though the box is still
there—cosmic cage,
Barnum’s biggest, proudest Ring.
My land: a chair, four sticks
with a board laid across:
This is the raft
I pile my dreams on,
set out to sea.
Look for me, shore.
Vacation
I love the hour before takeoff,
that stretch of no time, no home
but the gray vinyl seats linked like
unfolding paper dolls. Soon we shall
be summoned to the gate, soon enough
there’ll be the clumsy procedure of row numbers
and perforated stubs—but for now
I can look at these ragtag nuclear families
with their cooing and bickering
or the heeled bachelorette trying
to ignore a baby’s wail and the baby’s
exhausted mother waiting to be called up early
while the athlete, one monstrous hand
asleep on his duffel bag, listens,
perched like a seal trained for the plunge.
Even the lone executive
who has wandered this far into summer
with his lasered itinerary, briefcase
knocking his knees—even he
has worked for the pleasure of bearing
no more than a scrap of himself
into this hall. He’ll dine out, she’ll sleep late,
they’ll let the sun burn them happy all morning
—a little hope, a little whimsy
before the loudspeaker blurts
and we leap up to become
Flight 828, now boarding at gate 17.
A·wing´
Die Zeit im Grund, Quinquin, die Zeit,
die ändert doch nichts an den Sachen.
Die Zeit ist ein sonderbar Ding.
Wenn man so hinlebt, ist sie rein gar nichts.
Aber dann auf einmal, da spürt man nichts als sie.
Marschallin’s monologue, Der Rosenkavalier
Her noble soprano swells the car radio,
tone escalating on tone, a wine goblet
filling, then pouring out:
as frightening a perfection as the Alps
glimpsed, unguarded,
at the free end of a cobbled alley
crisscrossed with Monday’s laundry,
bed sheets and towels.
We’ve stopped to photograph Switzerland
en route to gentler climes. At this altitude
I’m lightheaded, though I’ve never felt
more brunette, here among the blondes
Schwarzkopf celebrated
(despite the irony of her name, a blemish
no native speaker hears). Strange,
the Marschallin trills, but time
changes nothing, actually.
Jolted, my chest stutters,
remembers to re-inflate—
glacial sun, iodine empyrean.
I lift the lens and snap. Even this deep
into summer, snow continues to pleat
those deadly crevasses—(Hochsommer,
the natives call it: high, deep, black,
white)—just as she continues
to thrill us with her icy passion, her
platinum Marschallin.
There’s really no end to this
perfection: It stands there
ignoring you, until you notice—and then
there’s nothing else.
After Egypt
The slum is the measure of civilization.
—Jacob Riis
Everyone’s quick to blame the alien.
—Aeschylus
Little Town
Cobble your streets and no whining:
Stones are abundant here,
Stones and weather and air.
Foundry
Cast out. Cast in
bronze, in iron
(medallions never),
in fervor, in torment,
testing for a nibble,
a bite of glory—
then reeled into The
Net. Always the net’s
diaphanous crucible,
a seething creel
dripping with its
wretched catch.
STAND UP, JEW!
NIGGER, HALT!
JUST TRY IT, BITCH.
I hear you. Your eyes
have screamed themselves
into slits and I am tired
beyond longing, past
caring if the stick
is thick. You think surely
there’s no harm in
rounding up trash
and hauling it
to the dump where it
won’t offend your delicate
snub nose. You think
as long as we stay where
you’ve tossed us, on
the slag heap of your regard,
the republic is safe.
OUT OF SIGHT, OUT OF MIND
Now you see me
Now you don’t
Sarra’s Answer
in response to a sonnet by Gabriele Zinano
You asked if I could swear this faith of mine
would guarantee to get me into heaven—
if not, then why not take the veil
and strike an iron-clad deal with God?
You wrote this in earnest, as if desire
were not a part of believing, and your zeal
one last irresistible swish of frosting
on the wafer offered up in trade for sin.
There is no way to say this sweetly: Death
will sour my breath before I set foot
inside that gilded gambler’s den. Aim your hope
elsewhere: There can be no prize behind Door
Number Three grander than all I’ll inherit—
passage from these lean walls into endless Room.
