Mary Jo Bang

We were told that the cloud cover was a blanket about to settle into the shape of the present which, if we wanted to imagine it as a person, would undoubtedly look startled— as after a verbal berating or in advance of a light pistol-whipping. The camera came and went, came and went, like a masked man trying to light a too-damp fuse. The crew was acting like a litter of mimics trying to make a killing. Anything to fill the vacuum of time. The wind whirred and tracked the clouds. The credits, we were told, would take the form of a semi-scrawl, urban-sprawl, graffiti-style typography. The soundtrack would include instrumental versions of "Try a Little Tenderness." Our handler, who was walking backward in order to maintain constant eye contact with us, nearly stumbled over a girl in a sheath and pearls who was misting a shelf of hothouse flowers. While the two apologized to each other, we stood and watched the fine spray settle over the leaves and drip onto the floor. On the way out, we passed a door with a small window reinforced with wired glass through which we could see a nurse positioning a patient on a table. We swore afterward we'd heard her say, "Lie perfectly still and look only inward." A clock chimed and as the others were audibly counting backwards from five to zero, I thought I heard someone say, "Now let go of this morbid attachment to things."

This bald year, frozen now in February. This cold day winging over the ugly Imperfect horizon line, So often a teeth line of ten buildings. A red flag flapping In the wind. An orange curtain is noon. It all hurts her eyes. This curtain is so bright. Here is what is noticeably true: sight. The face that looks back from the side Of the butter knife. A torn-bread awkwardness. The mind makes its daily pilgrimage Through riff-raff moments. Then, Back into the caprice case to dream In a circle, a pony goes round. The circle's association: There's a center To almost everything but never Any certainty. Nothing is More malleable than a moment. We were Only yesterday breathing in a sea. Some summer sun Asked us over and over we went. The sand was hot. We were only yesterday tender hearted Waiting. To be something. A spring. And then someone says, Sit down, We have a heart for you to forget. A mind to suffer With. So, experience. So, the circus tent. You, over there, you be the girl In red sequins on the front of a card selling love. You, over there, you, in black satin. You be the Maiden's Mister Death.

It was relatively painless except for being all she could see: a world made of dinner, very pleasant; a lunch at something called a table in the dining room; an endless night; a half-day; another lunch, this on Tuesday. Yesterday. Today. Pieces propped up with supports. The therapist tapped his cigar. He no longer accepted her general opposition to myth, marriage, Olympic Games, and the course of decades. He said it was as if she were engaged in an eternal war, either watching a movie or acting in one, depending on the situation and time of day. She sat in silence, the sky above a half-baked blue, a blank- face dying of awkwardness. The simple explanation boiled down to the too-easy explanation. He was smart and charming then; and later, much less so. Behind his head, pictures were crammed together with the top layer hung so high she had to crane her neck to see the details. He said to please pretend she was listening.

What is desire But the hardwire argument given To the mind’s unstoppable mouth. Inside the braincase, it’s I Want that fills every blank. And then the hand Reaches for the pleasure The plastic snake offers. Someone says, Yes, It will all be fine in some future soon. Definitely. I’ve conjured a body In the chair before me. Be yourself, I tell it. Here memory makes you Unchangeable: that shirt, those summer pants. That beautiful face. That tragic beautiful mind. That mind’s ravenous mouth That told you, This isn’t poison At all but just what the machine needs. And then, The mouth closes on its hunger. The heart stops.

The rhinestone lights blink off and on. Pretend stars. I'm sick of explanations. A life is like Russell said of electricity, not a thing but the way things behave. A science of motion toward some flat surface, some heat, some cold. Some light can leave some after-image but it doesn't last. Isn't that what they say? That and that historical events exchange glances with nothingness.

That's how it was then, a knife through cartilage, a body broken. Animal and animal as mineral ash. A window smashed. The collective howl as a general alarm followed by quiet. Boot-black night, halogen hum. Tape snaking through a stealth machine. Later, shattered glass and a checkpoint charm—the clasp of a tourist-trap bracelet. An arm. A trinket. Snap goes the clamshell. The film in the braincase preserving the sense of the drench, the angle of the leash, the connecting collar. A tracking long-shot. The descent of small-town darkness.

Alice cannot be in the poem, she says, because She's only a metaphor for childhood And a poem is a metaphor already So we'd only have a metaphor Inside a metaphor. Do you see? They all nod. They see. Except for the girl With her head in the rabbit hole. From this vantage, Her bum looks like the flattened backside Of  a black and white panda. She actually has one In the crook of  her arm. Of course it's stuffed and not living. Who would dare hold a real bear so near the outer ear? She's wondering what possible harm might come to her If  she fell all the way down the dark she's looking through. Would strange creatures sing songs Where odd syllables came to a sibilant end at the end. Perhaps the sounds would be a form of  light  hissing. Like when a walrus blows air Through two fractured front teeth. Perhaps it would Take the form of a snake. But if a snake, it would need a tree. Could she grow one from seed? Could one make a cat? Make it sit on a branch and fade away again The moment you told it that the rude noise it was hearing was rational thought With an axe beating on the forest door.

A pack of  young flirts was patrolling the party, They were cultural outsiders, consumed with    ...    what? Their own notion of  beauty as reflected in the shine-more mirror Of  a man's pants? Or nothing But midnight and no one is counting. They were practitioners, they admitted to the barman, Of  psychological materialism, explaining they had read both Sartre and Beauvoir and believed in the cerebellum, The thalamus and the lower brain and that between The lower and the upper parts there must be room for them, Nant [ nothingness ] aside. Indeed, the evening was a spectacular bacchanalia, The girls lugging their blind-drunk partners around the floor. One sitting it out with a volume of The Collected Camus. That one was “imperious” (the word is Beauvoir's) “The club was plunged into almost total darkness, With violinists wandering about ‘Playing soulful Russian music' into the guests' ears.” “‘If only it were possible to tell the truth,' Exclaimed Camus at one point.” There was vodka and champagne, both in quantities Extremely beautiful and nice for getting tight. And dancing Cheek to cheek, between the exchange of  furtive kisses And giggles every time one of  the chaps said, “Don't Leave me, I love you, I'll always love you.” Which they took as irrefutable evidence Of a general greed for human warmth, I.e., for touch, even among the agonized Post-adolescent dreamers who morphed on the dance floor That night into naughty boys, echoing the girls' questions Of   “how shall we live,” “what shall we do,” Words without end, without weight.