872 Life poems

How do they survive, riven as they are, the one undoing the other's desire? Tell the body to outrun the mind, and the mind smirks, whispering too loudly this way   this way, blocking all the exits. And the body, luxurious sensualist by pool side or in bed, doesn't it hear the mind's impatient machinery ticking it's time   it's time? And only in our mind's eye, as we're fond of saying, someone else's body leaping nimbly in jetés of thought, or revealing to us Act V, scene iii in one gestural flourish, body and mind beautifully synchronous. Oh, the mind is eely, slipping out of its puzzle boxes, loving its own wit. And the earnest body: speak of it with the least irony, and already you've begun to unnerve it. Better to let them have their way, forgetting about them both until they meet again sometime as if for the first time in library or steam room ready to shake hello or lead you to whatever door there is and always the two sets of stairs.

Life is short, though I keep this from my children. Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways, a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative estimate, though I keep this from my children. For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird. For every loved child, a child broken, bagged, sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world is at least half terrible, and for every kind stranger, there is one who would break you, though I keep this from my children. I am trying to sell them the world. Any decent realtor, walking you through a real shithole, chirps on about good bones: This place could be beautiful, right? You could make this place beautiful.

Slight whiff of toner, or is it White-Out? Brief heat of manuscript lifted from the printer, against my face. What is it about the new hire that has everybody talking? Her newness, perhaps, her éclat cutting through each of us, like a sword through wet bamboo; it’s a graceful violation. And then the water breaks, and then a darkening sky rolls over the lake, and then a meeting is called to introduce her, to make her understand, to allow her to share in our delights! Here is the coffee machine, there are the filters. You may store your lunch in the communal refrigerator, but please remember to empty yourself, all of you. Feel free to decorate your cubicle with pictures, tack up a view of the lake behind you to remind you of the lake behind you. Don’t listen to those of us who are certain of the small death each photo you tack up represents. Familiarity breeds intent, intent signals purpose, purpose is a proposition you make to those who observe, quantify and assess you; and use as many legal pads as you like. And the retractable pencils, they’re all yours. Marigolds. Sunflowers. Black-Eyed Susans. Just keep it yellow. Paper cuts will happen. Band-Aids are in the top left drawer in the kitchen, next to the cake-cutting knife we pull out for anniversaries, birthdays, retirements, record days, or the first time you see all of us converge on the conference room, leaving you alone in your cube.

The house in Broad Street, red brick, with nine rooms the weedgrown graveyard with its rows of tombs the jail from which imprisoned faces grinned at stiff palmettos flashing in the wind the engine-house, with engines, and a tank in which young alligators swam and stank, the bell-tower, of red iron, where the bell gonged of the fires in a tone from hell magnolia trees with whitehot torch of bud the yellow river between banks of mud the tall striped lighthouse like a barber’s pole snake in the bog and locust in the hole worn cigarette cards, of white battleships, or flags, or chorus girls with scarlet lips, jackstones of copper, peach tree in the yard splashing ripe peaches on an earth baked hard children beneath the arc-light in a romp with Run sheep Run, and rice-birds in the swamp, the organ-grinder’s monkey, dancing bears, okras in baskets, Psyche on the stairs— and then the north star nearer, and the snow silent between the now and long ago time like a train that roared from place to place new crowds, new faces, for a single face no longer then the chinaberry tree nor the dark mockingbird to sing his glee nor prawns nor catfish; icicles instead and Indian-pipes, and cider in the shed arbutus under pinewoods in the spring and death remembered as a tropic thing with picture postcard angels to upraise it and trumpet vines and hummingbirds to phrase it then wisdom come, and Shakspere’s voice far off, to be or not, upon the teacher’s cough, the latent heat of melting ice, the brief hypotenuse from ecstasy to grief amo amas, and then the cras amet, the new-found eyes no slumber could forget, Vivien, the affliction of the senses, and conjugation of historic tenses and Shakspere nearer come, and louder heard, and the disparateness of flesh and word, time growing swifter, and the pendulums in shorter savage arcs that beat like drums— hands held, relinquished, faces come and gone, kissed and forgotten, and become but one, old shoes worn out, and new ones bought, the gloves soiled, and so lost in limbo, like the loves— then Shakspere in the heart, the instant speech parting the conscious terrors each from each— wisdom’s dishevelment, the purpose lamed, and purposeless the footsteps eastward aimed the bloodstream always slower, while the clock followed the tired heart with louder knock, fatigue upon the eye, the tardy springs inviting to no longer longed-for things— the birdsong nearer now than Shakspere’s voice, whispers of comfort—Death is near, rejoice!— remember now the red house with nine rooms the graveyard with its trumpetvines and tombs— play jackstones now and let your jackstones be the stars that make Orion’s galaxy so to deceive yourself until you move into that house whose tenants do not love.

