CURATOR OF KOSINSKI’S MASK
Maybe he thought gods
Would gaze back through these eyeholes
Of leather soft as Leda,
Smoother than vellum.
He said, “Life, here’s Death
With his orphic grin.”
In the glass case is Mirth,
Over here Metamorphosis.
This is Quintus Roselus.
He called it “Beauty
Turned inside out
By what is seen.”
Here’s my favorite, The Plastic
Bag. Look how one mask fits
Inside another, how they kiss
Away each other’s fear.
POSTSCRIPT TO A SUMMER NIGHT
As if he’d stood too long facing
A pharaoh in the Temple of Karnak
Or Hermes of Siphnos, one night
J. R. Midas copied his penis
On the company’s Xerox machine,
Lying across a bed of hot light.
He was thirty-three, still half
Invincible, & scribbled on each: I am
On fire with love, & all the more fire
Because I am rejected … He x-ed out
Galatea, & wrote in names of the two
New district managers: Melissa, Amy
Lou. He hung his coat & tie on a hook,
Then strolled down to the docks
& walked under an orange moon
Till his clothes turned to rags.
SEPTEMBER
Today, somewhere, a man
In his early seventies is lost
In a cluster of hills at dusk,
Kneeling beside a huckleberry bush.
It’s been six—no, seven—days
Since he stood at his kitchen window
Gazing out toward this summit
As Armstrong’s “Gully Low Blues”
Played on his Philco, hoping
The hot brass would undercut
The couple’s techno & punk rock
In the basement. Two days ago,
He ate the last trail mix & beef
Jerky. Now, with a blues note in his head,
He nuzzles the berried branches
To his mouth, like a young deer.
CURANDERISMO
Dear, I roll this duck egg
Over your breasts to steal
The poison, old troubles,
& lamentation. The angry cells
Will sprout in this sacrifice
That now takes on your burdens
& pleas. The mystery of gods
Lives on our bodies. I want you
To take this icon, my dear,
Wrap it in a silk garment,
& bury it thirty-three paces
Among the trees. Disbelief
Can’t change what’s happened here
Tonight, with these bad omens
Zonked, & I can’t think ugly
Since I deal in cosmic stuff.
THE POLECAT
Thanks for your warning
Along the chilly hedgerow.
I have seen dogs roll in the dust
& run in circles, nudge the hemlock,
Trying to shake off the essence
Of you. Your scent rises up
Through the living-room floorboards,
The odor of fear from saw vines
& cockleburs. I fold both hands
Into a mask. Those days, in love,
Protesting for the spotted owl
Among my last good witnesses,
I remember a sheriff aiming pepper gas.
Praised or damned, it depends where
We stand, little terrorist
Of the stink bomb.
CROW LINGO
Can you be up to any good
Grouped into a shadow against Venus,
Congregated on power lines around
The edges of cornfields?
Luck. Curse. A wedding.
Death. I have seen you peck
Pomegranates & then cawcawcaw
Till hornets rise from purple flesh
& juice. I know you’re plotting
An overthrow of the government
Of sparrows & jays, as the high council
Of golden orioles shiver among maple
& cottonwood. Your language
Of passwords has no songs,
No redemption in wet feathers
Slicked back, a crook’s iridescent hair.
THE DEVIL’S WORKSHOP
The master craftsman sits like Rodin’s
Thinker, surrounded by his cosmic tools,
Experimenting with the greenhouse effect
& acid rain. A great uncertainty
Plagues him. Some hard questions
Wound the air. Yesterday afternoon
Children marched with a rainbow
Of placards. Perhaps he can create
A few suicides with his new computer
Virus. Something has gone wrong
In the shop, because the old gods
Are having more fun than he is
In his laboratory of night sweats
& ethnic weapons. Lovers smile
As Cupid loads a blowgun with thorns.
MUD
She works in the corner of the porch
Where a trumpet vine crawls up to falling
Light. There’s always some solitary
Bridge to cross. Right hand
& left hand. The dirt dauber
Shapes a divided cell
Out of everything she knows,
Back & forth between the ditch.
I could take a stick & play
God. Soldier. Sadist. Nosing
Mud into place, she hums the world’s
Smallest motor. Later, each larva
Quivers like bait on a hook … spermatozoa
Clustered in a song of clay. So small
Only the insignificance can begin
To fill the afternoon.
