Poetry

One by one the animals disappeared
either shot
or destroying each other
or owned by banks
or the military,
the short dog, the eagle mean and not giving over,
the cheeky sparrow,
the terrible melancholic deer.

I admired their efforts in the face of apocalypse
and so lined up my inner animals in a similar formation:
the happy stupid one, the cheater, the bully,
the practicing intellectual,
the yogini, the softball champion–

they looked pretty good together
a nice cross-section of society
so I fixed myself a scotch and smoked cigars Washington-style
and laughed from deep under my pubic bones
where my phantom penis nervously waited —

once gathered this way
these characters acted like union officials
out back on their breaks
cigarettes burning in solidarity with the sunset;
one by one
they raised their hands over their hearts —

I grew up with animals, you know.

I always needed to rescue or rearrange something.
I never liked lace
the troubling gaps masquerading as pretty completions,
nor the spring branches, that dripped with rain
then became dry–

no, there must be order.
Fold shirts and jeans neatly

and put them in drawers
use make-up, mow the lawn, eat right,
the body gracious as a butler–

And as if nothing had happened
someone butted out her cigarette
looking sad like a Chihuahua
and said, “Heavy rustling of needles. Uplifted branches–
their shapes offer themselves up but then they seem to struggle
against their shape–”

no–
–no one speaks like that

I turned away –
and when I looked back
she was gone
like the animals. No!
wait –
“When I looked back she was laughing,”
yes, like that, as though she actually
saw something in the trees
like a sign the fortune tellers had posted
giving up their charade:
be prepared for no answer

or maybe, be prepared for I.V. needles and crowded wards
an approximation of a conclusion–

a body’s knowledge here and there
then changed into something else–

published in The Drunken Boat, spring 2001

those weren’t excuses
I really was marking papers and waitressing and
pulling the dishwashing actions of a life into center,
the dirty bits of things
swept into my palm.

I’d love to get together
but I have a job. And then I plunged my hands back
into the murky water, cat-food hardened
on the dishes, crustaceans of yesterday
catching up with me too fast,

no, there is no time,
clean up, step up,
go to bed and begin again–
washing undiminished. Up, down

and across I rushed –even then
the curtains were falling down
(if I’d had curtains)
and the cats needed attention
(if they hadn’t been sleeping).

–in the background there’s the father unadorned,
the boyfriend turning in circles like a pigeon–
–the friend with eyes like buffed chestnuts
the mother’s hands limp with soaked shirts–

Below, and above, a cloud with a distinct smell
idles strangely–

ii) tapestry of isolation

after a while you wonder
what busy means anyway:
time for only
one arm around you?

poverty: when there’s never enough for you.
consciousness: at last you see
everyone’s tied to the tracks.

but still you have to tie yourself to something solid
and so the busy brick appears
and you hang on–

iii) tapestry of isolation

and when you’ve accumulated a lot of it?
It crumbles into pocket-lint
and single silver dog hairs and crumbs
from morning after morning.
I bet that’s what it does.

And the crumbling happens at the beginning,
or does it take years?

Years.

iv) tapestry of isolation

In the beginning you walk with plates balanced on your head
up the Avenue of the Americas.
Pedestrians rush like stock-hawkers, manic shoppers
against the future.
You do it to prove you can.

But I bet that was always happening,
even before you started the balance. The rushing
and the which-a-way walking. And like the others
you were so afraid your body would leave you.

v) tapestry of isolation

for the first time since the house burned down
I am living with rugs.

How much they hold. Each strand so loyal
it stands firmly in its pattern of printed roses;
roses holding
a footprint, crumbs, or feathers, things
from all over, including the direction the vacuum passed in.
(you can vacuum but
things stay unclean)

Rug, so internal, so at home, so domestic!
Womanly it spreads across the floor,
doing exactly as I ask,
holding like a breath its wearing.
And what’s unwanted inside its weave, it holds in.

miserable still, though different,
the morning sun rose into sight.

inside the hospital I was recovering
from a dailiness quite severe
something lost somewhere
or too much of me all around
or not enough.

the interviewers
looked down with a joke
sealed into their sympathy
like medical Houdinis, like secretaries
gone for cocktails and all
their makeups’ running:

“If we asked you,
could you talk about this
more directly?”

maybe.

“Could you write it
in these margins? Is it rhythmic?”

yes.
“Does it have sound?”

it has
repeating sounds, flashes and strikes.

“It has two parts then,
the facts and the flow;
numbers and voices.
Would you like to make a recording?”

No
I’d like to make amethyst.

published in The Drunken Boat, spring 2001