a radio? We used to tell it in school, everyone
standing in a circle and laughing like jackals, except for the one
not in on the joke, which in this particular poem
is you, because it’s not a joke at all
just a misleading non sequitur
designed to bait the unwitting
into falling into laughter alongside everyone else
so they could then be turned upon and savagely asked:
What’s so fucking funny?
As we watched them squirm to explain, grasping
at the tuxedoed symmetry of nuns and penguins,
the real laughter thundered out and made it
clear how much we’d learned.
The Shop Across the Street
I walked outside and looked to where the sky used to be.
The new laminate is better than I feared, I murmured,
but why this watery yellow? Why not sky blue?
The president’s voice crackled over the loudspeakers
and announced that yellow was something-something
but the spatter of white noise drowned him out.
The shop across the street—the one that sells clay figurines—
was not much help. Did you understand the president?
I asked, a little out of breath from running across the avenue.
The storekeeper smiled and said,
I am not able to recognize the president
even when I look right at him.
How much is that, I said, pointing at a figurine,
a little man, posed on a shelf behind him.
Oh, that one is not for sale.
Why not?
Because it’s me.
I leaned across the counter to peer at the tiny face
and saw that it was true: a perfect likeness. Well, I said,
whirling to leave, I guess now we know who the whore is.
The People Who Came Afterward
lived oblivious to the drifting veils of rain.
There were no fences. The point of existence
was to gather things in concentric rings
so possessions formed the hive where you lived.
It was the most effective prison ever devised
by humans. When the downpour came to melt
it away, filling depressions with grit and soft clay,
pottery shards returned to their element—bones
came unbound. Glass rose like fins from the ground.
The Professional
She arrived in a dark suit and a mask-like smile, explaining
her services in a manner so polished it almost put us off.
This is my specialty, she soothed. Both mind and house
will be empty as a mountain wind once I’m done. I sensed
she’d said those words before. We sat at the kitchen table,
you and I, looking at one another, hoping the other felt more
certain, more assured. Once we signed, it would take years
before we acknowledged our mistake. She’d left the whole day
open, and could begin immediately. Was there perhaps a guest
room where she could change? Her assistant arrived with
a black duffel, fresh white towels, and a stainless-steel basin.
I didn’t know the basin would be so big, I murmured.
We looked at one another warily. It isn’t always a clean process,
she reassured. You do understand, once I’m sequestered, it is
very important that I not be disturbed. We nodded. She closed
the door with an audible click. For the first few hours, it seemed
okay. Her assistant sat out in the van, with the windows down,
reading. We sat in the living room and tried to do the same,
ignoring the sounds coming from the guest room, sighs that
sharpened into cries. When a few faces started disappearing
in the photographs above the piano, you leapt to your feet.
This isn’t right, you said. These things shouldn’t be removed.
But what about the pain? I asked. Don’t you want it gone?
No, you said, pointing to the image of a child, suddenly frantic.
The eyes had faded to nothing. From forehead to cheekbone
was just smooth skin. I ran to the window. The van was gone,
as was the tire swing that had been there an hour earlier. I looked
and saw the elm losing its limbs, one by one. Maybe we can still
get some of our money back, I said. And then you said: I want her
gone. The assistant had sealed the door shut with tape. It came
off with a spattering sound, and the shrieks from inside paused.
Then the voice came, a strangled croak as I opened the door
and saw her, smaller than I remembered, perched on the dresser,
her suit pooled on the floor beneath her. Her face had become
a sort of beak, hinged open and hissing. But it was the children
that were upsetting, sitting in a circle at her feet, quietly singing.
Imperfection
after Tomaž Šalamun
Leather without history
is merely the skin of the dead
animals that once walked these fields.
Strength without rickets
can be seen on any playground.
Consider the appetite
of these children and remember:
blood is silk.
Walk silently away. Drop your empty
cup in the receptacle. Note
how the plastic helmet is stained brown
from where your lips drew coffee
out with a wet sound. Blood is like fruit.
Maybe spend a moment
thinking about the tanks and hunger
but keep moving.
There is no need to thrash yourself.
