God Must Be a Beautiful and Lonely Outcast
For a moment,
she forgets that her body is the bark of a decaying yew or the egrets that once rested on her branches light as Peruvian lilies bring only tiny jolts of pain snatching a bite of her flesh their nest is somewhere else. They leave her with a jagged line of imprints. I know I know she says. She won’t send me away. This afternoon’s love will be like morphine and only a dose. I think of the drip rate of rain over crowded cities their underbellies. This scorned harlot of a body was once conjured from the River Pishon and I was the first and last man in Eden. If I ask her to undress, will she? Will it be too painful? And this forbidden apple we eat never tasted as sweet as today, our slow dying, unfolding. I can hear that river breathe. |
The Day Her Elephant Died
When Slo’ Alice called to tell us that her albino
elephant had died from an inverted hoof, I didn’t know
what to say. All of us knew how much she pampered
that elephant, although none of us could figure out
how she got it into her house or what kind of clothes
she bought for it. Stretch pants, said my sometimes
friend, Spiff, who sold hallucinogetics to the old
ladies on Elderberry Street, passing them off as
herbal remedies for constipation. He also sold
firecrackers to veterans who hung out in front
of the Double Derby Barbershop. So Spiff is
driving us to the funeral and I have no idea
how they will fit an elephant into a casket. And
I’m not too sure of the directions. I’m hungry,
says Spiff, and we pull over to a MacDonald’s
and in the parking lot we witness some older kids
picking on a twirp, they call Blondie. For once,
I decide to be brave. After all, I was raised on cheeseburgers
and pop up waffles, a childhood of fast fried love.
When it came to supper, I always gave it up.
“Give him back that ball,” I yell to the leader,
a scrawny kid with rakish eyes, “or I’ll make you
eat it.” Spiff leans against the car, looking at
his worn sneaks. You’re going to get your ass kicked
for sure, I tell myself. Luckily, the kid obeys and
we’re back in Spiff’s old Volvo, about to be
repossessed, the way my ex-girlfriend was, and we’re
taking all these detours and sidestreets that are
not on any map of Grouseland Heights. Spiff decides
to pull over and talk to a girl he says he knew
from the old block, which is now a bloc of abandoned
houses. Spiff, I say, why is it that everytime I’m
trying to get somewhere, you always frustrate me.
Like you want me to be late. Spiff shrugs and adjusts
his sunglasses. He parks and shuts off the motor.
Spiff, I’m saying, we can’t be late to an elephant’s
funeral. They say it’s bad luck. They say that
in the next life you’ll come back as an insect
and get stepped on without really dying. Do you
want to go through your whole life getting stepped on?
Then Spiff tells me how when he was a kid
there was a friendly skunk that would sneak
in his backyard, waddling through his mother’s
garden plants. He says that he killed that skunk
with a slingshot and it’s stayed with him ever since.
I’m trying to tell Spiff that this is different.
Slo’ Alice’s elephant died of natural causes.
But Spiff isn’t listening. I’d be better off
getting out, carrying the goddamn car on my shoulders.
The tragedy of your life
is not that you were without
a centerfold of curves
or pregnant
with a sky empty of luck
but rather
that you kept returning
to people, places,
in a series of threes:
the boy at the bottom of the pool,
circa 1969, his face white, soft
as a marshmallow,
the older man with bare trees
for veins, hands falling
from the highest of granite edges,
but always landing on his feet.
Your token lover, you nicknamed him
Cat, and sent him scampering to die
without a bowl of minced fish bones.
You pretended to cry in front of strangers
how he died without a proper diet
of Omega-3s.
& there was the mother with her nervous fits
of bows & oats & Sunday coats of fox-fur trims.
In time, you learned that she loved you
slightly less than her latest tummy tuck.
& there was my brother and me
who loved you more than ourselves. But we never
could count change. Three years after
Woodstock, we tried to chase our shadows,
drown them in a river,
to make a perfect set of three.
But they returned
& made it known
that we could not multiply in daylight.
After you flew to Nova Scotia,
to be with the latest movie star
in his very private rehab,
camouflaged within the solace of wooden densities,
my brother and I collapsed
into a flattened dimension of none.
Let Me Be Your Twin I
So we can go scuba diving at night, looking for the bodies we once swam with in the backseat of cars. Our oxygen tanks are half full with promise. The cars below are sunken treasures, an oil spill of what was once ours. At such a depth, we are giddy pirates. We live for the bubbles. See how everything tends to Up? Or we can attend parties together, twins of glittering destinies, our haploid mirth, our discrete hand signals across the room. We’ll steal the paparazzi from the real stars and I’ll bring home the left over caviar. You’ll complain that your feet hurt. At weddings, we’ll dance with octopus arms. The brides will secretly fall in love with us and from their first class suites will call out to us in muted longing, tongues in cheeks, cheeks under water.
