Poemunity — your poem community

1 nothing to drink in the refrigerator but juice from the pickles come back long dead, or thin catsup. i feel i am old now, though surely i am young enough? i feel that i have had winters, too many heaped cold and dry as reptiles into my slack skin. i am not the kind to win and win. no i am not that kind, i can hear my wife yelling, “goddamnit, quit running over,” talking to the stove, yelling, “i mean it, just stop,” and i am old and 2 i wonder about everything: birds clamber south, your car kaputs in a blazing, dusty nowhere, things happen, and constantly you wish for your slight home, for your wife’s rusted voice slamming around the kitchen. so few of us wonder why we crowded, as strange, monstrous bodies, blindly into one another till the bed choked, and our range of impossible maneuvers was gone, but isn’t it because by dissolving like so much dust into the sheets we are crowding south, into the kitchen, into nowhere?

Don't bring haw into the house at night or in any month with a red fruit in season or when starlings bank against the light, don't bring haw in. Don't give me reason to think you have hidden haw about you. Tucked in secret, may its thorn thwart you. Plucked in blossom, powdered by your thumb, I will smell it for the hum of haw is long, its hold is low and lilting. If you bring haw in, I will know you want me gone to the fairies and their jilting. I will know you want me buried in the deep green field where god knows what is rotting.

I love when out of nowhere I love when out of nowhere my cat jumps on me and my body isn’t even surprised. Me who wants to be surprised by everything like a dandelion like a bottle cap cricket cricket. I keep waiting for the god under the anthill to speak up. I keep waiting for the part of the myth where everyone turns into a different bird or the reeds start talking or horses come out of the ocean in their parliamentary regalia and cities grow from their hoofprints. I keep waiting for the bugle and the jackal-headed god to weigh my heart across the river. All this daylight in just a few moments pours itself into darkness. More and more I’m satisfied with partial explanations like a fly with one wing, walking.

When the hour is hushed and you lie still, So quiet is the room about me It seems perhaps that you are gone, Sunken to a marble sleep. I hear no sound; my quiet will, Passive as the lambs at rest, Stirs not the quaint forgetfulness But only murmurs, “Sleep is strange!” The low moon at the lattice going Rests no more quietly than you at peace. Hushed is the candle; the hour is late, And I, poor witness of extreme change, I think perhaps then heaven opens Like the unfolding of your hand in sleep— Your cold white hand—to close again— While I sit staring at the marble gate.

In an effort to get people to look into each other’s eyes more, and also to appease the mutes, the government has decided to allot each person exactly one hundred and sixty-seven words, per day. When the phone rings, I put it to my ear without saying hello. In the restaurant I point at chicken noodle soup. I am adjusting well to the new way. Late at night, I call my long distance lover, proudly say I only used fifty-nine today. I saved the rest for you.

My dolls have been put away like dead children in a chest I will carry with me when I marry. I reach under my skirt to feel a satin slip bought for this day. It is soft as the inside of my thighs. My hair has been nailed back with my mother’s black hairpins to my skull. Her hands stretched my eyes open as she twisted braids into a tight circle at the nape of my neck. I am to wash my own clothes and sheets from this day on, as if the fluids of my body were poison, as if the little trickle of blood I believe travels from my heart to the world were shameful. Is not the blood of saints and men in battle beautiful? Do Christ’s hands not bleed into your eyes from His cross? At night I hear myself growing and wake to find my hands drifting of their own will to soothe skin stretched tight over my bones, I am wound like the guts of a clock, waiting for each hour to release me.

The merry World did on a day With his train-bands and mates agree To meet together where I lay, And all in sport to jeer at me. First Beauty crept into a rose, Which when I pluck'd not, "Sir," said she, "Tell me, I pray, whose hands are those?" But Thou shalt answer, Lord, for me. Then Money came, and chinking still, "What tune is this, poor man?" said he; "I heard in music you had skill:" But Thou shalt answer, Lord, for me. Then came brave Glory puffing by In silks that whistled, who but he? He scarce allow'd me half an eye: But Thou shalt answer, Lord, for me. Then came quick Wit and Conversation, And he would needs a comfort be, And, to be short, make an oration: But Thou shalt answer, Lord, for me. Yet when the hour of Thy design To answer these fine things shall come, Speak not at large, say, I am Thine; And then they have their answer home.

They got old, they got old and died. But first— okay but first they composed plangent depictions of how much they lost and how much cared about losing. Meantime their hair got thin and more thin as their shoulders went slumpy. Okay but not before the photo albums got arranged by them, arranged with a niftiness, not just two or three but eighteen photo albums, yes eighteen eventually, eighteen albums proving the beauty of them (and not someone else), them and their relations and friends, incontrovertible playing croquet in that Bloomington yard, floating on those comic inflatables at Dow Lake, giggling at the Dairy Queen, waltzing at the wedding, building a Lego palace on the porch, holding the baby beside the rental truck, leaning on the Hemingway statue at Pamplona, discussing the eternity of art in that Sardinian restaurant. Yes! And so, quite frankly—at the end of the day— they got old and died okay sure but quite frankly how much does that matter in view of the eighteen photo albums, big ones thirteen inches by twelve inches each full of such undeniable beauty?