I know a doctor who can pull that
wire clean from your back. We
will roar and get excited soon enough.
The Horse
When it says The Horse up there in letters slightly larger than
these including that beautifully balanced H that could serve as
a solid frame for a barn door and that s curving from the back
of the e in rather uncanny imitation of how a horsetail curves up
from meaty rump before falling downward in a swoop, you might
think of a glossy coat rippling over musculature bred to quickness
rather than the stiff and bloated thing toppled sideways in the ditch
that we saw as we rolled downhill into the warm and humid sea air
letting dusty mountains recede behind us with all that endless agave
that tinged field after field with something much softer than blue.
A family in a small red wagon: the girl eight, the boy almost five,
the beach below us home for a week after nearly nine hours driving
getting slightly lost in Guadalajara and suddenly two legs jutting like
poles across the road and a man with a blue T-shirt wrapped across his
face and sawing through the bone with the rusted buck blade kicking
out a little pink powder with every pull and the smell mingling with
green air and ripened mangos as we swerved momentarily into the
oncoming lane and I looked at the barrel of those ribs swollen tight
wondering about the gush of gas and stink if it were pierced when
the boy asked in a tremulous voice if that was a horse and before
anyone could think what to say the girl answered, Not anymore.
Now Here, Nowhere
The cow unfolds its legs and
rises against the white sky,
flickering among the tree trunks
as we pass. The window
glass is cold against my forehead
and I can feel the pavement
humming b
elow.
A pine has overturned, roots
ripped into the air. A dog
trots along the road, another
lies dead on the shoulder, fur
frozen to the pavement like carpet.
We drive on, not telling
how a dusting of snow
whitens shadows, it is still cold but
water will run, insects will rise,
these dogs will flower
in sweet decay. We pass
another broken tree,
the heartwood split
open in a storm.
The car swings
through rolling curves
beneath the white sky,
the sky that holds clouds and light
and clouds and light and nowhere
does it explain.
In the Pasture Corner
The earth beneath the oak is boar-broken,
torn dark and furrowed, clods unearthed
in a dirt-spray: fine roots stand up like hairs.
There, where hooves churned turf to mud
the gash is greased red with blood: the flung
lamb snagged heavy on the branch a hair
too high for the muscle of what pounded
the earth and pounded the earth beneath it.
How It Survived for a While
It waited until we wandered home, then
limped to the sea where the rasping
mouths of hagfish cleaned its wounds.
For a while it disguised itself
as a hailstorm, but the constant
clattering loosened its teeth and the cold
became too difficult to bear.
gifted at disappearing. Yet it was
the trees themselves that gave it away,
frightened that one of them
had somehow learned to walk.
Now it will become our king! they whispered,
wrapping their roots like rope
tighter and tighter around its thick neck.
The School
The anaconda was useful. The youngest
obeyed more readily and occasionally
did not return from the boiler room.
The older children paid attention
to lessons in toolmaking and chemistry,
forming acids that scald, then used boar-
bristle brushes to outline the boundaries of their lives.
Wolverines were introduced, worrying
carrion out on the playing fields. Then
jackals. We watched them seize viscera
and tug, quivering the whole of the rubbery
carcass, shredding the body into ragged skeins
as the steady rain fell. When the teacher intoned
Nature red in tooth and claw, we understood.
They were out there, weaving drunkenly
among the puddles, fur flecked with mud, our parents
waiting in the road beyond: a line of black cars, idling.
The Orangutan
They were more than a little embarrassed when it turned out their
orangutan was electric.
They’ve gotten so good with the musculature, said father, who knew?
Also the soft parts, said mother, who loved to stroke the wrinkled skin
in the hinges of his body. Sometimes his flesh responded in the most
surprising ways. And lord knows, she added, he ate more than his
share of bananas.
But then they found them, mashed in a brown pile, a syrupy mass
stashed behind the furnace in the basement. He had always been a
furtive monkey. Dozens of ants were trapped in the clear fluid
leaking from the pile.
We couldn’t have come up with a better trap if we’d tried, shouted
father, picking at the delicate carcasses.
