Horoscopes for the Dead (4 page)

Marco   Polo   Marco   Polo

would be required to read a biography

of Marco Polo—a long one with fine print—

as well as a history of China and of Venice,

the birthplace of the venerated explorer

Marco   Polo   Marco   Polo

after which each child would be quizzed

by me then executed by drowning

regardless how much they managed

to retain about the glorious life and times of

Marco   Polo   Marco   Polo

Not long after we had sat down to dinner

at a long table in a restaurant in Chicago

and were deeply engrossed in the heavy menus,

one of us—a bearded man with a colorful tie—

asked if anyone had ever considered

applying the paradoxes of Zeno to the martyrdom

of St. Sebastian.

The differences between these two figures

were much more striking than the differences

between the Cornish hen and the trout amandine

I was wavering between, so I looked up and closed my menu.

If, the man with the tie continued,

an object moving through space

will never reach its destination because it is always

limited to cutting the distance to its goal in half,

then it turns out that St. Sebastian did not die

from the wounds inflicted by the arrows:

the cause of death was fright at the spectacle of their approach.

Saint Sebastian, according to Zeno, would have died

of a heart attack.

I think I’ll have the trout, I told the waiter,

for it was now my turn to order,

but all through the elegant dinner

I kept thinking of the arrows forever nearing

the pale, quivering flesh of St. Sebastian,

a fleet of them forever halving the tiny distances

to his body, tied to a post with rope,

even after the archers had packed it in and gone home.

And I thought of the bullet never reaching

the wife of William Burroughs, an apple trembling on her head,

the tossed acid never getting to the face of that girl,

and the Oldsmobile never knocking my dog into a ditch.

The theories of Zeno floated above the table

like thought balloons from the 5th century before Christ,

yet my fork continued to arrive at my mouth

delivering morsels of asparagus and crusted fish,

and after we ate and lifted our glasses,

we left the restaurant and said goodbye on the street

then walked our separate ways in the world where things

do arrive,

where people usually get where they are going—

where trains pull into the station in a cloud of vapor,

where geese land with a splash on the surface of a pond,

and the one you love crosses the room and arrives in your

arms—

and, yes, where sharp arrows can pierce a torso,

splattering blood on the groin and the feet of the saint,

that popular subject of European religious painting.

One hagiographer compared him to a hedgehog bristling

with quills.

Moon in the upper window,

shadow of my crooked pen on the page,

and I find myself wishing that the news of my death

might be delivered not by a dark truck

but by a child’s attempt to draw that truck—

the long rectangular box of the trailer,

some lettering on the side,

then the protruding cab, the ovoid wheels,

maybe the inscrutable profile of a driver,

and puffs of white smoke

issuing from the tailpipe, drawn like flowers

and similar in their expression to the clouds in the sky,

only smaller.

Once upon a time there were two oval mirrors

hanging face to face

on the walls of a local barbershop

in the capital city of a country

running the length of a valley

lined with the stubborn molars of mountains.

It’s hard to say how the mirrors felt

about all the faces peering into them—

the unshorn, the clean-cut, and the bald—

their only job being to double

whatever stands in front of them

including the cologned heads of customers.

And when business was slow

the mirrors would see the barbers themselves

glancing in to run a comb quickly through their hair.

Every day except Sunday the mirrors

received the rounded heads

and gave back the news, good or bad.

And the reward for their patience

arrived at night in the empty shop

when they could look down the long

corridors of each other—

one looking at the dead mirrors of the past,

the other looking into the unborn mirrors of the future,

which means that the barbershop

must symbolize the present, in case anyone wants to know—

the present with its razors, towels, and chairs,

its green awning withdrawn,

its big window and motionless pole,

and the two mirrors who lived repetitively ever after.

The road across a wide snowy valley

could not have been straighter

if someone had drawn it with a ruler

which someone probably did on a table

in a surveyor’s office a century ago

with a few other men looking over his shoulder.

We’re out in the middle of nowhere, you said,

as we bisected the whitened fields—

a few dark bison here and there

and I remember two horses snorting by a shed—

or maybe a little southwest of nowhere,

you added, after you unfolded a map of the state.

But that night, after speeding on sleds

down a road of ice, the sky packed with stars,

and the headlights of our host’s truck blazing behind,

it seemed we had come a little closer to somewhere.

And in the morning with the snow sparkling

and the rough white mountains looming,

a magpie flashed up from a fence post,

all black and white in its airy exertions,

and I said good morning to him

on this first day of the new decade

all of which left me to wonder

if we had not arrived at the middle of exactly where we were.

When he told me he expected me to pay for dinner,

I was like give me a break.

I was not the exact equivalent of give me a break.

I was just similar to give me a break.

