His memories of court were fond, but distant, and muted by a natural sepia,
and each one was framed and mounted on a black mat border, behind which
the Red Army smoked, drank, and waited. He perused the paper,
lamented with fellow exiles, shook his head at the unfortunate state of things,
but didn’t believe in his own name anymore, in the way his title,
a spondee of bloodlines, could be anything but the polite nod from a customer,
asking him where he’s from and if he’s out of chocolate.
We tell you this as fair warning, as the barely-restrained id
of those who let their lawns grow untamed for weeks
and whose kids talk back, those who wait in line to be sent back to the line,
again and again, who sympathize, against their better judgment,
with the graffiti writer who renames the city, by fiat of neon orange and blue:
Deltron, Pink Lady, Futura, Krash One-Four. They claim for themselves
the belly of the expressway or the flank of the train, dirtying the decay
of broken brick walls and the legs of a viaduct going deaf,
walking down the street singing, “Style don’t need a permit!”
When the chain-link fence is too high, and the cops are too fast,
we’ve got a thousand mix-tapes of his voice to replay,
a slight crackle, then a little white noise before he sings it again.
It’s a sentiment that ends in the irrhythmic tapping on a keyboard.
Garrulous, okay, but only to fill the outline of four walls
left bare with the occasional picture hook, wiring exposed,
cupboards raided of everything that might suggest a simple way
to express a discontent that only exists as the frustrated exhale
while standing on the corner of Least and Last, blowing dust
in the eyes, stealing round corners, taking a crack on the jaw.
Power Lines with Piano Accompaniment
The road below the power lines offers this heat
to you—offered with pale streetlights, with distance
as the closed suture between the meanings
of drained glasses, dry bitten crusts,
the concave of spoons reflecting the inversion
of…
Of what now? a barman asks again,
leaning an ear toward a woman who can’t articulate
the word “whisky” over the noise. Of ten dollars
that a waiter stained with wine and the smell
of garlic swears he had; of the wine;
of the hostess thinking about going back to college;
of the chef who sees himself in the clean
of the knives he washes, and of his humming
a melody, whose name he can’t recall, by Erik Satie.
Something about gymnasts? He worries about his memory,
following the power lines down the road,
watching them fillet the sky, humming
like violas imagined in the ears of Satie.
Slowly and lightly, through the 1890s, his cane taps
out antiquity’s waltzes on the long walk home
from Montmartre cabarets to Arcueil-Cachan
and his room above a tobacco shop, hiding a hammer
in his pocket for the thieves in the allies, back to his piano.
Through the warm night, he asks how it feels,
for miles around he asks how his piano feels.
Because he wants to know that the gods still love him,
and he believes they sleep in the grain of the wood,
so he asks how it feels. Is it tired? Will it wake?
Satie is not a metaphor, Satie is not the humming
of the power lines escaping on steel shouldered towers
into the hills, but is only the companion to the quiet,
as the chef sits on the curb to light a cigarette,
the breeze stealing a chill from the sweat
behind his ears and neck. He accepts the heat
from the pavement, puts his hand against it,
scrutinizes his index finger where the knife’s reminder
of the small hazards and wages of his work
lets blood from the knuckle. It pools a bit
and the blood, too, hums the warmth and the quiet,
reflecting the thin strips of power lines
upon which gymnasts, painfully, keep their balance.
Kelsey Charles
Autobiography
He told the story like eating soup,
hot soup that steamed boiling
fresh from the stove, and we watched,
listened as he blew languid on each word
to cool it for our consumption.
“You’ve lived such an interesting life,”
I said, I hovered in my admiration, waiting
for him to continue. But he stopped,
told me my life was just as interesting
and smiled knowingly.
He went back to his soup. I hung
on his words waiting for resolution.
Paris, stolen kiss, the graveyard,
the subway, the walk, the loss and escape
from commitment. By the end,
I was full. I knew the meat was in the telling.
Fishing with Teddy
The man could not keep quiet as he cast his line,
pulled it back in, and cast it again without regard for finesse.
Teddy said, “I don’t understand why the damned fish
don’t like my bait.” I didn’t tell him they never had a chance to see it.
I offered to bring beer, but Teddy brought whisky—
“there’s no point in half-assing it.” It being getting drunk.
