Circe
I magic myself a man: ta-da! and it’s done the deed the
dirty the down-there down-home hello hoe is me a bit too
witchy bitchy pussy a cooch like a clamp a clutch to turn
a trick a dick sick hungry woman I take and take too much
this miss mistress distrust me disgust me wanting woman
wanton woman I a mouthing a tonguing an in-cheek kinda
sly-slippery-snakebite of a woman bite of a woman who licks—
sick, such a woman (not-wife) wily whet-thirst of a woman
with wit tits cunt we don’t like that (a woman) the way
she walks the hips the lips surely a trick an abracadabra ta-da
ha! I hunger a husband (right?) I bite the beast and feast I beast-
summoning woman beast-loving woman I make me a man
a meal I snare I snake I hungry and I swallow whole
Augury
they’ll arrive at the house
in the poem where the man,
who is the father, who is
the husband, who is the body
in the earth—
but we haven’t
gotten there yet;
we are in the car
with his mother and sister,
who are talking— people-talk,
busy-talk, light nothing-talk
of a weekend afternoon—
on their way to visit
the son, the brother, after
two days, no word and
the fear
that lives like a soreness
in the back of the throat. and now
his mother thinks maybe
of silence, of her son, who
has always been a child of
silence, and now is this all
it will be? but
not yet, there’s just time
now for these still- harmless
thoughts, these nothing-
thoughts nervous nothing-
thoughts of the living.
because when the car pulls up
to the house, it is only a house
and not a foreshadowing or
a place of ends or beginnings.
It is just plaster and bricks
and a door where there is no
answer, which sounds like —
[what they already know].
but they have been wrong
before; they may be wrong
again. please let them not be
prophets; let them not be
the ferrymen to their own grief.
let them be
wrong and human and
unknowing. and if the side door
is open, let them go in
and greet only the living.
and if his sister calls and there is
no answer, perhaps her brother
is simply unhearing, silent.
perhaps her brother is simply sleeping
in silence—but
is there only such a silence
as the grave?
because his mother knows
before she sees it—
the it, not him, of the son—
no longer
her
son, no longer
the breath or voice of her
son. there he is. and she
already knows but still
tests the air with the question,
calls his name once just
to watch it fall.
January 3, 2015
would have been
his birthday, 2
days after New Year’s,
the day of the blizzard
named for the Greek hero,
his 12 labors
of redemption,
1 year after
the divorce, 10 years
since the affair, 3
years since we’ve
spoken, 3 years
since the first poem
and there have been
poems and will be
poems but no
father, today, of the 52
would-be birthday
candles, after 3
trips to the hospital,
5 stitches in the
chest, 1 heartbeat
gone dumb, 1 hearse,
3 limos, 52
roses for the grave,
no cake, no
celebration, but candles,
52 candles, these
52 small fires, 1
body, 1 wooden
box: kindling.
Nepenthe
Let us agree, then, to no longer beat our chests
and tear our hair. There’s no need
to balance the accounts or get things in order;
we have been disorderly before so let us return
to the rooms as we left them where no time has passed
at all—we have no use for it here, though we may
watch it from a distance; we all need some sport—
and music! finally something we can dance to,
improper though it is, that we still have bodies
that can dance, and clothes, immodest
and in every possible color, and it will be
the shapes of our mouths that give us away,
the way they arch in the corners
despite— and our volume, unsuited
to whispers in respect of—
how long has it been,
exactly? Is it time yet for the streamers
and champagne? Happy new year to all
of our losses. What a shame such time,
in the end, should go to waste. Suddenly
it’s too late and the guests are leaving.
The management, annoyed, is dimming the lights.
We know better than to idle in the silence
but surely we can’t help it when
we hang up the armor, when the ship’s sails
are black… Now that the band has left
and the radio’s broken, let’s toast
to the bottom of the punchbowl, one more
round till we take it to the street: Let’s all
of us agree to our bodies unstoppable.
There’s no music but god knows we need to dance.