I Also reputed to be golden, Quivira: Cibola, unknown to Coronado, meant ‘buffalo’ to the Indians, but onward, to El Dorado, ‘The Gilded One’, a country where boats were incrusted with gold, where golden bells hung from trees (tho the food there, said to be served on gold, was buffalo). ‘We took the hump from both sides of the hump ribs, of all the carcasses.  In taking out the hump we inserted the knife at the coupling of the loin, cutting forward down the lower side, as far forward as the perpendicular ribs ran; then, starting at the loin again, would cut down the upper side, thus taking out a strip from a full-grown animal about three feet long.  Near the front of the hump ribs it would be ten or twelve inches wide & four or five inches thick.  When first taken out it was hung up for a couple of days with the big end down.  It became shrunken, tender & brittle, with no taint.  The front end had a streak of lean alternating with fat & when fried in tallow, made a feast for the gods’. The prairie soil was ‘black & fat’ &, according to Castaneda, the marrow of the land. On that soil, later to be stripped for prairie sod-houses, wild turkeys flocked among the persimmons their flesh succulent from golden sand plums, bitter with china-berries. The coyotes, their eyes aglow on the dark horizon, barked at a moon above the lowing of buffalo, heard twenty miles away. And cottonwood trees, from whose buds the Indians made clear yellow, scattered their drift in spring filling the gullies. The Quivirans were to tell Coranado ‘the things where you are now are of great importance’. II As Coronado turned to retrace his steps, the Smoky Hills were visible north across a stream enveloped in an atmospheric haze in which the hills became distant, impossible mountains— ‘where you are now’ the Indians had said, ‘of great importance’. The country they traveled over was so level, if one looked at the buffalo the sky could be seen between their legs, so that at a distance they appeared to be smooth-trunked pines whose tops jointed— & if there was one bull, it seemed four pines. The country was round, as if a man should imagine himself in a bowl, & could see sky at its edge an arrow’s shot away. And if any man were to lie down on his back, he lost sight of the ground. Did Coronado see also in that late summer storm, before he turned south, an horizon of dark funnels tapering toward the earth, coming with the thunderous sound of a buffalo herd out of the plains—a calm & sulphurous air in which clouds were drawn like lightning toward the funnels— scattering his men to hide among grassy hollows? A tornado against the sky like buffalo who were beared as goats, with the hump of a camel, the mane of a lion & who carried their tails erect as they ran, like any European scorpion. O Coronado, all country is round to those who lose sight of the ground. Canceas, Cansez, Kansies, Konza: the Indian word meaning smoky, from an atmospheric condition in the fall of the year, called Indian Summer: smoke in the air, in Quivira.

Invaders invariably call themselves: a) berserkers b) marauders c) frankincense d) liberators Our enemies hate us because: a) we’re sadists b) we’re hypocrites c) we shafted them d) we value freedom Our friends hate us because: a) we’re bullies b) we hate them c) we’re hypocrites d) we value freedom Pushed to the ground and kicked by a gang of soldiers, about to be shot, you can save your life by brandishing: a) an uzi b) a crucifix c) the Constitution d) a poem A poem can: a) start a war b) stanch a wound c) titillate the masses d) shame a nation Poets are: a) clowns b) parasites c) legislators d) terrorists A nation’s standing in the world is determined by: a) its buying power b) its military might c) its cultural heritage d) God A country is rich because of: a) its enlightened population b) its political system c) its big stick d) its geography A country is poor because of: a) its ignorant population b) its political system c) its small stick d) its geography A man’s dignity is determined by: a) his appearance (skin color, height, etc) b) his willingness to use violence c) his command of English d) his blue passport Those willing to die for their beliefs are: a) idealists b) terrorists c) suckers d) insane Those willing to die for nothing are: a) principled b) patriotic c) insane d) cowards Terrorists: a) abuse language b) hit and run c) shock and awe d) rely on ingenuity Smart weapons: a) render hopeless and dormant kinetic objects b) kill softly c) save lives d) slaughter by science Pain is: a) payback for evil-doers b) a common misfortune c) compelling drama d) suck it up! Humiliation is: a) the ultimate thrill for bored perverts b) inevitable in an unequal relationship c) a fear factor d) sexy and cathartic The media’s job is: a) to seduce b) to spread c) to sell d) to drug The Internet: a) allows us to be pure minds b) connects us to distant bodies c) disconnects us from the nearest minds and bodies d) improves illiteracy Pornography is: a) a lie that exposes the truth b) a needed breather from civilization c) class warfare d) nostalgia for the garden of Eden Correct answers: c,d,d,b,b,a,b,a,a,c,b,b,b,c,b,d,b,d,c. —If you scored 14-19, you’re a well adjusted person, a home-owner, with and income of at least $50,000 a year. —If you scored 8-13, you either rent or live with your parents, never exercise, and consume at least a 6-pack a day. —if you scored 7 or less, you’re in trouble with the FBI and/or the IRS, cut your own hair, and use public transit as your primary mode of transportation.