I imagine for Teddy fishing was a mythical romp of triumph
over the small brained swimmer, ending with a feast of his foe.
There was no waiting. Teddy didn’t wait. For ten minutes he yo-yoed
his line in the water, never letting it rest. He asked “Are there
fish in this river? I don’t think they’re there.” And he fidgeted:
crossed his legs, stood up, sat down, stretched an arm, formed a fist.
When he put down his rod, I knew there was trouble.
He went between the trees and broke off a branch the size of a bat.
I ducked as he took a few swings and argued when he stripped his pants.
He waded in like a hungry bear, and finally was still. Five minutes.
I jumped when the splash came, I hadn’t seen him move,
but Teddy swung away and the fish flopped on the bank
beside me, a wounded enemy brought low.
“Gut it, let’s eat.” Teddy commanded. I complied.
Ten Miles Away
We ate more than our stomachs could handle
that night as we sat with my Dad’s friends
I’d only just met, but the pots still over flowed with meats.
The sausage and bratwursts, the steaks and lamb
tenderloin, the pork chops all remained. The fried
potatoes, the creamed corn, long skinny beans, and
bits of carrot, we couldn’t finish. But they smiled
as I fell out of my chair, too heavy for legs.
And we rested outside, on the porch, the nylon chairs
sagging. I gazed at the fields without end until
the clear Kansas night fell. And they told me
the land was so flat you never knew the horizon,
that my eyes would break before I saw the end.
And there was a storm that night, but we were dry,
watching lightning spring from the sky ten miles away,
soundlessly illuminating the clouds in the dark.
I dream
t I died in Montparnasse
I dreamt I died in Montparnasse,
a careening moped to the skull.
People rushed around my body
and I watched them in third person.
I was abstract, a spirit, a specter
wandering in my death, the streets
around were filled with life, and I felt
apart. Then my vision blurred
and I saw other beings, great hordes
of ghosts and ghouls about the town
strolling through the living.
The artists and musicians of Paris past
romped about, gathered together again.
In the spaces they were most alive
they returned to in their death.
Outside of Henry Tanner’s house they
beat against the gate, the lines of pilgrims
returned for comments on their work.
They huddled in the sunny shadows,
burdened with translucent canvases
clutched to keep from drifting.
The Bobino raged with crowds while
Josephine waved from a car outside.
She’d returned in her prime, showered
in illusionary ticker tape parade.
It poured from the sky and floated
down through shades of past and present.
At the St. Louis Bar that night, phantom
jazz twined with modern pop, though
neither heard the other. The bar was packed
with dead on living, both dancing non-stop.
The air kinetic, emotions of both groups
went rushing like a flood. They moved
as though their souls depended on the joy
they’d felt in their warm blood.
John
You lay in the field, liquor in hand,
dead with brandy for blood.
You were hard to see in the two foot weeds,
Why couldn’t you have died courteous?
The kids who stepped on you didn’t flinch,
except for the new kid
from Connecticut. He looked on
as the neighbor kids rummaged
in your pockets. Thank him
that you were picked up at all.
When the morgue man came,
he saw fourteen dollars:
you were his dinner with a coke.
He called you John, and apologized
for the bumpy ride.
On the icy tray they laid you flat,
struggled with your arms,
then left you in the freezer bank
for someone else to claim.
Go on, wait in the closet for no one.
Therese L. Broderick
Polly
Better that my daughter forget
her weakest rabbit, one I loved
the most, white runt Polly
born lame, her red eyes
the spitting image of rabid;
and kept away from our cat,
penned inside our zoo—
warmest upstairs room—
which might’ve been filled with
a baby crib, rocker,
and a table for all those changes
of onesies, had I ever wanted
to have another baby, but no,
never did want
to risk
playing favorites. And better that
my little girl was sleeping
that evening Polly shriveled
like a flawed corsage
on the carpet, between my knees,
on my lap her rear leg ceasing
to twitch: first of twenty limbs
to wither. First rabbit to die,
just shy of those four equal
survivors, my sturdy orphans.
To the Motionless One in Egypt
Pup, will you lift your dry head, open dusty eyelids
if I slap you hard on your ribs, tug at your right ear,
force open your jaws with the rim of my bottle,
will you rise on front paws if I flee my tour, leap
into this pit of crumbling columns, only shade for miles
you might perish in—or the other strays pant in—
which parchment was once your milking mother?
