Wanderer moon
smiling a
faintly ironical smile
at this
brilliant, dew-moistened
summer morning,—
a detached
sleepily indifferent
smile, a
wanderer’s smile,—
if I should
buy a shirt
your color and
put on a necktie
sky-blue
where would they carry me?
Imagine for yourself what was in my heart
I was in Venice for the very first time
Piazza San Marco
With a thousand lire in my pocket
About a thousand lire
The pigeons were drunk on music
You know Venice better than I do
You know the Italians
Their music their pigeons
I was totally adrift
At nine o’clock it suddenly occurred to me
That I hadn’t eaten since the day before
The day before I had an orange for lunch
I stop a woman
She keeps on going
I’m lucky I bump into another
She laughs I laugh
But even before I have a line
ready in my mind
I remember I’m in Italy
And don’t know the language
I catch a pigeon by the wing
It claps me on my hat and flies off
Imagine for yourself
What was in my heart
I was in Venice for the very first time
With a thousand lire in my pocket
Jean-Piere Rosnay (French poet)
I wrote a letter. During my second moments, I read a book. Yesterday, I finished that book (Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow–quite good). Here’s my intended pleasure reading list for the upcoming days without school:
…that should probably get me through to August, no?
I just finished a paper on Dove’s book “Thomas and Beulah,” and today I went searching for the poems of hers that I’ve known and loved in the past. This is one of them.
For Fred
I could pick anything and think of you—
This lamp, the wind-still rain, the glossy blue
My pen exudes, drying matte, upon the page.
I could choose any hero, any cause or age
And, sure as shooting arrows to the heart,
Astride a dappled mare, legs braced as far apart
As standing in silver stirrups will allow—
There you’ll be, with furrowed brow
And chain mail glinting, to set me free:
One eye smiling, the other firm upon the enemy.
This post-postmodern age is all business: compact disks
And faxes, a do-it-now-and-take-no-risks
Event. Today a hurricane is nudging up the coast,
Oddly male: Big Bad Floyd, who brings a host
Of daydreams: awkward reminiscences
Of teenage crushes on worthless boys
Whose only talent was to kiss you senseless.
They all had sissy names—Marcel, Percy, Dewey;
Were thin as licorice and as chewy,
Sweet with a dark and hollow center. Floyd’s
Cussing up a storm. You’re bunkered in your
Aerie, I’m perched in mine
(Twin desks, computers, hardwood floors):
We’re content, but fall short of the Divine.
Still, it’s embarrassing, this happiness—
Who’s satisfied simply with what’s good for us,
When has the ordinary ever been news?
And yet, because nothing else will do
To keep me from melancholy (call it blues),
I fill this stolen time with you.
I caught up with the excellent K. Winder today, and remembered this little dash of poem I wrote after we spent a glorious night together in Eastham. (Yes, it was just as exciting as it sounds.) Please try not to take my toast boasts seriously. (TOAST BOASTS!)
the morning we spread jam
and Kathryn’s rendition was abysmal
(a fact she noted, that we laughed at) —
her toast was potholed
& without dignity—
it had the mark of the knife
all over it (much unlike mine:
velvety, with butter undetectable
underneath) & if we’d tried
we could’ve conversed across the table
through her meal: eloquently
regarding each other through bread
turned toast by voltage—toast
our ambrosial breakfast, our badly buttered goodbye,
that single-serve meal to last us, to last.
may the tide
that is entering even now
the lip of our understanding
carry you out
beyond the face of fear
may you kiss
the wind then turn from it
certain that it will
love your back may you
open your eyes to water
water waving forever
and may you in your innocence
sail through this to that
Heather’s googling “kombucha baby”
when that weird guy C. comes over & goes,
your dress looks thick, a comment so surreal I cannot
jest in response & so I simply say, it is, it is. Thank goodness
Otis Redding’s on and crooning low, unlike that time with L. and R.
when loony cartoon background noises
honked our study tune. This is the night I learn I’m what they call a B.O.E.,
a Big Orange Eater, something I’ve always been but I guess
I just needed Heather to acronym-me & help to craft
a quick and slapdash rap about the way I’m stuck
with peels to put somewhere in my sticky-citrused state.
lalallalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalaEarlier
as we passed the neon Boulevard, I’d asked Heather
if what she needed was to cry
like old men for a while, because I can do that
& was already with a booming gruff,
and I think she probably meant to say, yes please,
yes please, but all I remember is us laughing with so little sight
she might’ve missed a stop sign. Three times that I night I pee so fast
Heather swears I’m lying but of course I’m not,
and as I swig my cooling tea R. calls to talk
about a miscommunication over fucking with a friend.
The other R.’s not there tonight though I know that when
we do our entrance people-sweep it’s he that Heather eye-fishes for
among the rec-room tables. At 10:59 they kick us out
& without a J. or K. or L. to chat and goodbye with
we get straight into Labatt Blue: the name I’ve given Heather’s car since
what she calls it sounds too French and mine’s a beer from Canada. I can’t get in
without imagining her door-close move a month ago, a low side
hip-bump with a face so straight I thought I dreamt it and had to
re-perform it thrice for different friends.
lallalalalalalalallalalalallallalalalalNext
it’s off to Ralph’s for birthday bubbles
& a bee balloon that L. is sure to love tomorrow morning
and we almost buy some other things but don’t since Heather’s off to Paris soon
and I have all the food I need inside my house
that I enter by the side-porch-door
as Heather scoots off to 7th where she’ll sleep beside some books
I gave her and some she came upon herself.
I missed sadness because I no longer missed you,
how emotionally counterintuitive it was
as my citizenship in the nation I made of you
gradually lapsed. I woke some other
place with lakes and blue skies and rush hours
and strangers I worried about. But no you.
No ages of you. No your name three times
when I walked somewhere or lay down at night
to bargain with sleep. No you
falling from my mouth everywhere I went.
No you anywhere to be seen.
A secret to keep. And mostly I did,
even beside other women who asked
with privilege of their bodies
if you had ever existed and what did you do
and did you have a name I’d share
and had you been good to me
but I never gave you up. I left the last of you
to be lost in the fog inside me.
Napping in bomb craters, haggling
over debts I couldn’t deny were mine,
memorizing each month’s horoscope.
It seemed then the days
you had left me stained in sadness
were like that. Good apples on back order from God
and the steaks full of blood
you taught me to love, rationed.
At least I told myself this,
thinking of all the never you were.
But there were limits and lengths
and limits again. There were
songs inside the fog inside the world.
-Paul Guest
The marketplace opens
At six A.M. and it is fair and hot
as a nervy adolescent.
Another scorcher, say the Americans.
The Indian tribes are headed for extinction,
The language loses syllables, the hats
They used to weave are plastic, and their beauty
Is gliding into the cameras of the Americans.
A bare-assed baby chugs a Coca-Cola,
Mud between her toes, her vulva puffy.
A boy rushes between egg-baskets, shrilly
Calling somebody: Míra, míra.
Two in the afternoon, indigo clouds
Advance over the mountains.
The enormous drops plummet
Like prayers going downhill. Afterward,
The pavement’s slippery with rotten things,
And wetly shines, reflecting heaven.
-Alicia Ostriker, from her book “Imaginary Lover”
panache, perhaps 