As I said, I was like give me a break.

I would love to tell you

how I was able to resemble give me a break

without actually being identical to give me a break,

but all I can say is that I sensed

a similarity between me and give me a break.

And that was close enough

at that point in the evening

even if it meant I would fall short

of standing up from the table and screaming

give me a break,

for God’s sake will you please give me a break?!

No, for that moment

with the rain streaking the restaurant windows

and the waiter approaching,

I felt the most I could be was like

to a certain degree

give me a break.

The woman who wrote from Phoenix

after my reading there

to tell me they were all still talking about it

just wrote again

to tell me that they had stopped.

I seem to have forgotten several features

crucial to the doing of this,

for instance, how your lower lip

meets your upper lip besides just being below it,

and what happens at the end of the nose,

how much does it shade the plane of your cheek,

and would even a bit of nostril be visible from this angle?

Chinese eyes, you call them

which could be the difficulty I have

in showing the flash of light in your iris,

and being so far away from you for so long,

I cannot remember what direction

it flows, the deep river of your hair.

But all of this will come together

the minute I see you again at the station,

my notebook and pens packed away,

your face smiling as I cup it in my hands,

or frowning later when we are home

and you are berating me in the kitchen

waving the pages in my face

demanding to know the name of this latest little whore.

I would have to say that the crown

resting on the head of my first acid trip

was the moment I went down on one knee

backstage at the Top Hat Lounge

and proposed marriage to all three of the Ikettes.

We had no idea, Tom and I,

that the Ike and Tina Turner Revue would be playing there

when we stepped out for some lights and drinks,

but sometimes the tortoise gets lucky, they say,

and comes across an opening in the chain-link fence.

With many people sending many drinks

to our maniacally happy table,

how could I not feel that I had slipped

out of the enclosure of the past

where I used to inch in circles through the grass

when I wasn’t sunning myself on a favorite rock?

So the night flew on with its mighty colors

until there emerged a posture

of valor and chivalric intensity

as the music, especially “Nutbush City Limits,”

became more beautiful and fair, like a bower in a poem.

And even better was the sound

I heard when it became clear to those girls

why I had appeared backstage during a break.

Yes, the best was the laughter

of those three backup singers

in their shiny wigs and short red sequin dresses—

their sweet mocking laughter

at my courteous sincerity, my ardor,

after I had breached their dressing room

and descended to one knee before them all.

My new copper-colored bicycle

is looking pretty fine under a blue sky

as I pedal along one of the sandy paths

in the Palm Cemetery here in Florida,

wheeling past the headstones of the Lyons,

the Campbells, the Dunlaps, and the Davenports,

Arthur and Ethel who outlived him by 11 years

I slow down even more to notice,

but not so much as to fall sideways on the ground.

And here’s a guy named Happy Grant

next to his wife Jean in their endless bed.

Annie Sue Simms is right there and sounds

a lot more fun than Theodosia S. Hawley.

And good afternoon, Emily Polasek

and to you too, George and Jane Cooper,

facing each other in profile, two sides of a coin.

I wish I could take you all for a ride

in my wire basket on this glorious April day,

not a thing as simple as your name, Bill Smith,

even trickier than Clarence Augustus Coddington.

Then how about just you, Enid Parker?

Would you like to gather up your voluminous skirts

and ride sidesaddle on the crossbar

and tell me what happened between 1863 and 1931?

I’ll even let you ring the silver bell.

But if you’re not ready, I can always ask

Mary Brennan to rise from her long sleep

beneath the swaying gray beards of Spanish moss

and ride with me along these halls of the dead

so I can listen to her strange laughter

as some crows flap in the blue overhead

and the spokes of my wheels catch the dazzling sun.

Under the vigilant eye of my mother

I had to demonstrate my best penmanship

by thanking Uncle Gerry for the toy soldiers—

little red members of the Coldstream Guards—

and thanking Aunt Helen for the pistol and holster,

but now I am writing other notes

alone at a small cherry desk

with a breeze coming in an open window,

thanking everyone I happened to see

on my long walk to the post office today

and anyone who ever gave me directions

or placed a hand on my shoulder,

or cut my hair or fixed my car.

And while I am at it,

thanks to everyone who happened to die

on the same day that I was born.

Thank you for stepping aside to make room for me,

for giving up your seat,

getting out of the way, to be blunt.

I waited until almost midnight

on that day in March before I appeared,

all slimy and squinting, in order to leave time

for enough of the living

to drive off a bridge or collapse in a hallway

so that I could enter without causing a stir.

So I am writing now to thank everyone

who drifted off that day

like smoke from a row of blown-out candles—

for giving up your only flame.

One day, I will follow your example

and step politely out of the path

of an oncoming infant, but not right now