EUPHONY
Hands make love to thigh, breast, clavicle,
Willed to each other, to the keyboard—
Searching the whole forest of compromises
Till the soft engine kicks in, running
On honey. Dissonance worked
Into harmony, evenhanded
As Art Tatum’s plea to the keys.
Like a woman & man who have lived
A long time together, they know how
To keep the song alive. Wordless
Epics into the cold night, keepers
Of the fire—the right hand lifts
Like the ghost of a sparrow
& the left uses every motionless muscle.
Notes divide, balancing each other,
Love & hate tattooed on the fingers.
FROM
TABOO
LINGO
Herodotus, woven into his story,
tells how the Phoenicians lent
war fleets to Greece & Egypt,
how a ghost-driven flotilla
eased like salmon up birth water
& sailed the Red Sea,
hoping to circumnavigate Africa
around the Cape of Good Hope
& along Gibraltar. A blue
door opened. Diodorus
says of the Ethiopians,
“born under the Sun’s path,”
that “its warmth may have ripened them
earlier than other men.” As if
a ventriloquist inherited
the banter of a sailor’s parrot,
words weave with Herodotus’s—
angel food … sellers didn’t touch
the gold … devil’s food. The stories
become flesh as these ghosts
argue about what’s lost
in translation, believing two images
should spawn & ignite a star
in the eyes of a sphinx
or soothsayer. Sometimes
they do.
There’s a reason why the dead
may talk through a medium
about how Aryans drove cattle
along the seven rivers & left
dark-skinned Dravidians
with tongues cut out, sugarcane
fields ablaze, & the holy air
smelling of ghee & soma.
These ghosts know the power
of suggestion is more than body
language: white list, black
sheep, white tie, black market.
Fear climbs the tribal brainstem
or wills itself up an apple tree,
hiding from the dream animal
inside. The serpent speaks
like a Lacan signifier,
posing as a born-again agrarian
who loves computer terminals
better than cotton blossoms
planted, then we wail to reap
whirlwind & blessing. Each prefix
clings like a hookworm
inside us. If not the split-tongued
rook, the sparrow is condemned
to sing the angel down.
IMHOTEP
His forehead was stamped, Administrator
of the Great Mansion. Unloved in the
Crescent City, I sat in a bathtub
clutching a straight razor.
Desire had sealed my mouth
with her name. I asked,
What do full moons & secret herbs
have to do with a man’s heartache?
But this sage from the island of Philae
just smiled. Here before me stood the Son
of Ptah. Dung beetles & amethyst …
cures for a mooncalf,
flaccidity, bad kidneys, gout,
& gallstones. What we knew
about the blood’s map
went back to the court
of King Zoser. Something
beneath this April dream
scored by voices passing
outside my front door, a rap song
thundering from a boogie box.
I wasn’t dead. This Homeric healer
from the Serapeum of Memphis
lingered in the room.
I folded the bright blade
back into its mother-of-pearl
handle, & laughed at the noise
in the street, at a yellow moth
beating wings into dust
against a windowpane.
BACCHANAL
Rubens paints desire
in his wife’s eyes
gazing up at the black man
who has an arm around
her waist. Tambourines
shake the dusky air alive,
& there’s a hint of tulips,
a boy touching his penis
at the edge of jubilation.
Has a war been won, have dogs
been driven from the gates,
or the old fattened calf
slaughtered? Cartwheels
tie one Pan-hoofed season
to the next, with Bacchus
& Zulus. We believe
there’s pure quartz
hidden in this room
fretting the light,
forcing hands to reach
for each other, beyond
ambrosia. His wife
seduced by joy & unction,
wants to know how long
he’s danced with a brush
to will the night’s hunger
into an orgasm of colors.
NUDE STUDY
Someone lightly brushed the penis
alive. Belief is almost
flesh. Wings beat,
dust trying to breathe, as if the figure
might rise from the oils
& flee the dead
artist’s studio. For years
this piece of work was there
like a golden struggle
shadowing Thomas McKeller, a black
elevator operator at the Boston
Copley Plaza Hotel, a friend
of John Singer Sargent—hidden
among sketches & drawings, a model
for Apollo & a bas-relief
of Arion. So much taken
for granted & denied, only
grace & mutability
can complete this face belonging
to Greek bodies castrated
with a veil of dust.
