I always seem to be trying to do six or seven different poems at the same time and just hoping I can keep them all well-nurtured enough so that one of them will suddenly get strong enough to take over all by itself until it is done.
-Elizabeth Bishop, in a letter to Robert Lowell
Goodbye grandma and grandpa and suckers
in ceramic bowls in their just-cold house where
I came into some Steinbeck and heard word about
the “two-cent plain,” a small glass of seltzer
at the fountain and a single smoke for a penny
less. Goodbye New York, goodbye high school
(though I should’ve said it years ago); goodbye
thick scarves that warm my chin, goodbye smallperson
chance at the lottery win. In an apartment floor
on Warburten we sang “The Weight,” planned the three
-part chorus note and in our rendition humor didn’t pull
us out, half our faces painted and the other half about
to be. The photographs I seized these weeks are grainy
and behind the gloss the noise is coiled. Sam didn’t
snore. Andrew’s voice across the phone was hushed
and pious for the past. He drove. Goodbye pink
backdropped cheetah where we’ll pose until we’re all
too fat for year-end dresses. Goodbye Euclid and Villard
where I didn’t exercise but hoped to hold a face or two.
Goodbye avocadoes posed in pitied winter pyramids
and goodbye to mothers in the store and on the street,
catty-cornered on a mat or in the heated trainstop.
And here’s the last full stop after a half day’s research
into telegrams: I came, I saw, I ate late meals. I ran.
I’m behind the deli counter, surveying
you through the pickle jar. With water,
with vinegar, with redblack peppercorns
seasoning the mixture in which you swim,
you solicit eight ounces of tuna. Five
is all I have to offer. True there’s some
in the back, true too I loathe to keep
flesh from you but my own numbered
bones aren’t much wider than those I slice
and though you’ve spun worthy tales of life
on rainless land, my archival mitts are off
today, my fish gloves on. To think in terms
of weight is unbecoming though I love
the paper used to wrap, the thick white
tape to match. You clutch the ounces
that I pass across a counter much too tall
for us. Your teeth aligned along
an orthography of thanks, you pay
from dollars tightly clipped together,
close as thieves but not as thick.
We finish the day in the presence of the same
red flesh, culled from the same cut form.
I sear mine and share it, the center a sailor’s
delight. Your ounces perch upon a shelf,
forgotten and not quite what you had in mind.
The tuna’s redness ages, and maroons.
The Brunch Poems have taken a two-day hiatus; instead of writing them I’ve been having brunch with once-or-twice-a-year-in-their-presence friends, and food and them are great excuses. See y’all tomorrow.
I arrive at Chase’s at 6:34pm and
straightaway we hang a photograph
on the wall (I have these skills I am
Woman) and then atop the redblue
plaid of the comforter that could only
be his we talk about prospects of office
chairs and a ten-year-old love interest
and a book title in all capitals. When I go
to the bathroom the walls the tub the tiny
toilet remind me of other Brooklyns I’ve
known and I want to ask Chase to pose
in the bathtub for me with a prop like
a Frisbee or an empty foam cup but
we have to go to dinner and that means
three layers for the arms and the boots
we’ve got. I don’t even buy sliced bread
anymore. I make tacos. The intonation
of this Timothy-middled man is so dear
to my heart & throat I’ll imitate it twice
at dinner and then again to myself
in Grand Central two hours later when
my socks have taken up residency at my
toes and it’s not the jokes about college
tours but the strict announcements of delayed
arrivals that bribe my mind awake.
