For the table-mates they seemed to be addressing.
It bore some message, all that baritone
Brio of masculine snort and self-assertion.
It belonged with cigars and bets and locker rooms.
It had nothing to do with damask and chandeliers.
It was a sign, she knew at once, of something.
They wore her husband’s same convention badge,
So must be salesmen, here for a pep talk
And booster from top-level management,
Young, hopeful, energetic, just like him,
But, in some way she found unnerving, louder.
That was the earliest omen.
The second was
The vast boardwalk itself, its herringbone
Of seasoned lumber lined on the inland side
By Frozen Custard booths, Salt Water Taffy
Kneaded and stretched by large industrial cams,
Pinball and shooting galleries with Kewpie Dolls,
Pink dachshunds, cross-eyed ostriches for prizes,
Fun Houses, Bumpum Cars and bowling alleys,
And shops that offered the discriminating
Hand-decorated shells, fantastic landscapes
Entirely composed of varnished star-fish,
And other shops displaying what was called
“Sophisticated Nightwear For My Lady,”
With black-lace panties bearing a crimson heart
At what might be Mons Veneris’ timber-line,
Flesh-toned brassieres with large rose-window cutouts
Edged with elaborate guimpe, rococo portholes
Allowing the nipples to assert themselves,
And see-through nightgowns bordered with angora
Or frowsy feather boas of magenta.
Here she was free to take the healthful airs,
Inhale the unclippered trade-winds of New Jersey
And otherwise romp and disport herself
From nine until five-thirty, when her husband,
Her only Norman, would be returned to her.
Such was this place, a hapless rural seat
And sandy edge of the Truck Garden State,
The dubious North American Paradise.
III
It was just after dinner their second evening
That a fellow-conventioneer, met in the lobby,
Invited them to join a little party
For a libation in the Plantagenet Bar
And Tap Room; he performed the introductions
To Madge and Felix, Bubbles and Billy Jim,
Astrid, and lastly, to himself, Maurice,
Whose nickname, it appeared, was Two Potato,
And things were on a genial, first-name basis
Right from the start, so it was only after
The second round of drinks (which both the Carsons
Intended as their last, and a sufficient
Fling at impromptu sociability)
That it was inadvertently discovered
That the Carsons were little more than newlyweds
On what amounted to their honeymoon.
No one would hear of them leaving, or trying to pay
For anything. Another round of drinks
Was ordered. Two Potato proclaimed himself
Their host, and winked at them emphatically.
There followed much raucous, suggestive toasting,
Norman was designated “a stripling kid,”
And ceremoniously nicknamed “Kit,”
And people started calling Shirley “Shirl,”
And “Curly-Shirl” and “Shirl-Girl.” There were displays
Of mock-tenderness towards the young couple
And gags about the missionary position,
With weak, off-key, off-color, attempts at singing
“Rock of Ages,” with hands clasped in prayer
And eyes raised ceilingward at “cleft for me,”
Eyes closed at “let me hide myself in thee,”
The whole number grotesquely harmonized
In the manner of a barbershop quartet.
By now she wanted desperately to leave
But couldn’t figure out the way to do so
Without giving offense, seeming ungrateful;
And somehow, she suspected, they knew this.
Two Potato particularly seemed
Aggressive both in his solicitude
And in the smirking lewdness of his jokes
As he unblushingly eyed the bride for blushes
And gallantly declared her “a good sport,”
“A regular fella,” and “the little woman.”
She knew when the next round of drinks appeared
That she and Norman were mere hostages
Whom nobody would ransom. Billy Jim asked
If either of them knew a folk-song called
“The Old Gism Trail,” and everybody laughed,
Laughed at the plain vulgarity itself
And at the Carsons’ manifest discomfort
And at their pained, inept attempt at laughter.
The merriment was acid and complex.
Felix it was who kept proposing toasts
To “good ol’ Shirl an’ Kit,” names which he slurred
Both in pronunciation and disparagement
With an expansive, wanton drunkenness
That in its license seemed soberly planned
To increase by graduated steps until
Without seeming aware of what he was doing
He’d raise a toast to “good ol’ Curl an’ Shit.”
They managed to get away before that happened,
Though Shirley knew in her bones it was intended,
Had seen it coming from a mile away.
They left, but not before it was made clear
That they were the only married couple present,
That the other men had left their wives at home,
And that this was what conventions were all about.
The Carsons were made to feel laughably foolish,
Timid and prepubescent and repressed,
And with a final flourish of raised glasses
The “guests” were at last permitted to withdraw.
