The first retainer
he gave to her
was a golden
wedding ring.
The second—late at night
he woke up,
leaned over on an elbow,
and kissed her.
The third and the last—
he died with
and gave up loving
and lived with her.
~Robert Creeley
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
The Flight
That day I hired a private detective to follow me,
and could not read his notes. In a tangled grove,
I hid behind white pines, compressed my body,
then watched him write, left-handed and myopic,
under an Irish cap, when I asked for help
from strangers who spoke Slavic languages.
Wary, moving ahead, I found a depot,
watched an immense train churn, haloed in steam,
and boarded, second class. I had no ticket,
and my expired passport represented
a drooping head with unfamiliar eyes.
Unshaken, rows behind, the stranger waited,
wielding camera and pen. Across the border
I disembarked, but knew he would capture me,
with soundless footsteps, even on black gravel.
I tried to recall my crime. I know I am guilty,
but never why. Lawless, I have ignored
those signs: WRONG WAY; GO BACK and NO WAY OUT,
circles that tell me YOU ARE HERE. I gather
it is the whispers that explode, the looks
that make dogs whimper. When I bow in prayer
I think of love; I know I’ve killed my friends,
pelting them with a touch—and yet I’ve heard
they are alive. Besides, that’s not the real
offense. I would cross any path, or trek
through swamps to find my crime. But even he,
that bald, insistent man who follows me,
unsleeping, cannot tell me what I’ve done.
and could not read his notes. In a tangled grove,
I hid behind white pines, compressed my body,
then watched him write, left-handed and myopic,
under an Irish cap, when I asked for help
from strangers who spoke Slavic languages.
Wary, moving ahead, I found a depot,
watched an immense train churn, haloed in steam,
and boarded, second class. I had no ticket,
and my expired passport represented
a drooping head with unfamiliar eyes.
Unshaken, rows behind, the stranger waited,
wielding camera and pen. Across the border
I disembarked, but knew he would capture me,
with soundless footsteps, even on black gravel.
I tried to recall my crime. I know I am guilty,
but never why. Lawless, I have ignored
those signs: WRONG WAY; GO BACK and NO WAY OUT,
circles that tell me YOU ARE HERE. I gather
it is the whispers that explode, the looks
that make dogs whimper. When I bow in prayer
I think of love; I know I’ve killed my friends,
pelting them with a touch—and yet I’ve heard
they are alive. Besides, that’s not the real
offense. I would cross any path, or trek
through swamps to find my crime. But even he,
that bald, insistent man who follows me,
unsleeping, cannot tell me what I’ve done.
~Grace Schulman
Monday, March 22, 2010
Rat Song
When you hear me singing
you get the rifle down
and the flashlight, aiming for my brain,
but you always miss
and when you set out the poison
I piss on it
to warn the others.
You think: That one’s too clever,
she’s dangerous, because
I don’t stick around to be slaughtered
and you think I’m ugly too
despite my fur and pretty teeth
and my six nipples and snake tail.
All I want is love, you stupid
humanist. See if you can.
Right, I’m a parasite, I live off your
leavings, gristle and rancid fat,
I take without asking
and make nests in your cupboards
out of your suits and underwear.
You’d do the same if you could,
if you could afford to share
my crystal hatreds.
It’s your throat I want, my mate
trapped in your throat.
Though you try to drown him
with your greasy person voice,
he is hiding / between your syllables
I can hear him singing.
you get the rifle down
and the flashlight, aiming for my brain,
but you always miss
and when you set out the poison
I piss on it
to warn the others.
You think: That one’s too clever,
she’s dangerous, because
I don’t stick around to be slaughtered
and you think I’m ugly too
despite my fur and pretty teeth
and my six nipples and snake tail.
All I want is love, you stupid
humanist. See if you can.
Right, I’m a parasite, I live off your
leavings, gristle and rancid fat,
I take without asking
and make nests in your cupboards
out of your suits and underwear.
You’d do the same if you could,
if you could afford to share
my crystal hatreds.
It’s your throat I want, my mate
trapped in your throat.