Their daughter remained quiet through it all, which they attributed to
shock. When the baby was born some months later, its face was eerily
reminiscent of a calculator.
I don’t know what to say, the girl announced, pressing the function key
on her new son. Every time I run the numbers, I get a different answer.
Manhood
Sherman tried to show the extent of his manhood
by insisting his wife wear the pants in the family.
This allowed his manhood to extend
well below his knees, wrinkled as the head of a vulture,
and then coil damply beneath him
as he settled onto the porch steps to read the paper.
I’d be more inclined to apologize for that image
were it not for the fact that the buzzard head
was at one time attached to the body of a snake
replete with a simile evoking crinkled hosiery
and thus this is the mild version and contains
significantly fewer genital-animal parallels
which editors do not typically recommend
for inclusion in general-interest publications.
Why there was only one sturdy pair of pants
between the two of them remains a mystery.
And that those pants were stitched of leather
with supple creases worked into their knees
and embroidered detailing on the pockets
is perhaps as close as we will get to the reason
for their existence in the first place. At this point
it would probably be wiser to return to Sherman
reading on the porch, nude from the waist down.
Yet nude would be an overstatement
given the pair of tire-tread sandals he is wearing
which of course have the effect of making him
even nuder—which is not a word—but was
nonetheless included for purposes of double entendre,
just as the sandals were conjured to amplify his nudity.
And look, there is his unnamed wife doing some
gritty task, mussing the knees of those disturbing pants
as she vigorously trowels the root-base of her rosebush.
I’m sweating like a pig in these trousers, she mutters,
not to him exactly, though there is no one else there.
He is so long in responding it seems the moment
might pass when the newspaper rustles and he says,
Fine . . . give them here . . . I’ll wear the damn things,
sighing like a beleaguered king who must wear pants
he does not like, rank with the sweat of his wife,
like church shoes on a child’s feet in August.
Foretold
he shot the bird through the eye
then plucked the pouch
of the belly clean and cut it
open with scissors
so the gut breathed
steam in the chill air
Could you read these for me? he asked
pulling gray-pink strings from inside
Boy or girl? and will the labor be easy?
It seems an odd way
of finding such a thing out, I said
but I think you can wager
on a cesarean
and the child will not go
hungry
Binary
He wore a slightly rumpled shirt,
its buttoned placket off by one
so a triangle of cloth flapped loose
over his belt buckle. It struck me
this was possibly a studied move
meant to indicate joie de vivre.
He set his coffee down with a clack,
sat in the chair opposite and said,
“How would you like to be a zero
in a world of ones,” and he paused
like that after the zero, for effect
yet did not wait to see what effe
ct
this tidbit of drama would generate
before plunging forward in what was
either intellectual vigor or arrogance:
“As a zero in the Arabic numeral system
you could increase by tenfold the value
of any one you chose to stand beside.
And as a zero in a binary world of ones
you would quite literally contain
within the orb of your nothingness
half of all the instrumental information
needed to reduce the world’s chaos
into straightforward propositions.”
He smiled broadly and settled back
in his chair to await the response,
and that is when I slowly raised
my revolver level with his chest
to help him understand the world
is not in love with certainty.
Recollection
Sometimes, after waking,
I take a moment to collect myself.
My mind wanders to the cabinet
where I keep one leg neatly folded,
held snug by a canvas strap.
The other is toppled like
firewood beside the bed.
The embroidered box on the bedside table
that once housed a blown-glass ornament
now holds my tongue,
that dark knot of sleeping muscle.
My pale twinned arms
lie nestled together in a battered cello case
fingers tangled like amorous starfish.
The cradle of my pelvis sits on a wooden saddle
designed specifically for that purpose
and the hairy coil of my privates
rests on the dresser, next to a pile of coins.
How I’m writing this is anyone’s guess.
I’ve always been somewhat
scattered in dismembered places,
maybe you can remember
and mis-
take me, yes,
take me for my assemblage.
The Last Time I Saw God
was different from the first two times.
I’d fallen asleep and when I woke
it was just the two of us rocking
gently through each rumbling curve.
(It was on a subway car at night.)
I thought you’d be a woman, I said.
You always say that, he said and laughed.