IV
Fade-out; assisted by a dram of gin,
And a soft radio soundtrack bringing up
A velvety chanteur who wants a kiss
By wire, in some access of chastity,
Yet in a throaty passion volunteers,
“Baby, mah heart’s on fire.” Fade-in with pan
Shot of a highway somewhere south of Wheeling
Where she and her husband, whom she now calls Kit,
Were driving through a late day in November
Toward some goal obscure as the very weather,
Defunctive, moist, overcast, requiescent.
Rounding a bend, they came in sudden view
Of what seemed a caravan of trucks and cars,
A long civilian convoy, parked along
The right-hand shoulder, and instantly slowed down,
Fearing a speed-trap or an accident.
It was instead, as a billboard announced,
A LIVE ENTOMBMENT—CONTRIBUTIONS PLEASE.
They found a parking slot, directed by
Two courteous State Troopers with leather holsters
That seemed tumescent with heavy, flopping side-arms,
And made their way across the stony ground
To a strange, silent crowd, as at a grave-side.
A poster fixed to a tree gave the details:
“Here lies George Rose in a casket supplied by
The Memento Morey Funeral Home of Wheeling.
He has been underground 38 days.
[The place for the numbers was plastered with new stickers.]
He lives on liquids and almond Hershey bars
Fed through the speaking tube next to his head,
By which his brother and custodian,
John Wesley Rose, communicates with him,
And by means of which he breathes. Note that the tube
Can be bent sideways to keep out the rain.
Visitors are invited to put all questions
To the custodian because George Rose
Is eager to preserve his solitude.
He has forsworn the vanities of this world.
Donations will be gratefully accepted.”
At length she wedged her way among the curious
To where she saw a varnished pine-wood box
With neatly mitred corners, fitted with glass
At the top, and measuring roughly a foot square,
Sunk in the earth, protruding about three inches.
Through this plain aperture she now beheld
The pale, expressionless features of George Rose,
Bearded, but with a pocked, pitted complexion,
And pale blue eyes conveying by their blankness
A boredom so profound it might indeed
Pass for a certain otherworldliness,
Making it eminently clear to all
That not a single face that showed itself
Against the sky for his consideration
Was found by him to be beautiful or wise
Or worthy of the least notice or interest.
One could tell he was alive because he blinked.
At the crowd’s edge, near the collection box,
Stood a man who was almost certainly his brother,
Caretaker and custodian, engaged
In earnest talk with one of the State Troopers.
It crossed her mind to wonder how they dealt
With his evacuations, yet she couldn’t
Ask such a question of an unknown man.
But Kit seemed to have questions of his own
And as he approached John Wesley she turned away
To the edge of a large field and stood alone
In some strange wordless seizure of distress.
She turned her gaze deliberately away
From the road, the cars, the little clustered knot
Of humankind around that sheet of glass,
Like flies around a dish of sweetened water,
And focused intently on what lay before her.
A grizzled landscape, burdock and thistle-choked,
A snarled, barbed-wire barricade of brambles,
All thorn and needle-sharp hostility.
The dead weeds wicker-brittle, raffia-pale,
The curled oak leaves a deep tobacco brown,
The sad rouge of old bricks, chips of cement
From broken masonry, a stubble field
Like a mangy lion’s pelt of withered grass.
Off in the distance a thoroughly dead tree,
Peeled of its bark, sapless, an armature
Of well-groomed, military, silver-gray.
And other leafless trees, their smallest twigs
Incising a sky the color of a bruise.
In all the rancid, tannic, mustard tones,
Mud colors, lignum grays and mottled rocks,
The only visible relief she found
Was the plush red velvet of the sumac spikes
And the slick, vinyl, Stygian, anthracite
Blackness of water in a drainage ditch.
The air sang with the cold of empty caves,
Of mildew, cobwebs, slug and maggot life.
And at her feet, among the scattered stubs
Of water-logged non-filter cigarettes,
Lay a limp length of trampled fennel stalk.
And then she heard, astonishingly close,
Right at her side, the incontestable voice
Of someone who could not possibly be there:
Of old Miss McIntosh, her eleventh grade
Latin instructor, now many years dead,
Saying with slow, measured authority,
“It is your duty to remain right here.
Those people and their cars will go away.
Norman will go. George Rose will stay where he is,
But you have nothing whatever to do with him.
He will die quietly inside his coffin.
From time to time you will be given water
And a peanut butter sandwich on white bread.
You will stay here as long as it shall take
To love this place so much you elect to stay
Forever, forsaking all others you have known
Or dreamed of or incontinently longed for.
Look at and meditate upon the crows.
