Unfastened

Christmas Morning August 31, 2007

A man in a skirt with a glass of champagne – not so long ago he ran for mayor – takes down the number from a for sale sign. He leans on the fence where once was hung a crooked mailbox and a wrestler who clung to a post.

While our perennial candidate imagines the windows trimmed in lime, I will tell this story: A couple finds a cottage with flies in the screens and they scrub and scrub until her knees are green and his shoulders are as strong as the shoulders of trees. They paint their bedroom a perfect mango and the whole house is planted with them inside. In the dark she holds him; his hand like a leaf wraps her budding fingers. Sleepy monkeys, long nights of octopus ink, a lone robot lost in banana trees climbing until he climbs inside the moon.

The monkeys throw off their new pajamas, a glimmer sewn into each collar and cuff.  A man in a skirt unravels a cloud. And landscapers arrive to unsuction the ivy and plant peonies no one can else can see.

One of Julie Story’s Favorites by the New Laureate August 19, 2007

TWO DOGS

An old dog afraid of his own shadow
In some Southern town.
The story told me by a woman going blind,
One fine summer evening
As shadows were creeping
Out of the New Hampshire woods,
A long street with just a worried dog
And a couple of dusty chickens,
And all that sun beating down
In that nameless Southern town.

It made me remember the Germans marching
Past our house in 1944.
The way everybody stood on the sidewalk
Watching them out of the corner of the eye,
The earth trembling, death going by . . .
A little dog ran into the street
And got entangled with the soldiers’ feet.
A kick made him fly as if he had wings.
That’s what I keep seeing!
Night coming down. A dog with wings.

Charles Simic

(Note: I officially acknowledge “kendrive” for the oddly staged looking photo)

Kleve Can See that Star

                                        for Libby and Aaron

Brush the spider’s web from the windshield,
wipe your glasses glopped with fog.
Unvented toilers, the time to leave has come.
The front yard barky fungus, the tiger lilies
crassly shout their perfume behind you.
Don’t be detained, though your cat is mashed
between doubt and a yen for vittles.

Awake to the road’s jag, what you owe
the grim men whose path you follow,
reeling Northward, the UFO ranched
behind you. Like a serif free of its N,
you’ll roam
unbarred, amazed, a rapping magician,
an unmarked buoy.

For this, we bring hugs and travel mugs.
Friends, vex us not with boos but sing
and send postcards of park benches,
uncouth couch surfers, dual silhouettes.
Compass your hearts together and spin
back to the nearest star.

Unsprung August 3, 2007

Already scurrying out the door,
the lizard with a grasshopper in its mouth.

Brother somnambulist still perched on a faucet.
The talk show host clasping his last guest.

(I’m not dreaming how little time we have left.)
Like a rolled down window or the only red toad,

she just wants to shower and rinse her suit
in warm water, to keep her auricular truth.

O little drops. O small motels and maps.
The O of lodge glistening, how far back

A Light Breather

— Theodore Roethke

The spirit moves

Yet stays

stirs as a blossom stirs,

Still wet from its bud-sheath,

Slowly unfolding,

turning in the light with its tendrils;

Plays as a minnow plays,

Tethered to a limp weed, swinging,

Tail around, nosing in and out of the current,

Its shadows loose, a watery finger;

Moves, like the snail,

Still inward,

Taking and embracing its surroundings,

Unafraid of what it is,

A music in a hood,

A small thing,

Singing.

The Lady from Shanghai

It’s a bright, guilty world.

Michael O’Hara, The Lady from Shanghai

Because I don’t smoke, I’m an unhappy wife.
You’re a man who often calls me by name.
The wrong name because I’m wearing a wig,
the sort that requires makeup.
Under the wig, my scalp itches, itches.
I reach up as if to scratch my hair
and wonder whose part I must be scratching –
all the way from LA—maybe an actress,
or a hungry screenwriter.
Maybe in a wig shop in Tyler, Texas
when hair dies its dead for good.

My husband was grimly attached to scotch.
I fold a cigarette into my purse.
The wig is a curtain, my face – a shower.
I’m Patsy, Pistol Packing Mama;
I’m Rita mirrored in black and white,
a polished gun tucked between folded gloves.
Beneath my nails a tannery town
clings like a sulfur ghost.

Back East, the power finally quits.
The shop-owner guesses this might spread south:
the lights of Shreveport, the air at Denny’s,
sputter and wheeze. All along
the drawl of Casino Rouge softly
lingers inside my head.
I’m two years back from the USO –
with embossed lingerie,
a thigh length kimono; I’m ten,
stretched across my first real bed –
all braids and limbs, a happy star.
Look at me! I’m saying. You pretend
I’m drunk for no reason at all.