Poemunity — your poem community

According to Mister Hedges, the custodian who called upon their parents after young Otwiner and young Julia were spotted at the matinee of Rudolph Valentino in The Sheik at the segregated Knickerbocker Theater in the uncommon Washington December of 1922, “Your young ladies were misrepresenting themselves today,” meaning, of course, that they were passing. After coffee and no cake were finished and Mister Hedges had buttoned his coat against the strange evening chill, choice words were had with Otwiner and Julia, shame upon the family, shame upon the race. How they’d longed to see Rudolph Valentino, who was swarthy like a Negro, like the finest Negro man. In The Sheik, they’d heard, he was turbaned, whisked damsels away in a desert cloud. They’d heard this from Lucille and Ella who’d put on their fine frocks and French, claiming to be “of foreign extraction” to sneak into the Knickerbocker Theater past the usher who knew their parents but did not know them. They’d heard this from Mignon and Doris who’d painted carmine bindis on their foreheads braided their black hair tight down the back, and huffed, “We’ll have to take this up with the Embassy” to the squinting ticket taker. Otwiner and Julia were tired of Oscar Michaux, tired of church, tired of responsibility, rectitude, posture, grooming, modulation, tired of homilies each way they turned, tired of colored right and wrong. They wanted to be whisked away. The morning after Mister Hedges’ visit the paperboy cried “Extra!” and Papas shrugged camel’s hair topcoats over pressed pajamas, and Mamas read aloud at the breakfast table, “No Colored Killed When Roof Caves In” at the Knickerbocker Theater at the evening show from a surfeit of snow on the roof. One hundred others dead. It appeared that God had spoken. There was no school that day, no movies for months after.

Spiked sun. The Hudson’s Whittled down by ice. I hear the bone dice Of blown gravel clicking. Bone- pale, the recent snow Fastens like fur to the river. Standstill. We were leaving to deliver Christmas presents when the tire blew Last year. Above the dead valves pines pared Down by a storm stood, limbs bared . . . I want you.

The word itself: prim, retired, its artifact her portrait above the fireplace, on her face the boredom she abhorred, then perfected, her hands held upward—their emptiness a revision, cigarette and brandy snifter painted, intolerably, out, to leave her this lesser gesture:What next? or shrugged Whatever. From the waist down she was never there.

The world has certified itself rid of all but the argument: to eradicate or not the small stock of variola frozen, quarantined—a dormancy it has refused, just once, for a woman behind a sterile lens, her glass slide a clearest, most becoming pane. How could it resist slipping away with her, that discrete first pock?

This morning the world’s white face reminds us that life intends to become serious again. And the same loud birds that all summer long annoyed us with their high attitudes and chatter silently line the gibbet of the fence a little stunned, chastened enough. They look as if they’re waiting for things to grow worse, but are watching the house, as if somewhere in their dim memories they recall something about this abandoned garden that could save them. The neighbor’s dog has also learned to wake without exaggeration. And the neighbor himself has made it to his car with less noise, starting the small engine with a kind of reverence. At the window his wife witnesses this bleak tableau, blinking her eyes, silent. I fill the feeders to the top and cart them to the tree, hurrying back inside to leave the morning to these ridiculous birds, who, reminded, find the rough shelters, bow, and then feed.

While the long grain is softening in the water, gurgling over a low stove flame, before the salted Winter Vegetable is sliced for breakfast, before the birds, my mother glides an ivory comb through her hair, heavy and black as calligrapher’s ink. She sits at the foot of the bed. My father watches, listens for the music of comb against hair. My mother combs, pulls her hair back tight, rolls it around two fingers, pins it in a bun to the back of her head. For half a hundred years she has done this. My father likes to see it like this. He says it is kempt. But I know it is because of the way my mother’s hair falls when he pulls the pins out. Easily, like the curtains when they untie them in the evening.