Waiting on the train platform in thicksoled
winter boots and a scarf made by a friend
in the middle of an Argentinean reunion,
I find myself whistling the chorus of “If I Only
Had A Brain.” Today, shapes of water towers
and the palisades are very dear to me: one
a private chamber from a mechanized fairtytale,
the other a snow-ruled wall announcing
New Jersey. I’m on my way to see a dancer,
a music writer (red-headed), and a friend
whom I once informed was unphotogenic
and with whom I could sit on a bench
forever (and very nearly have). I’m in love
and in love and in love all at the same time
though it’s rare for a person to believe this
without use of their eyebrows. There are places
in Ohio I will never touch. There is an image
of a father vomiting into the outdoor aisle
of a baseball game that has yet to reach
its date of expiration. Perhaps we speak
with the verbs that grew us: awake, embrace,
record, replay. Perhaps the technology
of the VCR more accurately suits our human
love of angles holding time. Somewhere
in America, someone I have yet to meet
is halted in the walkable night, suctioned
to two conflicting ideas at once. I may be both
of these ideas. I may thieve one of these notions
like a gift I was owed as a child and permit myself
no remorse. The Hudson River was clean, then filthy.
Now it’s swimmable. This is only the beginning
of trains today, only the first gesticulation away
from coal and its misbehaved mythology.
At the bar I answer three questions correctly
The difference between self-awareness
& self-consciousness is that one involves a strong
understanding of self and the latter may
prevent you from acting and The color of the first
humans was sandy soil and one other before
we drive to the train station and back since Eoin
has left without saying goodbye. Tall people can’t
see me and one Guinness is enough and as
we exit once then twice through the back I throw
the fur of my hood over my eyes and snakedance
my arms through the crowd and Hey tall people!
Betcha can’t see me now! Five dollars wasted
on the jukebox isn’t so much but we never even
heard the songs and Eoin actually could use
that bill, may I have it back for him, please?
Even now, listening to Nina and thinking of Katie
tolerating an updo I can’t quite undo the smile
I started when I asked Eoin if I could quote him
on that (in the wake of his inquiry regarding why
I’ve never photographed him and years after
I wrote my first good poem with his name in the title)
and he responded with his elfish sense of right and wrong
Oh, so you’re asking my permission now?
I’ve heard that animals can run over the desert without damaging the ancient top layer of dirt, but humans only break it down. Our culture tilts us toward the loud: the rhyme of noise with poise misleads us and so we may trust the decibel over touch. I once touched a man’s face and it wasn’t loud and he didn’t shudder and I could have cried if not for knowing that someone might walk in at any moment. How do you tell that? Am I telling it now? But you weren’t my fingertips. And you don’t know his smell. I knew this man for many years and we told each other things inane and things momentous, and I touched his face one day during a season that told us nothing of where we were in the year. Are you listening? There was no telling. You’re not hearing me out loud, and yet you still may hear. I’m speaking to your brain: I touched his face. The dirt in which we sleep is dented. But it will hold.
Oh bollocks thin
tight pants & suede
boots! I’m not prepared
for these parts & yet
we will ourselves
into a winter leisure
on the grass, the ground
not quite cold enough
to sprint from but also
not quite dry. It’s 9pm
when I voice my veto
for the glasses—it’s time
to swig and if not now
then when can you drink
straight from the bottle
with a friend who shares
your name? And so with drink
in tow & hats on ear
we fiddle down the His Side
of the street where pavement
squares aren’t as angled
by the roots. Hoo! the night
is colder than a witch’s
chest exposed to currents
and a swift eclipse & even if
the nightsky fails its task
to teach us of our smallness
& the exigence of whittled
mornings shared in bed,
we’ll have numbed the toes
of longing for this place
& named mistakes which now
in low degrees will be briskly fed
to desperate winter birds
like bread.
for Colin
He’s the historian he’s
got tallies stitched behind
the floorboards of every
lore he spins, nick names
& scoreboard shame
punches thrown
& homegames blown
up until the dirtiest
of mismatched details
quits its job in mall store
retail and hightails it
out his mouth like proof
of some uncouth and not
quite legal brand
of smalltown microscope.
But blue eyes, there is hope
for you the joke’s of course
on whom your brain
elects to memorize and you
my cornered friend are
slightly borrowed, slightly
prized and altogether
heedless of the tonnage
of your fulltime occupation
you’re just a new york boy
with piss poor circulation
panache, perhaps 