AT THE RED SEA
So, this is where
cries come to us,
where molting seagulls
peck the air. I never
thought Crown Heights
would be so quiet, just
a cantor & a blues singer
weaving all the old begats
into Cato, Yankel, Andy,
Michael, James … all the others
transplanted to earthen dams
& tenements. Sabbath-breakers
& charlatans sow seeds to kill
fruit. What we forgot
or never knew is enough
to teach the ant to profane
sugar. To see injustice,
don’t care where your feet
are planted, you must be
able to nail your left hand
to a tree in full bloom.
Now, look at Sheba
in Solomon’s hanging garden,
carved by grace from head
to toe, she was “wounded
by love of wisdom” hidden
in a cloud of galbanum
& myrrh. Didn’t the King
trust his heart? Let’s hope
the crystal floor
over that silent stream
had nothing to do with
the color of her skin,
but to prove her legs
weren’t like a donkey’s.
We sense what we’ve done
even if we can’t say why
we’re dismayed or overjoyed
by how the stones fit
in our hands. The egg
& sperm we would love
to deny, they still move
the blood till we can hear,
“I am black but comely,
ye daughters of Jerusalem.”
Some of us grow ashamed
peering up from the rat’s hole
in the belly of the Ark
till we’re no longer the same
women & men. Like Sheba
& Solomon, who asked
hard questions, we know
if a man is only paid
a stud fee,
he’ll butt his head
till stars rain down
& kill some stranger.
TROUBLING THE WATER
As if the night
on Fire Island
never happened—the dune
buggy that cut
like a scythe of moonlight
across the sand—I see
Frank O’Hara
with Mapplethorpe’s
book of photographs.
He whistles “Lover
Man” beneath his breath,
nudging that fearful
40th year into the background,
behind those white waves
of sand. A quick
lunch at Moriarty’s
with someone called LeRoi,
one of sixty best friends
in the city. He’s hurting
to weigh Melville’s concept
of evil against Henry
James. That woman begging
a nickel has multiplied
one hundredfold since
he last walked past the House
of Seagram. They speak
of Miles Davis
clubbed twelve times
outside Birdland by a cop,
& Frank flips through pages
of Mapplethorpe as if searching
for something to illustrate
the cop’s real fear.
A dog for the exotic—
is this what he meant?
The word Nubian
takes me to monuments
in Upper Egypt, not
the “kiss of birds
at the end of the penis”
singing in the heart
of America. Julie Harris
merges with images of Bob Love
till East of Eden is
a compendium of light
& dark. Is this O’Hara’s
Negritude? The phallic temple
throbs like someone
breathing on calla lilies
to open them: Leda’s
room of startled mouths.
LINGUA FRANCA
Those double shotgun
houses in New Orleans
can get a man killed.
Helena suns in our shared
courtyard in her crimson
swimsuit. Her breasts
point toward my back
door, just mesh & light
between us. I want to
talk about friendship,
about how an August day’s
brightness can murder.
She lies against the ground,
moving her hips to the music,
reading Joaquim Machado
de Assis again. Whispered
Portuguese floats to me
through magnolia scent.
We listen to Afro-Cuban
because we both can move
to the drum. Her husband
is draped in computer cables
somewhere. I want to say
that de Assis’s skin color
didn’t have anything to do
with indelible printing ink
on his hands, that “Mosca
Azul” & “Circulo Viciosi”
had been woven into one
unbroken song of colors
in my head. The blue
fly’s “wings of gold
& Carmine” were also
the glowworm’s lament
about the sky, the sun’s
wish to be a glowworm.
I want to tell her how
she’s wounded me with
red cloth, but before
I can walk across the room
a ghost or guardian angel
slams the door shut.
DESECRATION
The swastika tattooed
on his right bicep & a nude
on his left quiver-dance
as he tries to blowtorch
St. Maurice of Agaunum
off Saxony’s coat of
arms. When the flame
spits a molten bead
of blue on his steel-toed
boots, obscenities
leap into the bruised