Rachel Zucker

for Spalding Gray The West and North winds both lover us, wanting, bitter, to bring us in close in the small hold. Tongues loll and laze, while the flap and snapping above: crazy wanderlust. The basin must cradle, keep her passengers, though the hero abandoned the ferry for the real sea. Is nothing worthy? Wallet on bench. Wallet at home. Wallet at rest. The child, even his cries, must the ship balance, makes me wild to right this unhumanly keeling. I have six arms, am the dismembered figurehead, ballast, breasts covered in blue scales. I am at rudder, at bow, at mast, at rigging, at deck, at halyard, at stern, when the hold explodes with screaming. One boy has stolen the other’s marble. The boat shifts, tilts. A wallet washes up against us. Is this what you meant when you said a family steadied you? Is this what they see when they see me and my six handless arms, shining torso and cuspid humor? The figurehead has no need for eyelids, must on-guard, vigil, dry eyed. But she dreams. Dreams. The sail, its fine apparel, its linen long-shadow: a tiny hand opening, budlike

Saturday morning two hawks flew over the soccer field and swooped in low as Abram almost scored a goal. Moses, on the sideline, sat on a stray ball reading a book, not looking up at the game or the hawks or his brother who noticed. That night at the Basic Trust Day Care Poker Tournament I got knocked out with queen/nine against queen/jack by Dan Shiffman who seemed almost sad to beat me. I sucked on ginger candies and held new baby Phoebe Kate, born on the same due date as the baby I miscarried. When she left I cried and had more candies. In the end, Josh beat everyone and won a 40-inch flat-screen TV. Sunday morning I couldn’t sleep so got up early, went to the Hell’s Kitchen flea market and bought a dining table and chairs from a man named Toney. Bargained him down to $690 (including delivery) because “the chairs need new upholstery.” A 1950ish Danish with expandable top and funny splayed feet—it reminds me of my late Grandma Lotty, her sister Marguerite, and the heavy-laden tables of childhood. I’ve no idea what it will look like with my small family gathered round or if I’ll overworry the polished surface. We’ll see— it arrives on Tuesday. This morning I got a stack of papers from sophomore lit. The top two had the author’s name misspelled. I’ve not yet looked at any others. I talked in class about how Art Spiegelman chose realism over sentiment, how we conflate historical time with personal time, how on 9/11 I took my nine-month old son to his first day of day care and the city expoloded, went up in smoke, and no one but me cares that he spent hours there, only nine months old, while we watched TV in our phone-jammed airspace, breathed in fumes, tried to give blood, wondered was there anywhere, anywhere we could or should flee to?— Josh called right after class and said he’d gotten “strong intent” from an agent who’s “all about the money.” Nothing disastrous happened this week. Not so far. Unless you count what I saw next, between classes on my way to read student poems at Empanada Mama’s on 48th and 9th. A teenage boy lying on his side in the middle of the street. The traffic stopped and a crowd watched while six or seven other boys ran back and forth and stamped down hard on his skull. I turn a gag into a kind of cough and dial 911 We’ve already called the fucking police, says a woman as I retch into an empty trash can. Finally three teenage girls surround the boy and the other boys move off. Later, on my way back to Fordham, I stop a cop and ask about the boy.EMTs got him, says the officer. They had no shame, no fear, even with all of us watching . . . I tell him. They’re kids, ma’am, he says.You know what kids is like. Tonight in Writer’s Workshop I & II I read two cantos from Model Homes by Wayne Koestenbaum and then “A Poet’s Life” by David Trinidad. These poems hijack form and make it present, contemporary, immediate. Look how Wayne puts a plumber and lovers, his mother, porn mags, fashion into terza rima that lead us along, punch drunk, addicted to real life. And oh how David’s crown of sonnets breaks our hearts!

listen, a bad thing happened to my friend’s marriage, can’t tell you only can tell my own story which so far isn’t so bad: “Dad” and I stay married. so far. so good. so so. But it felt undoable. This lucky life every day, every day. every, day. (all the poetry books the goddamn same until one guy gets up and stuns the audience.) Joe Wenderoth, not by a long shot sober, says,I promised my wife I wouldn’t fuck anyone