Though you try to drown him
with your greasy person voice,
he is hiding / between your syllables
I can hear him singing.
~Margaret Atwood
Food
In a side booth at MacDonald’s before your music class
you go up and down in your seat like an arpeggio
under the poster of the talking hamburger:
two white eyes rolling around in the top bun, the thin
patty of beef imitating the tongue of its animal nature.
You eat merrily. I watch the Oakland mommies,
trying to understand what it means to be “single.”
*
Across from us, females of all ages surround the birthday girl.
Her pale lace and insufficient being
can’t keep them out of her circle.
Stripes of yellow and brown all over the place.
The poor in spirit have started to arrive,
the one with thick midwestern braids twisted like thought
on her head; usually she brings her mother.
This week, no mother. She mouths her words anyway
across the table, space-mama, time-mama,
mama who should be there.
*
Families in line: imagine all this
translated by the cry of time moving through us,
this place a rubble. The gardens new generations
will plant in this spot, and the food will go on
in another order. This thought cheers me immensely.
That we will be there together, you still seven,
bending over the crops pretending to be royalty,
that the huge woman with one blind eye
and dots like eyes all over her dress
will also be there, eating with pleasure
as she eats now, right up to the tissue paper,
peeling it back like bright exotic petals.
*
Last year, on the sun-spilled deck in Marin
we ate grapes with the Russians;
the KGB man fingered them quickly and dutifully,
then, in a sad tone to us
“We must not eat them so fast,
we wait in line so long for these,” he said.
*
The sight of food going into a woman’s mouth
made Byron sick. Food is a metaphor for existence.
When Mr. Egotistical Sublime, eating the pasta,
poked one finger into his mouth, he made a sound.
For some, the curve of the bell pepper
seems sensual but it can worry you,
the slightly greasy feel of it.
*
The place I went with your father had an apartment to the left, and in the window, twisted like a huge bowtie,
an old print bedspread. One day, when I looked over,
someone was watching us, a young girl.
The waiter had just brought the first thing:
an orange with an avocado sliced up CCCC
in an oil of forceful herbs. I couldn’t eat it.
The girl’s face stood for something
and from it, a little mindless daylight was reflected.
The businessmen at the next table
were getting off on each other and the young chardonnay.
Their briefcases leaned against their ankles.
I watched the young girl’s face because for an instant
I had seen your face there,
unterrified, unhungry, and a little disdainful.
Then the waiter brought the food,
bands of black seared into it like the memory of a cage.
*
You smile over your burger, chattering brightly.
So often, at our sunny kitchen table,
hearing the mantra of the refrigerator,
I’ve thought there was nothing I could do but feed you;
and I’ve always loved the way you eat,
you eat selfishly, humming, bending
the french fries to your will, your brown eyes
spotting everything: the tall boy
who has come in with his mother, repressed rage
in espadrilles, and now carries the tray for her.
Oh this is fun, says the mother,
You stand there with mommy’s purse.
And he stands there smiling after her,
holding all the patience in the world.
you go up and down in your seat like an arpeggio
under the poster of the talking hamburger:
two white eyes rolling around in the top bun, the thin
patty of beef imitating the tongue of its animal nature.
You eat merrily. I watch the Oakland mommies,
trying to understand what it means to be “single.”
*
Across from us, females of all ages surround the birthday girl.
Her pale lace and insufficient being
can’t keep them out of her circle.
Stripes of yellow and brown all over the place.
The poor in spirit have started to arrive,
the one with thick midwestern braids twisted like thought
on her head; usually she brings her mother.
This week, no mother. She mouths her words anyway
across the table, space-mama, time-mama,
mama who should be there.
*
Families in line: imagine all this
translated by the cry of time moving through us,
this place a rubble. The gardens new generations
will plant in this spot, and the food will go on
in another order. This thought cheers me immensely.
That we will be there together, you still seven,
bending over the crops pretending to be royalty,
that the huge woman with one blind eye
and dots like eyes all over her dress
will also be there, eating with pleasure
as she eats now, right up to the tissue paper,
peeling it back like bright exotic petals.
