have to buy him a big-boy
Bed, pack loads of sack lunches
& keep him out of trouble.
Maybe he’ll need dental braces,
A trumpet & Canadian meds.
Maybe one of his angelic fingers
Will finger a girl or a gun. This
Infant on your chest, who looks
Up to you now, his sky & favorite
Star, someday he’ll discover who
You were & who you really are.
ECHO
“What’s it called when somebody
Doesn’t believe in God?” Daughter asked.
“Oh, that just means they forgot,” Father said.
They stepped around the little pet’s grave.
“I can’t wait to die,” she said.
“What?” he said.
“Why?” he said.
She patted the soil.
“So that I can tell John Waynes how much I like his films.”
“Oh,” he said.
And she pressed harder,
And later refused to wash her hands.
FROM THE BOOK OF HOURS
When Son looks up at the sun,
He says he can’t help thinking
That the light on his face is
Both ancient and new—
The light having taken millions
Of years to reach the sun’s surface
And then only eight more minutes
To get to his eyes. “In other words,”
Father says, “there’s no past
As remote as the recent past.”
“No, Dad,” Son says, “it’s just that
When you die maybe it won’t
Be any worse than my eyes
Blinded for a moment by a star.”
EPISTEMOLOGY
And Daughter said, “Only girls are allowed in my room.”
And Son said, “I love Momma, not Daddy.”
And Momma said, “You can love Daddy, too.”
And Daughter and Son said, “No!” and “No!”
What’s knowledge without logical transition
Sentences? What’s guilt sprung from the back
Of the hand? What love we all have for each
Others’ faces and buttocks. Appreciate with
All your heart the love that runneth from
The penis, the justice that greaseth the great
Vaginal walls. Mother, you shined in the bedroom.
Father, you were always too tired to carry on
An affair. Nothing has an ideal form, and no
Child wants to get caught being too good.
LEST YOU DROVE YOURSELF FROM YOUR OWN DOOR
Worked by pushing your kids
To work harder. Got to work once
Even though the car was wrecked
Backing into one of our bikes.
Later, bankrolled one of our
Pregnancies and got arrested
Because of a windshield tinted
The color of your skin . . . O Momma,
Didn’t you know that under
The wrapping papers, we’d always
Assumed there was a gift . . .
And that behind your eyelids,
We’d hoped there was a dream?
You should have told us
You were allergic to gold;
We would’ve forgiven you for
Not wearing a wedding ring.
BOUND
She wanted to know the difference between one man and another,
The pillow said it wanted to know how to get rid of the bed, that it was
tired of its company.
That’s a real problem, she said. She supposed the pillow, quiet again,
would go on lying.
But the pillow said, I can’t take you for a friend because while you must
be interested in pillowness,
which you could find nowhere better than right here in the bed,
I’ll bet you’re just as interested
in sheetness, which you can find in a pure form right over there—a pure
form of evil, if you ask me.
I know, she said, I want to be friends with you both. But the pillow
slumped into a deep grief and said,
If you could just remove the headboard and let everything fall toward
the wall, I might be able to escape.
Why, she said, don’t I ask the bed if he wouldn’t mind moving away
from the wall enough so that you
both have more room? After all, you both enjoy my body and the
impression I leave; surely the bed will understand sharing . . .
Not likely, said the pillow. That, she said, is ungenerous and
unforgiving—what could you give the bed
in return for moving a little? What could I give him? the pillow said,
and then said nothing.
Should I simply keep my eyes closed while you do whatever it is
you’re going to do? she said.
Before the pillow could answer, her lover rolled over to her side,
his hands cupping her waist, his cock hard
and getting harder. She reached back and pulled on it, thinking it was
some kind of sign that the bed would
never let the pillow alone. But it wasn’t a sign, or it was a sign like
everything else is a sign, in name only.
THINGS SAID TO BE INEFFABLE
A book decorates
A
nightstand
And a body
Decorates a bed.
The nightstand
May be made
Of plastic, metal,
Or wood,
And is normally
The same
Height as the bed.
Even if they are
Very married,
Lovers tarry
And aver
And aver and
Tarry. Finally
One of them
Rises
To search
The dictionary
For a word
The other has
Made up.
BIBLICAL
Just shy of the surface, fish rise
And die, gleaming more
Beautifully when belly-up.
The moon kisses the sun’s ass;
God sees to it. Loneliness,
My child, isn’t so big after all.
Take faithful Job: In the end,
He got back a wife and children,
Just not the same wife and children
He began with. Nothing’s ever
Too wrong or right. Go ahead,
Hold your breath as long as you can.
Once the fig leaf falls off,
All metaphor is disgusting.
WHY A PERFECTLY GOOD, ALMIGHTY, ALL-KNOWING GOD PERMITS EVIL
Perhaps no pleasure is greater
Than being left alone,
Which may be why whatever
It is that one wants
To call or not call God
Has little desire to be anything
Other than by itself,
A subject with no need
For the direct object
We would like to be,
A mouth without a word,
But an existence
Everywhere
By word of mouth.
DIVINE COMEDIES
Alone.
Alone in bed.
Alone in bed, natural causes.
Alone in a meadow, crushed by felled pine.
Alone in the woods, after running from grizzly, tripped over log, always
at night, skull smashed on rock.
Botulism.