Some dreamily smoke cigarettes, some track toddlers who walk like drunks. Buzzy, the picnic grounds, noisy, sun-crazed, how forks and spoons don’t exactly lie flat. A mountain’s here, a famous overlook from which you’d see none of this. Like that first daguerreotype, its moving carriages and those who strolled never picked up in the long exposure, a Paris street emptied by the camera, only houses and lamp posts gone eternal. Or the one who stopped for a shoe shine, the one who knelt to the task. At the picnic—a commotion. A large man to a younger man.

The hotel bar downstairs was dirty and dark and almost empty except for him whom I didn’t know I lost my balance because evil is aroused by absence Outside on the island a brick city had grown up and old A person could only nibble on its shadows Where was my beloved? The cornerstone was familiar but unrecognizable and I didn’t understand why infinity was seeping into my hair Somebody said: “He’s out of his bottle” I guess it meant Temporarily out of service and empty. But then there was Arsene beside the last remaining cabin wandering with his eyes on the camera Dynamite in his pocket and a piece of thread to trap a rabbit. Evil is a growing thing It has its own gravity and never answers to its name It is a hole into chaos. It is real Arsene held me in his arms He was drunk as usual and his nipple smelled of rum But still I loved him— loved him madly!— as if he was the one

Never mind the pins And needles I am on. Let all the other instruments Of torture have their way. While air-conditioners Freeze my coffee I watch the toaster Eating my toast. Did I press the right Buttons on all these Buttonless surfaces Daring me to press them? Did you gasp on seeing what The mailman just brought? Will the fellow I saw pedaling Across the bridge live long After losing his left leg, His penis, and his bike To fearlessness? Will his sad wife find Consolation with the Computer wizard called in Last year to deal with glitches? Did you defuse the boys’ Bomb before your house Was under water, same As everything else? Aunt Til grabbed her Silver hand mirror Before floating away. The dog yelped constantly, Tipping our canoe. Silly dog.

Save these words for a while because of something they remind you of although you cannot remember what that is a sense that is part dust and part the light of morning you were about to say a name and it is not there I forget them too I am learning to pray to Perdita to whom I said nothing at the time and now she cannot hear me as far as I know but the day goes on looking the names often change more slowly than the meanings whole families grow up in them and then are gone into the anonymous sky oh Perdita does the hope go on after the names are forgotten and is the pain of the past done when the calling has stopped and those betrayals so long repeated that they are taken for granted as the shepherd does with the sheep

The woman across from me looks so familiar, but when I turn, her look glances off. At the last subway stop we rise. I know her, she gives manicures at Vogue Nails. She has held my hands between hers several times. She bows and smiles. There the women wear white smocks like technicians, and plastic tags with their Christian names. Susan. No, not Susan, whose hair is cropped short, who is short and stocky. This older lady does my hands while classical music, often Mozart, plays. People passing by outside are doubled in the wall mirror. Two of everyone walk forward, backward, vanish at the edge of the shop. Susan does pedicures, pumice on my heels as I sit on the stainless-steel throne. She bends over, she kneads my feet in the water like laundry. She pounds my calves with her fists and her cupped palms slap a working beat, p’ansori style. She talks to the others without turning her head, a call in a language shouted hoarse across fields where a swallow flew and flew across the ocean, and then fetched back to Korea a magic gourd seed, back to the farmer’s empty house where the seed flew from its beak to sprout a green vine. When the farmer’s wife cut open the ripe fruit, out spilled seeds of gold. Choi Don Mee writes that some girls in that country crush petals on their nails, at each tip red flowers unfold. Yi Yon-ju writes that some women there, as here, dream of blades, knives, a bowl of blood.

The pack is filing from my nowheresvilles filling the halfway hotels, braving the ruts and calling one another via satellite. A dollar says hello. At home I try growing a new life, one of many women bored by my womb’s mystery. Who has time to run a thumb between her legs and calculate the temperature — chipper and bitter netherworld weathergirl.