*
Last year, on the sun-spilled deck in Marin
we ate grapes with the Russians;
the KGB man fingered them quickly and dutifully,
then, in a sad tone to us
“We must not eat them so fast,
we wait in line so long for these,” he said.
*
The sight of food going into a woman’s mouth
made Byron sick. Food is a metaphor for existence.
When Mr. Egotistical Sublime, eating the pasta,
poked one finger into his mouth, he made a sound.
For some, the curve of the bell pepper
seems sensual but it can worry you,
the slightly greasy feel of it.
*
The place I went with your father had an apartment to the left, and in the window, twisted like a huge bowtie,
an old print bedspread. One day, when I looked over,
someone was watching us, a young girl.
The waiter had just brought the first thing:
an orange with an avocado sliced up CCCC
in an oil of forceful herbs. I couldn’t eat it.
The girl’s face stood for something
and from it, a little mindless daylight was reflected.
The businessmen at the next table
were getting off on each other and the young chardonnay.
Their briefcases leaned against their ankles.
I watched the young girl’s face because for an instant
I had seen your face there,
unterrified, unhungry, and a little disdainful.
Then the waiter brought the food,
bands of black seared into it like the memory of a cage.
*
You smile over your burger, chattering brightly.
So often, at our sunny kitchen table,
hearing the mantra of the refrigerator,
I’ve thought there was nothing I could do but feed you;
and I’ve always loved the way you eat,
you eat selfishly, humming, bending
the french fries to your will, your brown eyes
spotting everything: the tall boy
who has come in with his mother, repressed rage
in espadrilles, and now carries the tray for her.
Oh this is fun, says the mother,
You stand there with mommy’s purse.
And he stands there smiling after her,
holding all the patience in the world.
~Brenda Hillman
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Poem for My Twentieth Birthday
Passing the American graveyard, for my birthday
the crosses stuttering, white on tropical green,
the years’ quick focus of faces I do not remember...
The palm trees stalking like deliberate giants
The palm trees stalking like deliberate giants
for my birthday, and all the hot adolescent memories
seen through a screen of water...
For my birthday thrust into the adult and actual:
For my birthday thrust into the adult and actual:
expected to perform the action, not to ponder
the reality beyond the fact,
the man standing upright in the dream.
~Kenneth Koch
Saturday, March 20, 2010
wax job
man, he said, sitting on the steps
your car sure needs a wash and wax job
I can do it for you for 5 bucks,
I got the wax, I got the rags, I got everything
I need.
I gave him the 5 and went upstairs.
when I came down 4 hours later
he was sitting on the steps drunk
and offered me a can of beer.
he said he’d get the car the next
day.
the next day he got drunk again and
I loaned him a dollar for a bottle of
wine. his name was Mike
a world war II veteran.
his wife worked as a nurse.
the next day I came down and he was sitting
on the steps and he said,
you know, I been sitting here looking at your car,
wondering just how I was gonna do it,
I wanna do it real good.
the next day Mike said it looked like rain
and it sure as hell wouldn’t make any sense
to wash and wax a car when it was gonna rain.
the next day it looked like rain again.
and the next.
then I didn’t see him anymore.
a week later I saw his wife and she said,
they took Mike to the hospital,
he’s all swelled-up, they say it’s from the
drinking.
listen, I told her, he said he was going to wax my
car, I gave him 5 dollars to wax my
car.
he’s in the critical ward, she said,
he might die...
I was sitting in their kitchen
drinking with his wife
when the phone rang.
she handed the phone to me.
it was Mike. listen, he said, come down and
get me, I can’t stand this
place.
I drove on down there, walked into the
hospital, walked up to his bed and
said, let’s go Mike.
they wouldn’t give him his clothes
so Mike walked to the elevator in his
gown.
we got on and there was a kid driving the
elevator and eating a popsicle.
nobody’s allowed to leave here in a gown,
he said.
you just drive this thing, kid, I said,
we’ll worry about the gown.
Mike was all puffed-up, triple size
but I got him into the car somehow
and gave him a cigarette.
