Elegy Owed Read online

  held their soft beauty for ransom. Then no one

  throws a Molotov cocktail better

  than a Buddhist monk. Then the abstractions

  built a tree fort. Then I stopped hearing from you.

  Then I stared at my life with the back of my head.

  Then an earthquake somewhere every day.

  Then I felt as foolish as a flip-flop

  alone on a beach. Then as a beach

  alone with a sea. Then as a sea

  repeating itself to the moon. Then I stopped hearing

  from the moon. Then I waved. Then I threw myself

  into the work of throwing myself

  as far as I can. Then I picked myself up

  and wondered how many of us

  get around this way. Then I carried

  the infinity. Then I buried the phone.

  Then the ground rang. Then I answered the ground.

  Then the dial tone of dirt. Then I sat on a boulder

  not hearing from you. Then I did jumping jacks

  not hearing from you. Then I felt up silence. Then silence

  and I went all the way.

  How we came to live where we live

  The movie was over except the credits,

  music like but not Satie, I don’t remember

  if I felt the loss of the child deeply

  or needed people to think I did,

  as when you stand before a painting

  in a museum for as long as you hope

  says something good about you, even

  when you’re not sure what that good thing is,

  that you’re considerate of red or appreciate

  the historical significance of the brocade

  or know that the woman in the foreground

  holding the scythe was the painter’s lover,

  Mary Blake, who went on to swim

  the English Channel twice, once forward,

  once backward, but the vision was clear, I wanted

  to carry tiny people around in a box, actors

  who longed to perform Our Town

  for an audience of any size, the numbers

  didn’t matter if their attention

  was complete, You would feel like the sun,

  wouldn’t you, when they applaud, I longed

  to ask the tiny actors in my arms,

  and to feed them like the grasshoppers

  I believed as a child only needed grass

  in a jar to thrive, then we had cocooned

  ourselves in our coats and were outside

  with the gargoyles on the library, a gray sky,

  I was carrying the box of actors

  in how I believed the world was trying

  to be perfect, nothing has to be real

  to be real, like love, how often it makes me want

  to eat you, not figuratively but actually

  devour the hours you fill, one by one

  or fill you, however that works with time,

  and we walked until we couldn’t, so far

  there was no more light from the city,

  and built a bed there, a garden,

  a perspective, what you might call

  the staples of a life, and stayed.

  The heart of the soul of the gist of the matter

  In college, I stole a human heart from the anatomy lab

  and bowered it in a bird’s nest that had fallen, I make

  symbols, not whales, plagues, thistles, stars

  are the moms and pops of everything

  except themselves, inanimate’s the one word

  I’d execute by guillotine to excise the lie

  of lifeless, since bite into any bit of dirt

  or dust and you’ve got a gob full of electrons

  and quarks, the whole menagerie of matter’s

  in there, pinging and swooping, steel’s got a pulse

  as far as I’m concerned, and while I’m French

  Revolutioning my way across the lexicon, I’ll nix

  miraculous too, for what isn’t, what stone

  doesn’t do a number of things I can’t

  very well, avalanche and slingshot and skip

  at the shore, where compared to my one, water speaks

  with infinite mouths, and the simplest chair

  is sometimes the most mystical being

  in a room, animate with the knowledge

  of how to be wood and supportive, alive

  with the atomic breath of being, this is god,

  small g, no Bible, Koran, I stole a human heart

  from the anatomy lab in college and bowered it

  in a bird’s nest that had fallen, they looked

  lost alone but thrived as partners, the dead heart

  and dead home alive with the promise of shelter

  To speak somewhat figuratively for S.

  We went to the top of a building to jump off.

  She could no longer deal with having been raped.

  I was tired of falling asleep by looking forward

  to never waking again. It was a perfect day

  to watch a documentary on famous parachute-

  folding mistakes. Then we had a final meal, final smoke,

  final shower with the window open and pigeons watching.

  Are you sure you wouldn’t rather shoot the man

  who did this, I asked, adding that guns are easier to buy

  than “get well soon or whenever you want” cards. Of course

  I knew her mother would never forgive her

  if she shot her father, she’d have to shoot her mother too,

  which would anger her sister, also raped, who’d wonder why

  she didn’t think of that herself. The only time

  they talked about it, they were drunk on the steps

  of our brownstone and throwing peanuts at cabs

  until one cab backed up and a man got out

  who was three feet tall but his arms were eight feet long

  and it was the arms that did the talking. They ran.

