today i bought flowers for our little room.
beer gas and food
you say, that's my life these days
calla lilies and daffodils in the same vase
isn't it nice i say, all that negative space
as you yank out my ankle hairs for foreplay.
now remove my clothes slowly
tooth by tooth
of the zipper
so all we hear
is the darkness
going click. click. click.
Last night I dreamt I was nailing Jesus
to the cross. But every time I tried to hammer the nail,
he'd move his hand and go HA! in my face.
I guess that's what I get for not believing in him.
Jesus is a joke-
ster.
After sunset, black
moves over last
wet light of April.
I remember you
against me, turning.
on his lower lip, right
in the middle of it, as if
his lip had been birthing a baby
rat and died during labor--
the tiny bald head forever
stuck in red exit, never able
to breathe; to thank Ellis
for giving it life; to share
a cigarette with Ellis at rush hour;
to love Ellis
as only a son can love his father;
to comb Ellis' hair each morning before
leaving to scour the city for food, for
a penny or two to bring back to
Ellis' crumbling hands;
to coo molten lullabies
into his ears as Ellis falls
asleep each night on 42nd street;
to hold and heave his body
into the concrete,
as the world slowly tips
on its axis, so Ellis won't slip
off the edge,
that POP of flesh hitting air,
that brief shhhh
just before the scream.
I greeted my neighbor on the street,
Hello! I said, jubilantly.
Her head down, she nodded,
acknowledging me, yet
saying nothing, probably thinking
any number of things. Perhaps she
was late, or unable to commit
to a single reply, or maybe
she was simply cold
on this late-February day,
rushing to get out of it.
I wonder at her, as one wonders
at the Mona Lisa -- what does she want
from us, if not nothing at all?
What is the meaning of a poem
such as this, you'll ask, and I'll say
think of it as an emotion
immortalized in stone, a statue
at which you may stare and stare
and never quite understand what
you are supposed to feel.
Do not be afraid, dear reader,
to be left wondering.
Yes, darling,
I would love to
share a glass of red with you,
and I can think of nothing
sweeter than to join you
for a romp in the bathtub.
Of course, darling,
I'll spend the night with you,
and every night after this one --
let us make love
all over this city, and when
we've fucked the city dry,
let us flee to the country
to spread our seeds and tend
them 'til they're ripe as
your plum tongue upon
my swollen nipples.
For you see,
darling, we have no choice now
but to show our fellow human beings
that in this age of divorce
and disaster, not every glass
shatters, not every tub drains.
1
If you would just
send the sunshine through
the skylight of our breakfast nook, eat
your eggs slowly and let the yolks
harvest their seeds deep inside
your belly, open your mouth
and let the crops fall
out, into my hands--
then I will glue egg shells
to your cheeks and call you my little chicken.
2
After breakfast, we'll move
into the living room where the flag hangs
covering the fire place and we'll light
a fire behind it to honor ourselves, our
country, and all the illegal immigrants
we've so graciously welcomed
into our land of the free and the
money. When the flag goes up
in flames, we'll raise our arms and circle
around the Oriental rug together and don't
you forget this Lionel: we'll hold each other
there, for as long as it takes to beat this
thing down -- the questionable ideal
that we're going to be okay one day.
3
When our living room catches fire
with the flag,
your new sneakers
will melt into the rug,
but I won't leave you,
Lionel, I won't.
I'll hold you through this,
however it may end.
There, in the middle
of the overflowing street,
stands the Jasminewala –
He’s just trying to get by
on strings of tiny, white flowers,
whose fragrance alone
can intoxicate all soulful human beings
enough to altogether forget about
their looming departure –
I'm the only white in a sea of brown,
like his jasmine, still
he spots me –
With a grandiose smile
and inquiring eyes,
he raises his dying jewels to the night;
and I answer him,
with a smile to match,
raising my still-warm parcel of soggy bhel –
As he blazes a trail to me through
the sky’s tears and the petrol fumes,
a rainbow of trust connects us –
Tonight, he won’t be hungry,
and tomorrow,
I will give brown blossoms to the wind –
It's that smell of dead fish
mixed with wet dog and fried eggs
swirling on the crest of a pitiful wave
in the wake of a 1980s Boston Whaler
put in the water only yesterday
in anticipation of a summer made up of whole days
spent hunting for sea glass
and tending to your pet turtle in its cage
made of a giant blue buoy, cut open at the top
lined with moss and filled with rocks.
And your brother crouches
on the dock, his fishing pole in hand
patiently waiting for a bite.
And your sister suns herself
in the hammock, every now and then
demanding that you bring her a soda or
rub sunblock on her back.
And the rip of the curses inside
cuts between your mother and father and stings
your ears as it seeps through
the cracks of the jagged window in the front door
that you accidentally smashed
with your whiffle-ball bat
on your way out to the neighborhood game
under the lights
at the pump house last night.