I stopped at the liquor store for 2 six packs
then went on in. I drank with Mike and his wife until
11 p.m.
then went upstairs...
where’s Mike? I asked his wife 3 days later,
you know he said he was going to wax my car.
Mike died, she said, he’s gone.
you mean he died? I asked.
yes, he died, she said.
I’m sorry, I said, I’m very sorry
it rained for a week after that and I figured the only
way I’d get the 5 back was to go to bed with his wife
but you know
she moved out 2 weeks later
an old guy with white hair moved in there
and he had one blind eye and played the French Horn.
there was no way I could make it with
him.
your car sure needs a wash and wax job
I can do it for you for 5 bucks,
I got the wax, I got the rags, I got everything
I need.
I gave him the 5 and went upstairs.
when I came down 4 hours later
he was sitting on the steps drunk
and offered me a can of beer.
he said he’d get the car the next
day.
the next day he got drunk again and
I loaned him a dollar for a bottle of
wine. his name was Mike
a world war II veteran.
his wife worked as a nurse.
the next day I came down and he was sitting
on the steps and he said,
you know, I been sitting here looking at your car,
wondering just how I was gonna do it,
I wanna do it real good.
the next day Mike said it looked like rain
and it sure as hell wouldn’t make any sense
to wash and wax a car when it was gonna rain.
the next day it looked like rain again.
and the next.
then I didn’t see him anymore.
a week later I saw his wife and she said,
they took Mike to the hospital,
he’s all swelled-up, they say it’s from the
drinking.
listen, I told her, he said he was going to wax my
car, I gave him 5 dollars to wax my
car.
he’s in the critical ward, she said,
he might die...
I was sitting in their kitchen
drinking with his wife
when the phone rang.
she handed the phone to me.
it was Mike. listen, he said, come down and
get me, I can’t stand this
place.
I drove on down there, walked into the
hospital, walked up to his bed and
said, let’s go Mike.
they wouldn’t give him his clothes
so Mike walked to the elevator in his
gown.
we got on and there was a kid driving the
elevator and eating a popsicle.
nobody’s allowed to leave here in a gown,
he said.
you just drive this thing, kid, I said,
we’ll worry about the gown.
Mike was all puffed-up, triple size
but I got him into the car somehow
and gave him a cigarette.
I stopped at the liquor store for 2 six packs
then went on in. I drank with Mike and his wife until
11 p.m.
then went upstairs...
where’s Mike? I asked his wife 3 days later,
you know he said he was going to wax my car.
Mike died, she said, he’s gone.
you mean he died? I asked.
yes, he died, she said.
I’m sorry, I said, I’m very sorry
it rained for a week after that and I figured the only
way I’d get the 5 back was to go to bed with his wife
but you know
she moved out 2 weeks later
an old guy with white hair moved in there
and he had one blind eye and played the French Horn.
there was no way I could make it with
him.
~Charles Bukowski
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
A Side Street
On the warm Sunday afternoons
And every evening in the Spring and Summer
When the night hurries the late home-corner
And the air grows softer, and scraps of tunes
Float from the open windows and jar
Against the voices of children and the hum of a car;
When the city noises commingle and melt
With a restless something half-seen, half-felt—
I see them always there,
Upon the low, smooth wall before the church;
That row of little girls who sit and stare
Like sparrows on a granite perch.
They come in twittering couples or walk alone
To their gray bough of stone,
Sometimes by twos and threes, sometimes as many as five—
But always they sit there on the narrow coping
Bright-eyed and solemn, scarcely hoping
To see more than what is merely moving and alive...
They hear the couples pass; the lisp of happy feet
Increases and the night grows suddenly sweet...
Before the quiet church that smells of death
They sit.
And Life sweeps past them with a rushing breath
And reaches out and plucks them by the hand
And calls them boldly, whispering to each
In some strange speech
They tremble to but cannot understand.
It thrills and troubles them, as one by one,
The days run off like water through a sieve;
While, with a gaze as candid as the sun,
Poignant and puzzled and inquisitive,
They come and sit,—
A part of life and yet apart from it.
~Louis Untermeyer
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