  A three-foot-tall man dragging eight-foot-long arms

  is an interesting nightmare to watch run. They ran the whole night

  together, all the way to Brooklyn and bloody feet

  and crying most of the way out and laughing

  most of the way back, I think what’s known as a bond

  was formed. Still she wanted to die and I wanted

  to be with her, so we went up into the winds

  people don’t realize are in love with tall buildings

  and debated a long time the virtues of taking turns

  or going as one by holding hands and not shouting

  Geronimo. I’ve often wondered why people shout that

  when they jump and not Ulysses or Grover Cleveland,

  I’m sure there’s a reason like I’m sure her father

  could explain himself if she held a knife to his dick.

  We didn’t jump — this is a poem — but she’s still raped

  and I still wish I could articulate the point

  of breathing and her sister’s still fun to have around

  because she juggles really well and they lean

  against each other in doorways without knowing

  they’re the only two trees of a very small forest,

  in which I think of myself as a wild animal

  sheltered deep within their shade.

  Absence makes the heart. That’s it:

  absence makes the heart.

  Here is where spiders set up shop

  during the night, here is where a crow

  decided to perch. Then it got up

  and perched over there, beside

  where another crow perched last week.

  It would be peaceful to be a sail

  except during the storm.

  During the storm, I would like to be

  the storm. If you’re the storm,

  there’s nothing frightening

 
; about the storm except when it stops,

  then you’re dead and the maps

  are drowned. Within my heart

  is another heart, within that heart,

  a man at war writes home:

  this is like digging a hole in the rain.

  A very small bible

  Jesus with amnesia walks

  among the dead and wonders

  why they don’t rise, at least

  one of them, as he seems

  to recall someone did, and missing

  their eyes, kneels and opens them

  for hours, until his fingers hurt

  and he’s tired of the consistency

  of how what isn’t there

  isn’t there, like death

  has no imagination, and hears

  this name being called, Jesus,

  from every direction and begins

  calling too, to join

  how this valley clearly wants

  or needs to sound, that’s

  an interesting question, the difference

  between need and want, he thinks

  and thinks it will be dark soon

  and where do I live

  and is someone

  waiting there with water

  and to ask

  with kisses, where have you been?

  Notes for a time capsule

  The twig in. I’ll put the twig in that I carry in my pocket

  and my pocket and my eye, my left eye. A cup

  of the Ganges and the bacteria from shit

  in the Ganges and the anyway ablutions of rainbow-

  robed Hindus in the Ganges. The dawnline of the mountain

  with contrail above like an accent in a language

  too large for my mouth. A mirror

  so whoever opens the past will see themselves

  in the past and fall back from their face

  speaking to them across centuries or hours

  or the nearnevers it’ll take mirrored someone

  to unearth these scraps, these bones.

  The word terror. I’ll bury the word terror

  to be free of the terror of the word terror.

  I’ll bury the word terror so it will scream

  at mirrored someone as he or she falls back. Screams

  how afraid we were that we were not afraid

  enough. It’s the morning of September 11th.

  I’ll be told all day how to feel about the morning

  of September 11th. Told how to mourn the morning

  of September 11th. If terror is said

  seven times in a row, it loses meaning, becomes

  humdrum, a mere timpani of ear.

  If terror is said seven hundred

  thousand million trillion times, I am being raped

  by a word. I feel it was clever

  to fly planes into buildings, that evil

  is clever in the way rust is clever, eating itself

  as it goes, that peace is clever in the way a stone

  is clever, and I’ll tuck a stone

  from my garden inside a bell

  wrapped in a poem about a bell, the poem

  wrapped in the makings of a slingshot, the makings

  wrapped in the afterbirth of a fox, the afterbirth

  wrapped in the budget for the Defense Department.

  So mirrored someone will face the question

  of what weapons to make and what forgiveness

  to perfect and what to honor in nature

  and what to abhor in the nature

  of what we do. These

  are our complicated times

  so far, my complicated time capsule

  so far. My lament so far, my praise

  so far as it takes me: to a hole

  it takes me, to a shovel, to putting wind

  in, the keen, the mean, but also

  the hush, the blush, the dream

  of getting along free of froth

  and din. Clearly I need, I need, I need

  a bigger box.

