Unfastened

In a Century June 6, 2008

~ for Nana

On Cyrpus Hill between your husband and daughter
who died too young, on a cold morning with roses from Jamaica Ave,
in a napkin found folded in your apron pocket,
a bag of Mint Milanos, a few handfuls of dirt

in an unfinished poem, a rented Impala, the blood
you watched rolling through your wrists, all the way to the ocean

in the lights of the bridge, bulbs glowing through sea shells,
silent farmhouse candles, light through the curtains that touched
and left you, the day coming in

there were roses against the mechanic’s garage, rust in the hinges,
paint-chipped concrete, plastic flowers, legs and tables folding, the folding cot,
the broom, the sidewalk’s sway,the window onto the street, the window onto the ocean, the porthole in the ocean liner,
the disappearing village, the long ago

circling, not ever looking to land, the circling of objects
with a bright pen: statue of an angel – face lifted in prayer,
butterflies etched in a block of glass, butterflies clipped
in your granddaughter’s hair

that too long ago, now wandering, adjusting picture frames,
a spill of daisies, an array of paper clips, so close in the city
where everyone came, where the ocean liner and the sidewalk meet,
where the doll in the photo meets the sequined grass

with Whitman walking, or with Joseph Cornell, with the scraps
of many, dispersed not like butterflies or bats from a bridge,
but each alone and roped at the waist

the steam train’s whistle, the turn taken too quickly out of Grand Central,
on TV the last living World War I vet,

you were sleeping in the same bed as your dying sisters, I was spreading
my limbs out like a star, you were pushing your laundry in a wired cart –
the Empire State Building still unbuilt, I was watching the colors spin

for once not mistaken – there is not enough time – through windows I’ve watched
a hundred squirrels climb a hundred branches, never miss a leap

now flushed as a child who cries after the others,
snot landing on my patent leather shoes, and you’re opening the door,
always opening the door, the barley simmers as it always simmers,
mahogany and rain, and the quiet house where we wait for it all to pass

Little Song November 9, 2007

Sponge-soaked in tears at the summer’s start,
she drives off with a cup on the roof of her car.
For a full half block before it tumbles, not even a drop is spilled.

She imagines sometimes her life as a spiral –
stiff, tightly wound; and then there are moments
like an unstuck window, a cleansing gust of grief.

What she feels is death and no near reason.
One day asleep in a swamp of self and the next
at a wake where everyone wears plaid,

or everyone wears tanks,
or everyone wears the same blank stare,
and then the scrape of the shovel.

Sunflowers stuffed into bags of waste.
Shadow of a hawk across the river.

Her father whose toenails have long since turned yellow
says birth is a miracle, he just had that thought.
The pitcher picks off a runner at first.

There are miracles, yes, and there are bad choices.
Like a bear, the shadow moving.

Upright and uncracked in the middle of the road,
her cup picked up by her older brother.
The sheer unlikeliness makes her sing

nervously like a tiny bird
whose eyes have not yet opened.

from The New Spirit October 12, 2007

~ John Ashbery

It is very early.
The heavens only seem to be in a state of ferment.
If one might choose to see them differently there would be
Peace at the outer fringes
For their reluctance is never far away
And harmony, by the same token, is never ruled out completely.

One can accomplish the thing quite quickly
And turn toward the ruled outside space
That defines our hesitations so majestically
Though negatively.

It is necessary to go forward completing
The gesture from the beginning of life
That was worrying its shape into the trees
All this time, as though that shape were responsible
For the many fluctuating situations that fill the air.

Ultimately only one continuous bell sound
Exemplifies the crowding around of
All the things that need getting done.
They fall away like memories of the seasons.

There is no staying here
Except to pause for a breath on the peak
That night fences in
As though the spark might not be extinguished.

My Father’s Head (in progress)

A cantelope, aged,
an olive stuffed,
sandpaper, stone,
shiny with sweat
and lightly burned –

beneath an old man’s immigrant hat
small-brimmed, a green fedora crushed
a NATO helmet, a Yankee cap –

this crystal ball head
held up with the past.

This sun between two distant hills,
this moon moving with me as the miles pass –
car window moon, full and distant –

Sings a low song. The miles pass.
Hums like an ocean. I bend to kiss
a thin film of grease with my dry lips.

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.