Chinese Whispers: Poems (9 page)

III

Everything from soup to nuts is OK with me. Her bust came

buckled to Dad’s breeches, someone in trouble.

Halving and having a new thing are the same.

I always preferred him, he was a wreck, superior to the common man,

but oh so separate. If he had dimples,

everybody had to have them. If he went to bed with someone

everybody else had to too. It was his summer of fun.

The fashions “dictated” a lot of things just then, we were cool

with that. Some of you might think of life as some kind of upper berth

on a honeymoon. Marriage on stilts. The absolute truth is,

no one’s going to look at you once it’s done.

We may as well refresh ourselves—the chase soon comes to a head,

though not for long, as Galileo’s orange teaches.

The truth is always a bit further on, and sits there.

No one can read the expression

on its supplanted face.

The third monster seemed to think it was his turn to say something. “Well ...”

“Folks I can’t go on like this, that is, you can’t.

Whoever suffers fate’s naughty cudgel ought to come clean.

Otherwise there’s no explanation, and that cannot be,

as we know. In some other life siphoned out of this one with a tube we can all

kiss our masters, for that day anything is play.

The raddled cowslips of diverted energy have a vested interest in us.

The team partly owns a share of each one of us. Go figure. Ask Neptune.

And insofar as I count, I’m lowering the iron shutter

on today’s wares. God help us if he comes along. But if he doesn’t

we shall be sisters all the same, tame in embroidery, yet resistant

where least expected. My dog speaks proof. I can ladle surf too,

I used to be a bathhouse attendant. I got good grades in math.

Didn’t get into the college of my choosing. Oh well. It’s triste,

the drain choked with tumbleweed, mascara on the clouds, the wooden false fronts

of our little downtown, only we hadn’t left it this way, and ought not to foregather

as darkness falls and the real fur flies. You get caught out at night.”

The girl in the drawing said it and made it happen to me,

then turned over.

The nexus of the star is a superbrain

that can take in you and me and not be mottled or disturbed,

while we lead quiet, shadowed lives. Insignificance is all we have.

The colors, dark ocean maroon, we belong to in the sense that earth belongs to us,

more reassurance, and when day collapses it’s the same—a plight

that is a solution. That’s why I can never go back to philosophy—

its halls and chambers are a paradigm of emptiness, not the real thing,

for only under stones is the knowledge

of underneath, and my desire is mammoth.

So it’s decided. I’ll pack my suitcase

or something, we have the tickets.

Someday I’ll get you there, I know this, the flaming artery obstructs

but not that much, chestnuts still bask in the fire.

But when it came time to sample other essences

she had absconded, wasn’t behind the goalpost.

In this way, rhizome-like, life gets added to life until there is no backing down,

and again tackles its dull awareness of today’s

not remembering our names, only faces.

But there’s no mistaking their intent.

The missile had locked on its prey, houses are swept

for weddings, they cry and can’t alter anything.

We each had an appetizer, the pupils left.

My tetrahedron is open to the night.

(“But was it hinted that brains slant otherwise?

That a draft of cunning will get you into the fair,

where, as long as you keep quiet, you can own great, quivering beasts?

That one’s breath on the moat ignores the shoulders of pike,

and once more the canon desires what it devours,

made to come round again? That we were cousins once in Duluth?

That there is scrimping out there where buzzards plow

the greenery and bellboys interrupt? I’ll be my own vast placebo.

Twilight comes with a rush and wet plumbing.

There is more to our story, more to the telling of it—”)

The unbuilt demands added attention. We got swept along,

and you never learned Jay’s last name. Perhaps it was Jay.

Evening ebbed on the hour.

The newspaper arrived by pigeon post,

as might be. We loved hot food. There is something else

for you and me. Sighed the voyante. And they wonder why it didn’t

taste just right. With dead milk. But surely that

was an inning, it had to be. We had all worked so hard. It comes over me,

all this loss, and then the time. Added to your hours. For a few thrilling minutes

she came and sat by us. “For now, it’s all right. The children would have wanted

you to be this way, happy. But the older I get the harder

it is for me to climb the giant root,

beyond which is an extension of everything, see? You do see.

I’ll leave you the latchkey, at last. Don’t hesitate to use it.

Don’t call me. Or see anything wrong with this.” Like a charming

serpent, she took her leave, with one half of us in suspense,

the other clotured. But it was turning out this way. I knew it all

along, in the hallway of your dwelling. You shouldn’t make such noises

and not mean them. There’ll come a day when we’ll live off noise,

but for now the square forecourt is overgrown. I’ve loved some things in my time,

cast others aside, let others fall by the wayside. The feast such

as we now reap it is heavy, indistinct. Their voices blur. They could croon.

Each to the other thinks: It’s gone. But rotten. Days will

go on turning themselves inside out for us, and trees warble for us,

but not often and not very well.

Last Sunday morning at six o’clock in the evening as I was sailing

over the tops of the mountains in my little boat a crew-cut stranger

saluted me, so I asked him, could he tell me whether the little old

woman was dead yet who

was hanged last Saturday week for drowning herself in a shower of feathers?

“Ask Monk Lewis what he thinks ‘been there done that’ means in the so-called

evening of life. Chances are he’ll regale you with chess moves. All I

want is my damn prescription.” “And you shall have it,
sir
,” he answered

in a level voice. So he gave me a slice of beer and a cup of cold veal

and there was this little dog.

I see no reason to be more polite when the sun has passed its zenith,

yet ham radio operators infest every cove, defacing walls with their palaver.

And when two swans come to that, one swoons and is soothed.

The other lost inside a wall.

He seemed to think I knew some secret or other pertaining to the botched

logs in the fireplace. This caused him to avoid me I think

for a twelvemonth.

After which we got down to business and actually signed the contract.

He was inconsolable. The brat had cost him. With two wives and another

on the way wouldn’t commit himself to a used Chevy. Which is

understandable I think I said it’s understandable. The man

was in no mood to entertain these distinctions. At least I thought he said

bring on the heavy artillery the dream is now or

it won’t happen, not in my diary. Well why that’s just what

I think too, I blessed him. Cells in the wind. The sucker’ll be all

over our new templates, smearing them with grape honey, I’ll

challenge you for the right to beleaguer. To which he assented

abstractedly and it was over in a thrush. Not to ... well excuse me

too. Curses I’d already signed on,

there was no need to jump for it, put a good face on it. Mild eyes

expressing a child’s dignity. OK for it to rot, it

was pompous to begin with.

“No, don’t hang him,” says he, for he killed a hare yesterday. And if you

don’t believe me I’ll show you the hare alive in a basket.

So they built a pontoon bridge, and when they had crossed over the fish applauded.

I was aghast, lost forty pounds at the gaming tables of the

Channel Islands, ’sblood I said. So I set fire to my bow, poised my arrow,

and shot amongst them. I broke seventeen ribs on one side,

and twenty-one and a half on the other; but my arrow passed clean through

without ever touching it, and the worst was I lost my arrow;

however I found it again in the hollow of a tree. I felt it; it felt

clammy. I smelt it; it smelt honey.