Sarra’s Blues
I am not the one you hoped for
(it is morning my heart beats)
I am not the one you think I am
(my bed is stale the air is sweet)
I will not give in to sorrow
(though the lapping water purrs)
I will not be soothed by shadows
(I can hear the earth’s low roar)
You cannot find me in these lines
(I have not gone it is too soon)
I cannot find the noblest rhymes
(I did not die this afternoon)
From wan noon into dim evening
(brackish spittle clanging skull)
Evening grims into night’s easing
(water settles light decays)
What I whisper will not soothe you
(fevered washrag soured wet)
Do not look for peace or wisdom
(do remember do regret)
I have nothing left to tell you
(muffled voices fade away)
True I will not live forever
(but I shall not die today)
Aubade: The Constitutional
Leone da Modena. The Veneto
A day like this I should count
among the miracles of living—breath,
a heart that beats, that aches and sings;
even the ecstasy of thirst
or sweat peppering my brow,
fanned by the mercurial breezes
crisscrossing this reserve,
our allotment on earth—
why, then, am I unhappy
when all around me
the human pageant whirrs?
This much I can do for my lost,
my sweet and damaged tribe:
Each morning I pace the tattered verge
of their Most Serene Republic,
patrol each canal’s fogged sibilance,
chanting a day unlike all others—
and then I count it, and the next,
&nbs
p; God willing, and each day thereafter
as a path free of echoes,
a promise with no perimeters,
my foot soles polishing the scarred stones.
Sketch for Terezín
breathe in breathe out
that’s the way
in out
left right
where did we leave from?
when do we stop leaving?
*
This far west, summer nights cool off
but stay light, blue-stung,
long after sleep lowers its merciful hammer.
*
breathe left
breathe right
one two
in out
*
There will be music and ice cream
and porcelain sinks.
Carts of bread for the looking;
choirs and gymnastics.
I get to carry the banner.
*
that’s the way keep it up
in out in out
where did we leave from
when did we stop leaving
*
I was a girl when I arrived,
carrying two pots
from my mother’s kitchen.
It was October, growing crisp,
my sweater soft as cream cakes,
my braid blonder than the star
stitched across my heart.
*
breathe breathe
that’s the way
left right left
right left right
*
no one asks what village I’m from
though I look out from its leaf-green eyes
no one asks if I remember how the butterflies
startled, churning up lemony clouds
no one else hears the river chafing its banks
the one road singing its promises
going out
*
when did we leave from
where did we stop leaving
*
if I am to become a heavenly body
I would like to be a comet
a streak of spitfire consuming itself
before a child’s upturned wonder
Orders of the Day
After the bellowed call to rise, the cold dribble wash-up
before making our cots; after chores were dealt out
as we crumbled bread into sour cabbage, then fell
in line to be totted up, numbers matched to fates;
there was a moment—before the scramble to class,
lookouts posted below the attic hutch, no more than
a flicker, a bright, brutal remembering—
when we became ourselves again,
cowlicked and plaited, flush with pocketed apples
or tucked-away sweets. We were not
hunched in rain being counted or shivering
under rafters, trying to keep pace with
our dreams of the outside world.
We were merely children. And that
brief forgetting, that raging stupor
we tried to hold quiet in our heads
as if in a brimming goblet
until the day lurched upright, barking its orders—
was either the most blissful or shattering instant
we would live through on earth:
this hard and sullen earth
we no longer recognized but would,
sooner than later, commit our souls to
when at last our bodies crumbled
into their final resting place.
Transit
If music be the food of love, play on.
This is the house that music built:
each note a fingertip’s purchase,
rung upon rung laddering
across the unspeakable world.
As for those other shrill facades,
rigged-for-a-day porticos
composed to soothe regiments
of eyes, guilt-reddened,
lining the parade route
(horn flash, woodwind wail) . . .
well, let them cheer.
I won’t speak judgment on
the black water passing for coffee,
white water for soup.
We supped instead each night
on Chopin, hummed our grief-
soaked lullabies to the rapture
rippling through. Let it be said
while in the midst of horror
we fed on beauty—and that,
my love, is what sustained us.