Is this what I was made for? Is the world that fits Like what I feel when I wake up each morning? Steamclouds Hovering over the lake, and smoke ascending from ten thousand chimneys As in a picture on a calendar, in a frieze of ordinary days? Beneath a sky of oatmeal gray, the land slides downwards from a Kmart parking lot Into a distance lined with bungalows, and then a vague horizon. Higher and higher, until its gaze becomes a part of what it sees, The mind ascends through layers of immobility into an unfamiliar atmosphere Where nothing lives, and with a sense of finally breaking free Attains its kingdom: a constructed space, or an imaginary city Bordered all around by darkness; or a city gradually sinking into age, Dominated by a television tower whose blue light warns the traveler away. People change, or drift away, or die. It used to be a country Bounded by possibility, from which the restless could embark And then come home to, and where the soul could find an emblem of itself. Some days I feel a momentary lightness, but then the density returns, The salt-encrusted cars drive by the factory where a clock tower Overlooks the highway, and the third shift ends. And then softly, The way the future used to sing to me when I was ten years old, I start to hear the murmur of a voice that isn’t mine at all, Formless and indistinct, the music of a world that holds no place for me; And then an image starts to gather in my mind—a picture of a room Where someone lingers at a window, staring at a nearly empty street Bordered by freight yards and abandoned tanneries. And then the bus stops And a man gets off, and stands still, and then walks away. Last night I had a dream in which the image of a long-forgotten love Hovered over the city. No one could remember what his name was Or where he came from, or decipher what that emptiness might mean; Yet on the corner, next to the USA Today machine, a woman seemed to wave at me, Until the stream of morning traffic blocked her from my view. It’s strange, the way a person’s life can feel so far away, Although the claims of its existence are encountered everywhere —In a drugstore, or on the cover of a tabloid, on the local news Or in the mail that came this morning, in the musings of some talk show host Whose face is an enigma and whose name is just a number in the phone book, But whose words are as pervasive as the atmosphere I breathe. Why can’t I find my name in this profusion? Nothing even stays, No image glances back at me, no inner angel hurls itself in rage Against the confines of this surface that confronts me everywhere I look —At home or far away, here or on the way back from the store— Behind an all-inclusive voice and personality, fashioned out of fear And scattered like a million isolated points transmitting random images Across a space alive with unconnected signals. I heard my name Once, but then the noise of waiting patiently resumed. It felt the same, Yet gradually the terms I used to measure out my life increased, Until I realized that I’d been driving down these streets for sixteen years. I was part of the surroundings: people looked at me the way I used to look at them, And most of what I felt seemed second nature. Now and then that sense I’d had in high school —Of a puzzlement about to lift, a language just about to start— Meandered into consciousness; but by and large I’d spend the days Like something in the background, or like part of a design too intricate to see. Wasn’t there supposed to be a stage at which the soul at last broke free And started to meet the world on equal terms? To feel a little more at home, More intensely realized, more successfully contained Within the arc of its achievements? Filled with reservations, Moods and private doubts, yet always moving, with increasing confidence, Towards a kind of summary, towards the apex of a long career Advancing down an avenue that opened on a space of sympathy and public understanding? Or howling like the wind in the wires outside my window, in a cacophony of rage? I don’t think so. Age is like the dreams one had in childhood, Some parts of which were true—I have the things I want, the words to misdescribe them, And the freedom to imagine what I think I feel. I think that most of what I feel remains unknown, But that beneath my life lies something intricate and real and Nearly close enough to touch. I live it, and I know I should explain it, Only I know I can’t—it’s just an image of my life that came to me one day, And which remained long after the delight it brought had ended. Sometimes I think I hear the sound of death approaching Like a song in the trees, a performance staged for me and me alone And written in the ersatz language of loss, the language of time passing, Or the sound of someone speaking decorously into the unknown —Like a voice picked up on the telephone when two lines cross momentarily —Overheard, and then half heard, and then gone.

Lear's five nevers over the fool hanged, and Cordelia and Lear dead at last, Edmund reported and yes he was loved by both evil sisters, so what. I'm awake in the dawn. Cold stone floors. The cat. His father loved him too, I tell my son on the phone, my son just married. Let him cleave to his wife. Let my old flesh resume its boundaries, let go. No divisions of the kingdom. Will they write of my courage killing the snake? We know the dreamy answer to that one. Honey tea swirls us sweet; never fear the village fair, lights stay on all night. Tea bags bottomless coffee cup. Ashes in the grate sweeten the garden provender. Clay. Ripeness is all. The fool lives on, my left elbow's cartilage feather.

Like being reassigned to a case being made—to win? for a world mocked-up—terms to contest? Or,self glutting the market of experience— am am, a did this that— as “voice” script? Or, reining in the thrusting impulse that’d burst—out! and into. . . timed pattern a male’s—“mine?” Or, a hyper-local cultural thing—to do— conscious stance between friends strung along? Or, some gnawing negation—impelling all this? din’ wanna (really did) am “writing?” Or, being dispatched to a cramped corner of the vast. . . work-a-day transactions transmission? Or, alibis for (if not from) the near Black Out— detecting vital signs or dissent? Or, The National—reifying itself—can read? preemptive authorships as “progress”? Or, a once-elitist practice—popularized— aimless youth called forth—I came (aimed at?) Or, recombinant ruses of power—“allure”— who writes who here—and how sex—transects? Or, Capital’s quandaries of identity— certified— the stakes—now lowered? raised? Or, malingering with History’s inducements— disciplined we won’t be though are—need? Or, a schedule of vanguardist—occupations— vacuum left by the left to fill out? Or, the Nors that can’t be stated (just yet) can—mean? forming trends at the base asserting? Or, wouldn’t non-pop perspectives be also writ? discursive bumps and grinds to report? Or, logging on to a collectivizing—chance? bodies here plunked down—will plunk up. . . toward? Or, newly glozed invectives—to desublimate? old belles lettres upgraded downplays gain? Or, the pervasive liberinage of Genres— which clothes which strips which—for thrills—mostly? Or, a progressivist (scientistic)—complex? regrounding the grounds (props dignity? Or, an overdue reunion with precedence— compulsion to just flake kept in check? Or, why did you come—to hear something you don’t know? already— sorting terms— assigned to? Or, a realization of what’s yet unrealized— postscript or preamble to praxis?

In his fifth year the son, deep in the backseat of his father’s Ford and the mysterium of time, holds time in memory with words, night, this night, on the way to a stalled rig south of Kiowa Creek where the plains wind stacks the skeletons of weeds on barbed-wire fences and rattles the battered DeKalb sign to make the child think of time in its passing, of death. Cattle stare at flat-bed haulers gunning clumps of black smoke and lugging damaged drill pipe up the gullied, mud-hollowed road.Road, this road