John Hennessy

Forget contingencies from weather and wind, my Helen’s head was shaved, the shortest bit of stubble growing in. With darkened arching black eye-brows, Betty-Blue mouth penciled red, jet patent-leather trench and high-heeled boots, she seemed more mannequin for Fashion Ave.’s penitent spread than enemy to brass at Camp LeJeune. Simply and grudgingly put, her talk was action. Invincible in Bell- Atlantic block and tack, she converted non-coms and saved CO’s, harped flint and skinned the chair of military courts through well-pitched cheek, prompt dispatch from the War Resister’s League. She looked good even on a bicycle, hemming left through traffic on Fourteenth Street, locking up on Lafayette or Grand. She doused for me to celebrate—marched right through human waste and Bowery puddles, stretched her legs over the last old-fashioned hobos up to East Second Street. Those ancient days, our vestibule was manned by crack-dealing Stan, a concierge of wit and improv, half his face scored by orange scars from hydrofluoric burns. He kept the place safe. But I had gone, cleared out behind a gang of kids from Bronxville high on catnip wins, shell-game victims. Left Stan my toaster, shelves, a wire bird-cage, and, for once, nothing to say. Except to ask if he could touch her skull. Even now it makes no sense. Her precedents I knew lurched out of focus: photos from France after the Vichy fell, Jeannes and Sylvianes who’d made Nazi moll; those Belfast girls last-ditched by soldier boys or peelers; two- toned Bergen-Belsen, bald sister to Fort Santiago. Then Squeaky Fromm, the other Manson moms, at Charlie’s trial. Extremes of Joan of Arc, or even Buddhist nuns. Hated, chastened— or chaste, at least. Not what you’d run (I ran) your fingers satisfied across, the stubble surprising, soft as mink or fox, and arch your back, as I did once she found me uptown, say yes I give again when she went down— and faster now, quick as the television dropped after dishes to the curb—or slipped gradually up, the seconds separating as slowly as but more exquisitely than ticks off expensive fifty-minute hours— and some community service—all gone, and just as easily forgotten the raft of former friends I’d cursed and floated off the island. Shaved head, her slender neck, dark shoulders—that was half— or less—her most convincing argument.

Netflix the Green Man and any screen becomes a vineyard. Episodes cluster and climb, trellis narrative. Between the corn and lichen, creepers muster nine lives. They grow, divide, and splice, steal scenes by running fox grape, bittersweet, return on any handheld device as moonseed, woodbine, dodder, buckwheat — false buckwheat — note, though star- and heart-shaped. He trucks some mascot for our kids, glad-hands a sidekick dressed to burrow, root, and take them through their lessons rattling dad’s bouzouki nerves, mom’s percussive bones. Return, that ritual button, pressed like wine in HD, when end credits jolt. Stop time, we’re keyed up. Eternal return? Eternal jones.

More sky please push open the apartment shutters crowbar the paint factory’s broken window frames rip tar paper from the caving roof push it back crack it open blast an airshaft through the neighboring buildings snap it back expose the bird-ridden drafts the wren’s been busy here mornings year-round churr and chip golden open-throat yodel smack in the sleep cycle soldered to feeder suet in ivy like titmouse chickadee refusing to shift it back Carolina Canada climate haywire more sky please rik tik tik break open more light all the way past oil tank farms creosote docks the Kill Van Kull slide by kingfisher flap past cormorant incongruous flights parallel and merging plunge into slap out of tidal pools the Fresh Kills beak full of killifish and silversides crayfish and krill tarp past the salt grass and bridges fly Pulaski Skyway Bayonne’s silver buildings blank tower blocks sky wide as the river mouth more sky more please push it back past tankers and tugboats the last hulking cruise ship lasers fired across a spinning disco ball wobble bass and echo chamber dancing on deck past clanging buoys waveless channels to deepest basin all things even terns drop away sea and sky opened wide and empty