It's that taste of sweet blood in your mouth
when you fall
for the nineteenth time
teaching yourself
how to ride a bike
on the dirt road leading
toward and away
from it all.
Your breath smells
of warm milk, your breast,
of lilacs in bloom,
just before the heat
becomes too much
for such a delicate flower
to live through.
After Denise Levertov
The heat in baring skin
so white it seems
each summer the first summer.
The breath lifting, the tongue
shivering at the touch
each day the first day.
His bright eyes, color-blind
so deceived so
easy to fool, dreamily
move along my body
toe to brow. I hide
my blue eyes inside the darkness.
Before you know what fear really is
you must catch yourself
in a split-second gaze
with the screaming yellow eyes
of the young buck in the middle of the road
that your father is about to hit.
The cold Suburban, a black
frosted night, the slip of the tires
the stick of the brakes.
You must jump
at your mother's gasp and
grab your brother's arm
with a grip so tight you can feel
his heart dumping blood into his veins.
You must hear the vibration
of animal meeting machine and
you must try to understand
what it's like
to be on the other side of the bumper.
You must stare at the blood
growing from its nose --
imprint it in your mind.
You must eat the venison stew
your mother made with reluctance.
You must eat it for weeks.
Before you can know the power of fear,
you must let
the buck's steady breath
warm your hands.
Forget about bombs,
let's drop bears on Afghanistan. Yes,
I do believe the Pentagon is on
to something here. Bin Laden,
honey, you best pray
your porridge ain't "just right" today.
1
If you write it down
you remember it.
If you write it down
you get rid of it.
Well, which is it?
I'm begging you,
2
Poet, please choose!
To need
to get rid of it
is to remember it,
and to remember it
3
rids you not.
If it is writ,
it is rid from your brain,
but forever remembered
4
on the page.
So, the page
becomes your beloved
memory, or,
if it torments you,
5
your enemy.
The only way to wage
which is which
is to rip up the page
on which it is writ
and begin it
6
again. Over
and over again.
When it is time
Kellifer Jones will go to bed
That's what her father called her
With a big old smile
She is in love with people
My Kellifer Jones
But even better
How she loves to be alone
Alone with her books
Alone with her plants
Kellifer Jones and I
Go driving when we feel like it
We go where we've never been
Or to town and back again
Too late, or was it too soon?
Did I find you, or you me?
No need for doctors now, you and I
will heal ourselves by this fire,
the snow talking
pretty outside.
And when these flames
grow to love us,
we'll leave our bodies
here to dry,
a mother's sigh within the wind,
that tiny music.
hand-washed clothing
draped like fainted women
vulnerable
on a line under the ceiling fan
the sound of the rains
roaring crowds at a festival
wet socks drying on the wet sill
wind sweeping through the open window
chiding my papers to come out and play
Saturday afternoon in late September
just me
and my clothes
1 i bathe myself
in the kitchen sink
because there is no bathtub.
i stare at the ceiling
as the knots in the wood
turn into faces
of my favorite cartoon characters.
2 out at the pump house
some kids are playing
whiffle ball and i still
don't know how to ride a bike.
3 i hunt sea glass. i have
just about every color there is
except red. a motor boat goes by
a girl is water-skiing off the back
i don't know how to do that either.
4 the shed is filled with fishing gear
and smells like shed.
on the inside of the door
there are tracings and measurements
of the fish my brother and sister have caught.
5 i'm too young
to fish so i just hunt sea glass and bury
the dead as they wash up
along the shoreline.
What can I do?
What, when every craving
is fulfilled, every daydream,
brought to life,
when every grain
of sand burns white
under Betul sunbeams,
every smile skips
like a rare gem from one
wave's crest to another?
When everyone I meet
considers hospitality
a responsibility?
What can I do
in the face of such majesty?
I've been struck
into a state of perpetual
gratitude by so many hands
in this promising land.
I kneel before you, India,
I give you my words.
It's the least I can do, for
you have made me
the luckiest.
I sit ten seats back
from the rest of them, for here,
the window scene remains stagnant,
never disappearing behind me.
The sun calmly submerges,
splashing out the moon
and some stars.
As we careen
into the deepening
shadows, the last
pinks and greens eddy
in reverse motion before my mind's eye--
it's so beautiful, and still,
everyone on this damn train
is staring at me.
I am a stranger, a foreigner,
backlit in this sultry
North-Indian eve,
but to someone out there,
I'm a mere silhouette
in the fluorescent lights
of a passing train car.
Like stumbling upon
a lone feather
from a sacrificed bird,
my eyes find this moment
of miles behind, floating
on the film strip that lines
the back of my memory--
And in the broken, spotty
picture, the fading colors
sink to grey,
and I can't remember
what you look like.
for my father
As a yawn is contagious,
do as I do or just listen
to my voice. Let
what I say remind you
of something you've forgotten
to say or do or render
important. Let me remind you
why you go sailing
by yourself, then phone your
kids when your sails hit
broad reach. Let me show you
why you're suddenly inspired to write
poetry in your 50s, and
what it means to be proud of your father.
