872 Life poems

he hooked to the body hard took it well and loved to fight had seven in a row and a small fleck over one eye, and then he met a kid from Camden with arms thin as wires— it was a good one, the safe lions roared and threw money; they were both up and down many times, but he lost that one and he lost the rematch in which neither of them fought at all, hanging on to each other like lovers through the boos, and now he’s over at Mike’s changing tires and oil and batteries, the fleck over the eye still young, but you don’t ask him, you don’t ask him anything except maybe you think it’s going to rain? or you think the sun’s gonna come out? to which he’ll usually answer hell no, but you’ll have your important tank of gas and drive off.

When I was “in despair” (the dark days when I actually used such terms) I noticed the behavior of animals — sleep when tired, eat when hungry That made a lot of sense to me and yet I felt different I felt my humanness too much No fly ever wonders whether it should make lots and lots of maggots It gives birth on a mound of cat food or inside the rubbish bin As far as I know it’s not worried about overpopulation or what sort of environment its kids will grow up in My humanness sees me at an art gallery watching others watching walls My humanness gives me dark thoughts of cruel behavior You are in the States a visa glitch and there you remain Like Star Trek, I talk to you on a screen your face half a second out of sync with your speech I’m in the future my Tuesday is already over and I want to tell you all about it to prove my superiority That lovely conceit of time that saw people travel from all over the world to be in Gisborne for the first sunrise of the new millennium Remember how we all thought the sewer pipes would burst and the criminals would escape or something like that Y2K packs sent to every household because no one knew for certain what the numbers 2000 really meant Somewhere, people, important people cowered in bunkers fearing the worst

"There is no object so foul that intense light will not make beautiful." —  Emerson, Nature The renters bring out their greasy table, End of the month again: It sags, Weighted and warped like them, unable To hold much more than glasses and rags. Old clothes and rusty tools compete For space with magazines they stole From garbage bins behind our street; Each shoe reveals a run-down sole. A few come by, inspect, and leave, Almost always with empty hands. But when, at sundown, all things cleave To slanted light, and when it lands So rubber, glass, and metal glint— And for a moment make you squint— You'll see our neighbors bathed in gold As if their worth cannot be sold.

It was winter. The opposite of burning, which is also burning. My banner displayed clock parts, a cup of wine, a worm eating its opposite head. My motto was Try to Be Responsible, but every new moon was a sacrificial moon. Thirteen paving slabs were flipped into the river. The extra light of spring threw our business into relief. My banner displayed a sunburst, a bloodied hand dropping a knife, and in the other hand an avocado withholding its stone. War would soon come but not for us, and this became our motto,Not for Us. Then a crime in our community led to anger. Gossip gathered the truth into a ball; paperwork was spoiled; a man was removed from the yellow light of the barn. We heard his sobs coming from the orchard, and these were a source of comfort. Summer roused lanterns of dust under doorways, though a vinegar taste kept the air difficult. Antifa angels bathed their eyes in milk, as horses refused riders. The timid among us signed petitions swearing that when the time came we would know it by the rocks in our hands. I made a banner for the protests to come depicting the planting of milk teeth, the burning of a noose, a stadium left empty. Autumn was just my luck. I could not stomach the broth I boiled, and slept badly. Arguments I won in my head lost direction when formed out loud. The riots continued but quietly now, indoors. It was a time for manifestos, though the wrongs were too many for anything less than a lake. Friends kept the counsel of friends. In the yellow light of the barn we tried to write sentences each other would like, or not desire to alter. Together we designed a quilt depicting the wolf taking scent, water moving quickly, the sign of the errant cloud and alphabet, a baby resisting sleep, a worm eating its opposite head, only this time surrounded by snow, which hasn’t stopped falling since Thursday, the name we gave to our child.

Nothing required an account of me And still I didn't give one. I might have been a virtual casualty, A late victim of the Millennium Bug. No spontaneity, no insubordination, Not even any spare capacity.

What can a yellow glove mean in a world of motorcars and governments? I was small, like everyone. Life was a string of precautions: Don’t kiss the squirrel before you bury him, don’t suck candy, pop balloons, drop watermelons, watch TV. When the new gloves appeared one Christmas, tucked in soft tissue, I heard it trailing me: Don’t lose the yellow gloves. I was small, there was too much to remember. One day, waving at a stream—the ice had cracked, winter chipping down, soon we would sail boats and roll into ditches—I let a glove go. Into the stream, sucked under the street. Since when did streets have mouths? I walked home on a desperate road. Gloves cost money. We didn’t have much. I would tell no one. I would wear the yellow glove that was left and keep the other hand in a pocket. I knew my mother’s eyes had tears they had not cried yet, I didn’t want to be the one to make them flow. It was the prayer I spoke secretly, folding socks, lining up donkeys in windowsills.To be good, a promise made to the roaches who scouted my closet at night.If you don’t get in my bed, I will be good. And they listened. I had a lot to fulfill. The months rolled down like towels out of a machine. I sang and drew and fattened the cat. Don’t scream, don’t lie, don’t cheat, don’t fight—you could hear it anywhere. A pebble could show you how to be smooth, tell the truth. A field could show how to sleep without walls. A stream could remember how to drift and change—next June I was stirring the stream like a soup, telling my brother dinner would be ready if he’d only hurry up with the bread, when I saw it. The yellow glove draped on a twig. A muddy survivor. A quiet flag. Where had it been in the three gone months? I could wash it, fold it in my winter drawer with its sister, no one in that world would ever know. There were miracles on Harvey Street. Children walked home in yellow light. Trees were reborn and gloves traveled far, but returned. A thousand miles later, what can a yellow glove mean in a world of bankbooks and stereos? Part of the difference between floating and going down.

