Two Poems

Might a Fate Be Changed
 
The fortune teller
tells me it's not possible to tell
if love will last, that if he were to cast
his stones in matters of his heart, 
he'd find himself lost.
 
But I want all predictions to be made
in my favor.
 
The fortune teller once took dirt from behind
the last standing porn theater in this city.
 
A spell, he says, made
for a man who wanted a woman who did not want him.
 
There are old codes of magic for such things.
If you believe, the fortune teller says, you will manifest your dream.
 
I wanted the end of the story to be
 
The fortune teller gestures in the air
which is a way of saying heart, heart, heart
 
I wanted the end of the story to be
 
For what is a future
but a projection of the past, differently? 
 
But I want all predictions to be made
in my favor.
 
I’ve lost one man, two, three, and four. The most recent
reminds me heartbreak time is fluid as the story of us
departs from the future into the past
 
burdened with predictions undone,
heart, heart, heart dirt breaking heart
 
The fortune teller prays in a language I can’t understand.
Each syllable a mark in the ledger of my future.
 
The stones are arranged in the figure of a prison.
The stones are arranged in the figure of a dragon that eats the heart whole.
 
He says, the stones on the table indicate
I possess a bad outlook on my life.

All my good dreams will not come true
(I want the end of the story to be)
 
All my bad dreams will not come true
(I want the end of the story to be)
 
But I want all predictions to be made
in my favor.
 
The fortune teller says he can only tell the truth, hard as it is.
Manifest the rest.

**


Decline of the Humanities
 
The new dean says
you don't seem like someone who likes meetings. 
 
He’s trying to fit in,
a thin, bespectacled man.
Hold soft power, softly.
 
Two weeks into the gig he's shed
his too-big suit coat, told us we need to do less.
 
Truthfully, I am dutiful, show up to meetings
short of a minute late.
 
I am trying to do less. 
 
In the spirit, I tell him we should slash and burn
the things we don't need, make a party of it,
then I think to say
 
but not departments.
No, let's keep those.
 
We both laugh, understanding 
the relative value of "student demand,”
“budget deficit,” “enrollment cliff.”
 
Long ago, the business department
claimed “creativity” and “innovation” as their own.
 
As Chair of English, I advise a few of their majors.
Who are you?, they ask, sweetly dumb.
 
My arms hang at my sides, a metaphor
for the number of English majors.
 
What can you do? Everyone wants to be an author,
no one wants to read.
 
As a scholar of literature, a poet, my most marketable skill
is saying to the man I'm not sure if I'm in love with
that I recognize the poem in this episode of Ted Lasso.
 
It's Philip Larkin, I say confidently, eager:
"They fuck you up, your mum and dad..." 
They don't mean to, but they do! 
 
Once, he told me he didn’t know what love is
because his parents never showed him,
but I knew this explanation had been given to him
 
by a therapist who helped him
make himself into sense.
 
That’s what literature does. Puts a word
on your tongue and lets you speak it.
 
It’s soft power, you fools.