I've heard from several sources now
that you love me,
which is why I'm getting
a restraining order on you.
You can't just go around
loving everything that walks.
Save yourself!
Last night I dreamt of her,
my India, again.
Her wet reds and blues,
sacred cows lying down
in her flooding streets. Her fruit
bats and mangoes, pregnant with heat.
And in the morning I knew
it was out of my hands
because nothing ever is
the way it is when I sleep.
So fuck you, Dreams,
for fucking with me
and making me wake up
in Iowa, again.
There is a place I know where
I am humbled--
And it was there, by the light
of day, I sat on white steps,
conscious of my luck, in
denial of my faults,
yet thinking of nothing
in particular,
when they came--
I stared, fascinated,
as one colony of ants
lifted together,
paraded the stale, lifeless
body of a flattened gecko
up all the steps upon which I sat--
Hundreds of them,
some black, some red,
with the most
determined movements,
their impossible task
at hand, inch by inch
becoming possible--
In that moment, I loved
them all: the ants and the gecko,
the trees, the fruit bats, the steps,
my faults--
There is a place where I know
what it's like to conquer
the beast who feeds on my blood,
and how gently the dead
can be handled.
by Chris von Trapp
1
Dear John,
That's not your real name.
Although it could be
if you were given that name
or acted that way,
but it's really not you, it's me.
2
Dear John,
I thought you were special.
Filling the void
of the last one I lost,
but he is not you
he is him.
3
Dear John,
Rebounds never work.
Only in basketball,
or in this case,
basket case.
But that is not you
it's me.
4
Dear John,
I never wanted this to happen.
I thought we were forever
but, forever turned out to be
a really long time.
You can never go the distance
with me.
5
Dear John,
I did not mean to hurt you.
I needed you then,
but this is now.
We are not the same
as we used to be,
it is you
and me.
1
The man keeps a fox
in his freezer. The fox
is wrapped in a plastic
bag, which is wrapped
in another plastic bag,
which is neatly knotted
at the top. The fox
is small and rests
between a TV
dinner and a gallon
of mint ice cream.
Each night, the man
removes the bag
from his freezer,
unties the knot,
and lays the fox down
on his living room floor.
The man, crouching
over the fox, examines
its fur, inspects its
paws and its teeth.
After some time,
he folds the fox
into the bags,
and places it back
inside the freezer.
2
After the man has retired to bed,
Fox opens his eyes, lifts up his cold head,
crawls out of the bags and creeps 'cross the floor.
He knows the man sleeps -- he hears the man snore.
Fox sits for hours, fixed on Man's breath,
watching for changes, smelling for death.
And with the first signs of light, Fox slinks away,
back to his place beneath the ice tray.
The strange race continues just how it began:
the man and the fox and the fox and the man.
I was sitting in the air on an airplane next to a lady who smelled like hairspray and vodka. In her lap stood a tiny little toy dog, which I didn't notice until I was just reading and I got that feeling you get when you feel some eyes on you somewhere so I put down my book and I looked all around until I found that little dog making eyes at me. We looked and looked at each other and normally I don't stare but I thought, it's only a dog,
but since that day on the airplane, I've never once stared at another dog, big or small because after about a minute and a half of staring at this one, there was a blink of red light in its eyes, then a clicking sound, and then the damn dog blew up right there on the lady's lap and I thought she might turn and slap me in the face or something but no one said a word so I plucked the fur from my ginger-ale and kept on reading The Origin of Species.
Prints of barren
trees and
hot air balloons hang
on the walls
in these holes
where we're stuck-- living
like pigs in bowls
of wilted petals,
wasting evenings writing
poems, feeding
on pills and jellied salmon
rubbing our nipples right down
to the bone--
we tug at furniture that is screwed
to the floor, we are bored, so
flipping through a few pages,
we cross and uncross our legs, yawn,
then we blink and we're gone.
Hour 1
I'm near a young couple
that reminds me of us,
when you and I became we.
They hold hands in the back row
as fishermen depend on fishing
line, but really, they're not
fooling anyone.
They sit close, touching heads
now and then, or kissing lightly
on the lips, mouthing
I love you, back and forth.
How young they are, I think,
and look for something else
to criticize.
Hour 2
I spend time noticing the shadow
of the chandelier on the wall, then
the reflection of its light
in the dark window,
and finally, the chandelier itself.
It's golden, golden
like you'd imagine the Golden
Gate Bridge to be
if you'd never seen it before,
and I remember, for a moment,
that you're colorblind.
Invisible collisions of star
and star create electric-tar,
swallow acres
of galaxy from one
violent stone into another.
Like dust particles
and their pixie explosions,
we shed these stars:
pieces of gold
thimbles of sky.
One by one, and magically
another, finer than grass
we combust.