Think upon God. Humbly prepare yourself,
Like the wise virgins in the parable,
For the coming resurrection of George Rose.
Consider deeply why as the first example
Of the first conjugation—which is not
As conjugal as some suppose—one learns
The model verb forms of ‘to love,’ amare,
Which also happens to be the word for ‘bitter.’
Both love and Latin are more difficult
Than is usually imagined or admitted.
This is your final exam; this is your classroom.”
V
Another voice drowns out Miss McIntosh.
It’s Mel Tormé, singing Who’s Sorry Now?
Followed by a Kid Ory version of
Quincy Street Stomp, and bringing back in view
The bright upholstery of the present tense,
The lax geography of pillows, gin-
And-bitters with anesthetic bitterness.
It must be three AM, but never mind.
Open upon her lap lies The New Yorker,
Exhibiting a full-page color ad
For the Scotch whiskey-based liqueur, Drambuie,
Soft-focus, in the palest tints of dawn.
Therein a lady and a gentleman
Stand gazing north from the triumphal arch
That Stanford White designed for Washington Square.
She wears an evening gown of shocking pink
And a mink stole. Her escort, in black tie,
Standing behind her, his arms about her waist,
Follows her gaze uptown where a peach haze
Is about to infuse the windows of the rich.
Meanwhile, this couple, who have just descended
From a hansom cab departing towards the east,
Have all Fifth Avenue stretched out before them
Where Attic heroes dwell. They are alone
On the blank street. The truths of economics,
The dismal (decimal) science, dissolve away
In the faint light, and leave her standing there,
Shirley herself, suddenly slim again,
In the arms of a young nameless gentleman.
To be sure, the salmon hues up in the eighties,
Flushing the Metropolitan’s facade,
Glinting on silver tops of skyscrapers
As upon factory-made, hand-polished Alps
(Though the deep canyons still repose in darkness)
Bespeak the calm beneficence of dawn
When they shall both raise up their brandy glasses
Filled with that admirable Scotch liqueur
Or else with gin and tolerable bitters
And toast each other in some nearby penthouse.
But meanwhile her attention is wholly drawn
To the carriage lantern on the hansom cab.
A kerosene lantern with a concave shield
Or chrome reflector inside a box of glass.
The quivering flame of the broad ribbon wick
Itself presents a quick array of colors,
All brilliance, light, intensity and hope.
The flames flow upward from a rounded base
Like an inverted waterfall of gold,
Yet somehow at the center, the pure kernel
Of fire is pearly, incandescent white.
Out of
that whiteness all the celestial hues
Of dawn proliferate in wobbly spectra,
Lilac and orange, the rust of marigold,
The warm and tropic colors of the world
That she inhabits, that she has collected
And stuffed like assorted trophies of the kill.
The shape of flames is almond-like, the shape
Of Egyptian eyes turned sideways, garlic cloves,
Camel-hair tips of watercolor brushes,
Of waterdrops. The shape performs a dance,
A sinuous, erotic wavering,
All inference and instability,
Shimmy and glitter. It is, she suddenly knows,
The figure redivivus of George Rose,
Arisen, youthful, strong and roseate,
Tiny, of course, pathetically reduced
To pinky size, but performing a lewd dance
Of Shiva, the rippling muscles of his thighs
And abdomen as fluent as a river
Of upward-pouring color, the golden finish
Of Sardanapalus, emphatic rhythms
Of blues and body language, a centrifuge
Of climbing braids that beautifully enlarge,
Thicken and hang pendulous in the air.
Out of these twinings, foldings, envelopings
Of brass and apricot, biceps and groin,
She sees the last thing she will ever see:
The purest red there is, passional red,
Fire-engine red, the red of Valentines,
Of which she is herself the howling center.
INVECTIVE AGAINST DENISE, A WITCH
The hatred I reserve for thee
Surpasses the malignity
Of camel and of bear,
Old witch, unseemly thaumaturge,
Whipped by the Public Hangman’s scourge
The length of the town square.
Luring about you, like a brood,
The vulgar, curious and lewd,
You shamelessly lay bare
Your haunches to the sight of men,
Your naked shoulder, abdomen
Emblazoned with blood-smear.
And yet that punishment is slight
Compared to what is yours by right;
Just Heaven must not bestow
Its mercy on so foul a thing
But rather by its whirlwind bring
Such proud excesses low.
Still wracked by the brute overthrow
The Titans suffered long ago,
A brooding Mother Earth,
To spite the Gods, in her old age
Shall, in an ecstasy of rage,
At last bring you to birth.
You know the worth and power of both
Rare herbals and concocted broth