  Another holiday has come and gone

  It’s shoot-an-arrow

  into-your-ceiling day, I’m out of arrows,

  I go to the neighbors

  to borrow a cup of arrows, they’re making love

  on the floor doggy style, in that

  she barks then he barks

  at her barking, then it’s over

  and they circle in front of the door

  to be let out, We’re trapped,

  I tell my lover later

  on the phone, Do you mean us, she asks, I lie

  and tell her No, I mean every other person

  but us, we are free, we

  are entirely wings and little bits

  of fog and the open windows

  of speeding cars and Carmen

  at the end, when the performers

  take their bows to the rush of air

  from between our palms, forgetting

  she is deaf, that she’s heard nothing

  I’ve said, that this is a poem,

  that I am out of arrows and more

  importantly out of bows

  Ink

  I feel obligated to get a tattoo.

  It’s how the skin of the species

  is evolving. If I continue

  living without plumage,

  it will be impossible to mate

  or hold a conversation

  with a banker. My favorite

  is strawberry ice cream. Not

  average-size scoops, Baskin-

  Robbins-size scoops

  but three and tiny

  I discovered one night

  tattooed to a thigh.

  It was the possibility

  of kissing a private dessert

  I so admired. I’ve decided

  to get tattoos of my eyes

  on the inside of my eyelids

  so I can stare at the oceans

  of my dreams. I’ll have

  muscles tattooed to my chest,

  money to my palms, the smell

  of honeysuckle to my breath. I want

  BREAK GLASS IN CASE OF FIRE

  tattooed to my brain, mouths

  to the bottom of my feet, you

  to me. There is not

  enough art in this life.

  Tattoo my front door

  to my tombstone and place

  a key on my tongue

  like a mint. It’s not for me

  to decide whether my return

  will be called

  breaking out or breaking in.

  Shed and dream

  Rest with me under the linden tree.

  I do not have a linden tree.

  Come with me to buy a linden tree, stopping first

  at the bank, for I need a loan to buy a linden tree.

  Stay with me while the linden tree grows.

  We can have babies while the linden tree grows,

  colorectal cancer while the linden tree grows,

  an infestation of ladybugs while the linden tree grows.

  Babies sleep on blue blankets in July,

  shadows of heart-shaped leaves

  brushing their new faces as the linden tree grows.

  Let us warn others of the hard work of the linden tree.

  Then rest with me beside the knocked-down shed and dream

  of the cherry tree.

  O pie in the sky.

  You can never step into the same not going home again twice

  There was confusion on my end.

  I thought Jesus was bringing the five-bean salad.

  I thought the war had ended.

  I thought I limped on the left side.

  I thought the cloud a Lamborghini and got in.

  I thought the zoo deserved a hacksaw.

  I thought the tree had climbed the boy.

  I thought the grenade a potato and ate it.

  I thought Francis Bacon was painting my heart.

  I thought bears wou
ld stop us

  from killing the oceans.

  I thought pole dancing had made a comeback.

  I thought the Decency Party

  would offer a full slate of candidates.

  I thought the snow fort

  a metaphor for the womb

  of public housing.

  I thought Zen Buddhism

  would beat the New York football Giants.

  I thought San Francisco

  a roller coaster and screamed whee

  into the ear of noon.

  I thought you were alive

  when I packed an extra pair of socks.

  I thought you were alive

  when I realized “manumit” was two down

  on the plane.

  I thought you were alive

  when I asked a mutual bartender

  how you were.

  I thought you were alive

  even when I peed Sam Adams a first time

  after being told you were dead.

  But I thought the war had ended.

  I thought the half-moon was winking at me.

  I thought cabernet on the roof

  with two of your ex-wives a lovely funeral

  ten years too late with jumping

  at the end into the pool the only way

  to prove I’d paid attention

  to the jump shot with a second left

  you’d always tried to be.

  I thought a good, steady rain

  would bring us to our senses.

  But five thousand years

  into the flood, I just don’t know.

  A poem that wanted to be a letter but didn’t know how

  Thank you Marianne Boruch

  When, with the cadaver’s skinned face

  beside its open skull,

  one of the other students

  held up a stray left hemisphere

  and spoke to this bit of brain

  as to a phone, “She’s not in

  right now, can I take a message,”

  I wanted there to be a story

  our incursion had to tell

  about the woman — that she “liked words — Aesop’s

  Fables, Housman. Frost by heart...

  Not Jane Austen, she lied” — or to take

  part of her home, nick spleen