Pup, are you sinking through Valley of the Queens
or sailing to Ra, or will you rouse soon as I’ve gone
back to the bus, through tinted windows glimpsing
your resurrection but forbidden—ever—to touch
the miracle, to rest my hand on your salting belly.
Pistol Squat
Fuck any aim of Zen
humility.
I do squats as means
of combat, BMI
held to 20.
Right knee bent, left leg deployed
like the barrel of a
handgun.
Ankle cocked & hard core
burning down
inch by
inch.
Target: the toe:
Fix it.
three two one
Fire.
The Old Stylist
She soothes by comb, making it all better,
she wants to make hairs happy once
again, as they were before neglect—
my cheap shampoo, steely bristles—
and she wants to move to a city warm
with tropical reds & mauves & yellows,
new textures she can improve upon
every eight weeks, or six
and she doesn’t want the water spray too hot
on my head or the dryer helmet too close
or the cut too short, or highlights too bright
for my grey eyes, she wants to retire
after a few more years of this, squeezing perfect
tablespoons of perm gel, rescuing roots,
coating every gal in her chair with bliss: the do
will be so much easier going forward.
With Lines from All My Diaries Since the Millennium
She rehearses the words of Zeus, aloud,
waiting in bed
for breakfast.
Mistletoe is a veiled parasite,
and my party mask is the back
of a round mirror.
Of the pumpkin
she takes 50 photos, then says to me,
you’re too overflowing.
My husband’s mother (God help her)
put Superglue in the corner
of a false eyelash.
2010 was the best year of my life:
I almost had Asperger’s. Until
my doctors agreed: you don’t have Asperger’s.
Loud, soft, loud, soft: patterns
I snore in. He groans in.
“Singers Wanted”
pleads a bumper sticker;
“Sonnet”
declaims a license plate.
Did you know that some tornadoes
can swirl invisible?
Lane Falcon
Touch
He stands in my bedroom doorway and goes on about how this is it then, I won’t see him again, and I sit in my antique chair and cradle her while she sucks out the last ounce of her bottle, and he shivers a little in that threshold—don’t try and call me, nothing. When my daughter’s older, I’ll tell her the truth—and the silence turns pink in my mouth, then orange, then blue.
•
At five, he romped
barefoot in a pigpen
in the Dominican Republic,
his aunt would sterilize
a needle and pick whipworms
from the bottoms of his feet.
He, with a matching pair
of sneakers for every outfit,
whose rubber soles jut
just over the edge of my bed,
my incredulity matched
by wonder. In my dream,
the worm’s pointed head
; pricks through the skin
of my index finger. Tweezers
finally grip the exposed
eighteenth of an inch,
and it stretches,
stretches, its length
lodged in my flesh,
til the tweezers slip
and the worm, still one,
snaps back into
position.
The Descent
Why do they ignore me?
My sister and mother, who don’t
look themselves but svelte, decorous
in frosted lipstick.
The voice says you died.
Me? The ghost of this house
where I found what I stole? A broken
VHS and the diary
of the gastroenterologist I dated.
On the mantelpiece,
a picture of me at The Gala leans
without frame. How blithe I was
with my chipped nail polish
and glitter wallet, how little I cared
my hair clung to the fringe
of the circular rug . . .
Dream Feed
The infant hatches from sleep,
a hiccup, chirp and gasp
reel me from bed
to the edge of her crib. Her eyes
jerk upward.
In minutes, they’ll latch onto mine
as I push the latex nipple
between her lips, hurry
to quell her rage.
She bats the anime toy clipped
to the car seat where I’ve placed her
while I mix Similac and nursery water,
my panic, a current an inch below the coos
One second Baby.
Hold on Honey,
I’m here—
My Father Fixes My Portable A/C
If it would only grip, he says, just a little,
the plastic hose clamped between his bent
knee and elbow, as he tries to screw the open
end into the “duct.” I now know the name
for it—the part I circled with painters tape
from when I moved in six years ago (adhering
to itself, it twisted thin as twine as I brought it
round the hose, then patched it, again and again,
when chutes of humid air pushed through,