I am done smoking cigarettes, done waiting tables, done counting tips at two a.m. in the neon-dark dance hall, done sleeping with young men in my apartment, done facing them or not, thinking of oblivion, which is better than nothing. I am done not wearing underwear because it’s so Victorian. I am done telling men I don’t wear underwear because it’s so Victorian. I am done with the night a guy spread my legs on a pool table, all those balls piled up in the pockets. I am done. I am never going back. When I see that night on the street I will drive past and never even glance over. I am done going to grad school, nodding in your workshop. I am done teaching English as a second language, saying I pointing to my chest, saying you pointing to them. I am done teaching the poetry class where no one talked and no one listened to me and outside the window the cottonwood wagged its sun-white leaves in the breeze as if to say,I give up, I give up. I am done being a childless woman, a childless wife, a woman with no scars on her body. I am done with the wide afternoons of before, the long stare, the tightly closed door. And I am done, too, for the most part, with the daydream of after. I am after for now. I am turning up the heater to see if that will make the baby sleep another fifteen minutes so I can finish this poem. I am done thinking of the past as if it had survived, though sometimes I think of the past and sometimes I see it coming, catching up, hands caked with dried mud, head shaved clean.

You ask me, why, tho' ill at ease, Within this region I subsist, Whose spirits falter in the mist, And languish for the purple seas. It is the land that freemen till, That sober-suited Freedom chose, The land, where girt with friends or foes A man may speak the thing he will; A land of settled government, A land of just and old renown, Where Freedom slowly broadens down From precedent to precedent: Where faction seldom gathers head, But by degrees to fullness wrought, The strength of some diffusive thought Hath time and space to work and spread. Should banded unions persecute Opinion, and induce a time When single thought is civil crime, And individual freedom mute; Tho' Power should make from land to land The name of Britain trebly great— Tho' every channel of the State Should fill and choke with golden sand— Yet waft me from the harbour-mouth, Wild wind! I seek a warmer sky, And I will see before I die The palms and temples of the South.

with the medicinal poppies of June nor with Celan’s bloom-fest of dredged stone, not with history’s choo-choo train of corpses, not with Nottingham’s Robin Hood nor Antwerp’s Diamondland. Not walking on the Strand in Manhattan Beach with her silicone breast implants, refinery, waves of trash, not out of the Library of Alexandria with her burnt gardens that prefigure gnarly, barnacle-laden surfboards broken in half. You can’t build the child with the stone paths that we have walked on through the atmosphere, the pirate’s plank, the diving board, the plunge, nor with the moon whether she be zombie or vampire. Not with Delphi, not with fangs, or cardamom bought in Fez, red with spring, red with marathon running cheeks. Not with monk chant, bomb chant, war paint, not with the gigantic Zen pleasure zones, nor with this harnessed pig on the carousel that I am sitting on with my son in Nice, France. How it burns on its axis as if it were turning into pineapple-colored kerosene the way the Hawaiian pig, apple in snout, roasts in its own tropical meat under the countdown sun.

Sit on the park bench and chew this mint leaf. Right now, way above your head, two men floating in a rocket ship are ignoring their delicate experiments, their buttons flashing red. Watching you chew your mint, the men forget about their gritty toothpaste, about their fingers, numb from lack of gravity. They see you and, for the first time since liftoff, think home. When they were boys they were gentle. And smart. One could tie string around a fly without cinching it in half. One wrote tales of sailors who drowned after mistaking the backs of whales for islands. Does it matter which man is which? They just quit their mission for you. They’re on their way down. You’ll take both men — a winter husband and a summer husband. Does it matter which is — don’t slump like that. Get up, we have so much work to do before —                          wait               you’re going the wrong     way               small whelp of a woman!         this is not how we     behave                       where are you going this world is already       willing to give you anything                  do you want to know Latin okay             now everyone here knows Latin            want inflatable     deer deer!               i promise the winter / summer children will barely hurt                   dear        i’m hurt   that you would ever think i don’t glisten to you         i’m always glistening tame your voice       and               turn around the men are coming                    they’ve traded everything for you               the gemmy   starlight the click                          click                                  click of the universe   expanding stop aren’t you known              aren’t you known here how can you be certain that anywhere else will provide more pears than you could ever eat remember the sweet rot of it all come back             you forgot your sweater what if there’s nothing there when you — you don’t have your sweater what if it’s cold