Let Me Be Your Twin II
We can invent memories or eat hot dogs like true Yankee fans, mustard the color of our new dirty angel tee shirts. Set up a lemonade stand on Central Park West. We’ll donate all proceeds to us. Your father will be my father and the three of us will wash out all the dirty stains of my father’s past. Let’s trade closets. Let’s play rabbit and hunter. I’ll have you squirming in my palm. Or I might let you go. You’re such a silly rabbit and my gun is only a toy one. Grow up. I’m already older than you.
elephant had died from an inverted hoof, I didn’t know
what to say. All of us knew how much she pampered
that elephant, although none of us could figure out
how she got it into her house or what kind of clothes
she bought for it. Stretch pants, said my sometimes
friend, Spiff, who sold hallucinogetics to the old
ladies on Elderberry Street, passing them off as
herbal remedies for constipation. He also sold
firecrackers to veterans who hung out in front
of the Double Derby Barbershop. So Spiff is
driving us to the funeral and I have no idea
how they will fit an elephant into a casket. And
I’m not too sure of the directions. I’m hungry,
says Spiff, and we pull over to a MacDonald’s
and in the parking lot we witness some older kids
picking on a twirp, they call Blondie. For once,
I decide to be brave. After all, I was raised on cheeseburgers
and pop up waffles, a childhood of fast fried love.
When it came to supper, I always gave it up.
“Give him back that ball,” I yell to the leader,
a scrawny kid with rakish eyes, “or I’ll make you
eat it.” Spiff leans against the car, looking at
his worn sneaks. You’re going to get your ass kicked
for sure, I tell myself. Luckily, the kid obeys and
we’re back in Spiff’s old Volvo, about to be
repossessed, the way my ex-girlfriend was, and we’re
taking all these detours and sidestreets that are
not on any map of Grouseland Heights. Spiff decides
to pull over and talk to a girl he says he knew
from the old block, which is now a bloc of abandoned
houses. Spiff, I say, why is it that everytime I’m
trying to get somewhere, you always frustrate me.
Like you want me to be late. Spiff shrugs and adjusts
his sunglasses. He parks and shuts off the motor.
Spiff, I’m saying, we can’t be late to an elephant’s
funeral. They say it’s bad luck. They say that
in the next life you’ll come back as an insect
and get stepped on without really dying. Do you
want to go through your whole life getting stepped on?
Then Spiff tells me how when he was a kid
there was a friendly skunk that would sneak
in his backyard, waddling through his mother’s
garden plants. He says that he killed that skunk
with a slingshot and it’s stayed with him ever since.
I’m trying to tell Spiff that this is different.
Slo’ Alice’s elephant died of natural causes.
But Spiff isn’t listening. I’d be better off
getting out, carrying the goddamn car on my shoulders.
Wicca Women
is not that you were without
a centerfold of curves
or pregnant
with a sky empty of luck
but rather
that you kept returning
to people, places,
in a series of threes:
the boy at the bottom of the pool,
circa 1969, his face white, soft
as a marshmallow,
the older man with bare trees
for veins, hands falling
from the highest of granite edges,
but always landing on his feet.
Your token lover, you nicknamed him
Cat, and sent him scampering to die
without a bowl of minced fish bones.
You pretended to cry in front of strangers
how he died without a proper diet
of Omega-3s.
& there was the mother with her nervous fits
of bows & oats & Sunday coats of fox-fur trims.
In time, you learned that she loved you
slightly less than her latest tummy tuck.
& there was my brother and me
who loved you more than ourselves. But we never
could count change. Three years after
Woodstock, we tried to chase our shadows,
drown them in a river,
to make a perfect set of three.
But they returned
& made it known
that we could not multiply in daylight.
After you flew to Nova Scotia,
to be with the latest movie star
in his very private rehab,
camouflaged within the solace of wooden densities,
my brother and I collapsed
into a flattened dimension of none.
Let Me Be Your Twin I
So we can go scuba diving at night, looking for the bodies we once swam with in the backseat of cars. Our oxygen tanks are half full with promise. The cars below are sunken treasures, an oil spill of what was once ours. At such a depth, we are giddy pirates. We live for the bubbles. See how everything tends to Up? Or we can attend parties together, twins of glittering destinies, our haploid mirth, our discrete hand signals across the room. We’ll steal the paparazzi from the real stars and I’ll bring home the left over caviar. You’ll complain that your feet hurt. At weddings, we’ll dance with octopus arms. The brides will secretly fall in love with us and from their first class suites will call out to us in muted longing, tongues in cheeks, cheeks under water.
Let Me Be Your Twin II
We can invent memories or eat hot dogs like true Yankee fans, mustard the color of our new dirty angel tee shirts. Set up a lemonade stand on Central Park West. We’ll donate all proceeds to us. Your father will be my father and the three of us will wash out all the dirty stains of my father’s past. Let’s trade closets. Let’s play rabbit and hunter. I’ll have you squirming in my palm. Or I might let you go. You’re such a silly rabbit and my gun is only a toy one. Grow up. I’m already older than you.
The Hanging Boy
You open the door to the house
your father put up for sale
and find a boy
hanging from the ceiling,
one who looks the way
you once did.
Slowly, delicately,
you take him down,
cradle, carry him outside,
next to your father's rows
of grape hyacinth, scarlet sage.
But it is beginning to rain.
He, you, deserve better weather
than this.
So you lay him down
in your bed.
In the soft reflection
of the night light,
you swear one blue eye,
same color as the both of yours,
opens.
Now you know
what you'll dream of :
ruined corn
purple sky
your father's smile
floating
in the Neosho River.
And you won't bury this boy
until the weather clears up.