O Venlo, Venlo, stedje van pleseer. This time her body made him think of countryside, some figure from his childhood, sun on scythe, wind blowing shadows across the shining barley, the milk-pail dented from use, the smell of leaf-mulch and leather in the tack room. Soon she’d take bus and ferry from London to Belfast, but first the fire in her bed-sit. Her fingers traveled too, down the raised purple scars along his vertebrae, the flannel sheets between her thighs, his hair trailing along her abdomen, the quill of a feather poking through seams of the comforter, the comforter itself. Those scars—he’d lied to her, his time in Nicaragua, thugs cut him coming from the fields. The bloodier fight was with his brother, slicing tines of a pitchfork plucked up along the flooded Maas. Everything reduced to trinket and anecdote, the beer and facepaint of carnival, street-dance and tuba, beyond the muddy English roundabouts, the brown and white waves, yellow lamps along Dutch highways, his work at the union office pinned beneath a glass globe paperweight—shaken it showered silver snow over the wide straw hat, red and green plow, the slouching body, a campesino from days before Somoza fell. He wondered if she were any better, smuggling French social theory into Ulster, encounter groups in the rec-centers of tower-block basements. She’d just gotten the news: her last lover died in a fire along the side of the highway, body broken in seven places, silver chrome, pearl and gold gas tank scorched, his bike crumpled beneath the husk of an overturned van. There wasn’t much to talk about. Afterwards she lay with her back to him and he sang her carnival songs in a language she didn’t speak,O Venlo, stedje van pleseer. He thought of himself as the sun, kissing her neck at the hairline, turning grey cobblestones of the town-square silver, marshaling parades.

He would have gone to Hell ageine, and earnest sute did make: But Charon would not suffer him to passe the Stygian lake. —Ovid, Metamorphoses (Tr. by Arthur Golding) Never mind phantom forms, the Keaton-crash that dumped us in that sea-fed swamp, the Dutch kill, Latin nihil, thing without opposite—attend instead the transcendent, the flying, for god’s sake, what we saw the moment before we thwocked overboard: a heron stutter-flapped and lifted off, clumsy as a wind-mauled tarp at first, but couth beyond sublime once clear of cattail punks and saltgrass tips, the overturned rowboat’s rusted hull. Or the cormorant that plunked and dipped, rose flipping fish from beak to tongue and down its neck, water beading on its head. But the crown that really pleased the crowd my maiden voyage was iridescent green, brilliantined, a merganser’s spiky coxcomb. He swam right by, chasing red herrings and cackling so happily I had to pull a feather from his cap. And so I surfaced solo. I tell myself, I only launch the bark, I never book the seats. I didn’t stop to spin the prop or wipe the rail, just tipped the motor up and paddle-poled, bottom- stirred. Rousted horseshoe crabs, sleeping ducks, cranky grebes, slapped along the little waves, the seeping tide, lonelier, sure, indignant, too—what better lover has plucked and boasted, over what better lyre? An open boat: it’s company, not coin, I want. I’ll tune the wake to silence, court grace, make change— still trading on the laughs I’ve jerry-rigged.

7-Eleven’s a misnomer, like “mind- body” problem. They never close. The hyphen’s a dash of form. Sure,this mind-body’s a machine, if you want, plowing across town to the steak house. American Spirit. Give us the yellow pack. No matches? This dollar fifty-nine Santa lighter, too. Big Grab bag of Doritos. No, the “engine” is not separate — it’s part of the machine. Sure, paper’s good, container for recycling. Rain’s no problem. I eat the Doritos, smoke up — one for you? The chips are part of my machine — matter inside matter — smoke fires my lungs, gives me that slap of pleasure in my tailbone, maybe stimulates a thought. I’m prime matter informed by the soul. No, I didn’t just slip the word in there: that’s a spade — it digs through bullshit. Lean close, under the awning, cover up, you want a light. The mist can’t decide if it’s rain or fog. Streetlight moons, clouds around the neon signs. Pink as the steak we’re heading for. The comfort of a red leather banquette. No, your engine exists as part of and powers its machine; separated, both are just scrap, bunch of gears, rusty sprockets. An unlit oven. Unbaked potatoes. Sour cream inside a cow, chives growing mostly underground. “Engine” is a bad analogy. I’m one thing, not two, no intermediaries. I don’t have a body, I am one. A hollow one at the moment. What’ll it be? Filet mignon? Slab of prime rib, don’t trim the fat? Twelve oz. T-bone, two inches thick? No, I’ll wait until after I eat for another, but you go right ahead. Here’s a light.