[Alice Herz-Sommer, survivor of the Theresienstadt concentration camp]
Declaration of Interdependence
Hooknose, Canada Goose, slit-eyed Toucan.
Porch monkey, baboon, trash-talking magpie.
I cover my head in adoration, just as you doff your hat.
Do not rub my head. Don’t even think about it.
I bob as I chant, I pray as I breathe. Does that disgust you?
I shout to the Lord, dance out my joy. Does that amuse you?
To my knowledge I have never terminated a deity.
Last time I looked, I did not have a tail.
Business is not “in” my blood. I attended university. I studied.
I am a trained athlete. Nothing I do on the court is natural.
Matzo is not a culinary delicacy: There wasn’t a menu.
Fried chicken will kill you just as easy as the Colonel.
You buy tickets to hear me crack jokes about my tribe. Are you uncomfortable yet?
Suddenly you’re walking up the same street I’m walking down. Are you frightened yet?
You laugh, and forget. I laugh, and remember.
I laugh to forget, and the thorn deepens.
Excuse me, but what do vermin actually look like?
Raccoons are intelligent, curious, and highly industrious.
I am not the problem or even a problem. Problems have provenance; someone created them.
I’m neither exotic nor particularly earthy. I was a child once; I belonged to someone.
No, I do not know how to play the violin.
Sorry, I’m tone-deaf. No rhythm here.
Bagel-dog, Bronx Indian, Beastie Boy.
Buckwheat, Burr Head, banjo lips.
I have never even seen a well.
So is that a poplar?
Do not talk about my mother.
Do not talk about my mother.
Elevator Man, 1949
Not a cage but an organ:
If he thought about it, he’d go insane.
Yes, if he thought about it
philosophically,
he was a bubble of bad air
in a closed system.
He sleeps on his feet
until the bosses enter from the paths
of Research and Administration—
the same white classmates
he had helped through Organic Chemistry.
A year ago they got him a transfer
from assembly line to Corporate Headquarters,
a “kindness” he repaid
by letting out all the stops,
jostling them up and down
the scale of his bitterness
until they emerge queasy, rubbing
the backs of their necks,
feeling absolved and somehow
in need of a drink. The secret,
he thinks to himself, is not
in the pipe but
the slender breath of the piper.
Youth Sunday
16th Street Baptist Church
Dirmingham, Alabama
This morning’s already good—summer’s
cooling, Addie chattering like a magpie—
but today we are leading the congregation.
Ain’t that a fine thing! All in white like angels,
they’ll be sighing when we appear at the pulpit
and proclaim “Open your hymnals—”
Addie, what
’s the page number again?
Never mind, it’ll be posted. I think. I hope.
Hold still, Carole, or else this sash will never
sit right! There. Now you do mine.
Almost eleven. I’m ready. My, don’t we look—
what’s that word the Reverend used in
last Sunday’s sermon? Oh, I got it: ethereal.
Aubade East
Harlem, a.m.
Today’s the day, I can taste it.
Got my gray sweats pouting in a breeze
so soft, I feel like I’m still wrapped for sleeping
as I head uptown in my undercover power-suit,
bitch sunlight fingering the spaced-out tenements.
This morning there ain’t nothing I can’t do.
This is my territory, I know all of it—
ten long blocks flanked by mighty water.
Walking any Avenue is like riding
a cosmic surfboard on the biggest wave
of the goddam century, the East River
twerking her bedazzled behind
while sky spills coins like a luck-crazed
Vegas granny flush at the slots. Today
I’m gonna make out like a bandit myself:
hook up with my buds to drop
a few shots on the courts, ogle the ladies,
then play the rest of the day
as it comes see where it goes
feeling good
feeling good
somewhere over the Hudson
the sun heading home
Trayvon, Redux
It is difficult / to get the news from poems / yet men die miserably
every day / for lack / of what is found there. / Hear me out / for
I too am concerned / and every man / who wants to die at peace
in his bed / besides.
William Carlos Williams, “Asphodel, That Greeny Flower”
Move along, you don’t belong here.