on the beach after the oncologist told him he had two months to live
two years ago. That’s not enough for me, he said, and will say again
when the cancer comes back to coil around his belly and squeeze hard
like a python set free and starving in the swamp. He calls me on his cell
from the hospital, and I can hear him scream when they press the cold
X-ray plates to his belly, but he will not drop the phone. He wants
the surgery today, right now, surrounded by doctors with hands
blood-speckled like the hands of his father the butcher, sawing
through the meat for the family feast. The patient’s chart should read:
This is JoeGo: after every crucifixion, he snaps the cross across his back
for firewood. He will roll the stone from the mouth of his tomb and bowl
a strike. On the night he silenced the drinkers chewing ice in my ear,
a voice in my ear said: What the hell is that man doing here?
And I said: That man there? That man will live forever.
BARBARIC YAWP BIG NOISE BLUES
for David Lenson
The Professor played saxophone for the Reprobate Blues Band,
rocking the horn like an unrepentant sinner at the poet’s wedding.
I was the best man, and the band howled at my punch lines about
the president while the bride’s family made Republican faces at me.
Later, in the dark, The Professor passed a joint to the harp player,
remembering a thousand gigs in the firefly-light of the reefer,
a night of saxophone delirium with John Lee Hooker, who broke
a string on his guitar and chanted Boogie with the Hook.
That was before the poet caught his wife at Foxwoods Casino
gambling away the rent money. That was before the harp player
hanged himself from the tree in his front yard. That was before
the stroke blacked out the luminous city in The Professor’s brain.
I tracked him down at the nursing home on a hill hidden from the town.
He labored to drop the jigsaw puzzle pieces of words into the empty
spaces. The label on the door said door; the label on the bed said bed;
the label on the window said window. The saxophone was a brass
question mark leaning in the corner, blues improvisation banned
by the nurses to keep the patients drowsing in sedation and soup.
The man with the white beard two doors down was born in 1819,
said The Professor. You mean 1918, I said, unscrambling the code.
I escorted him to the picnic table in the middle of the parking lot,
slipping Whitman’s Leaves from my back pocket like contraband.
The Professor saw the face on the cover, and the words cranked
the wheels of his jaw: I. Celebrate. Myself. Blues improvisation
broke out in the parking lot. I would read and he would riff:
Yes. Right. Fantastic. I read: I am the man, I suffer’d, I was there.
The Professor whispered: How does he know? as if the bearded
seer in the poems could see him sitting at the picnic table.
I read: I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.
The Professor heard a band so loud the neighbors called the cops.
That’s what I need, he said. I can’t make that big noise for myself.
I left The Professor at the nursing home on the hill. I left Whitman too.
Tonight, the label on the door says yawp. The label on the bed says yawp.
The label on the window says yawp. The Professor swings on his saxophone
in the parking lot, oblivious to the security guards who rush to tackle him,
horn honking like a great arrowhead of geese in the sky: Yawp. Yawp. Yawp.
ONCE THUNDERING PENGUIN HERDS DARKENED THE PRAIRIE
I. Poetry for Tourists
The poets bring poetry to the Coney Island Aquarium,
around the corner from the wooden rollercoaster
creaking since 1927, tourists staggering away queasy,
yet hungry for a hot dog on the boardwalk. We will
tempt them to taste the steamed tofu dog of poetry instead.
II. Poetry for Jellyfish
Tonight, we declaim poems at the jellyfish exhibit,
creatures that plummet like parachutes of light,
illuminated mushrooms zooming sideways, amusing
themselves, oblivious to the nuances of alliteration
and assonance, silently refusing to clap after the last poem.
III. Poetry for Penguins
The voice of a poet on a loop, installed in the penguin
exhibit, booms out poetry in praise of penguins:
Once thundering penguin herds darkened the prairie.
Once flocks of flapping penguins blocked out the sun.
Now they cower behind a rock, peeking, ducking down,
listening to poetry for penguins, hearing only the rumble
of the Almighty Orca opening his jaws on Judgment Day.
IV. No Poetry for the Octopus or the Security Guard
The Coney Island Aquarium is closed. We are locked in.
The octopus glares at us with one huge eye. No one fed
him today. No one read him any poems. We panic and flap
like flightless birds. We rattle the gate, wailing in chorus:
We are the poets. Let us out. The security guard glares
at us with one huge eye. No one fed him today. No one
read him any poems. He unlocks the gate anyway.
CASTLES FOR THE LABORERS AND BALLGAMES ON THE RADIO
for Howard Zinn (1922–2010)
We stood together at the top of his icy steps, without a word for once,
squinting at the hill below and the tumble we were about to take,
heads bumping on every step till our bodies rolled into the street.
He was older than the breadlines of the Great Depression. Before the War,
he labored at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, even organized apprentices, but now
there was ice. I outweighed him by a hundred pounds; when my feet began
to skid, I would land on him and hear the crunch of his surgically repaired spine.
The books I held for him would fly away like doves disobeying an amateur magician.
Let’s go back in the house, I said. Show me the baseball Sandy Koufax signed to you:
“From one lefty to another.” Instead, he picked up a blue plastic bucket of sand,
the kind of pail good for building castles at Coney Island, tossed a fist of sand
down onto the sun-frozen concrete and took the first step, delicately. Again
and again, he would throw a handful of sand in the air like bread for pigeons,
then probe with the tip of his shoe for the sandy place on the next step:
sand, then step; sand, then step. Every time he took a step I took a step,
an apprentice shadow studying the movements of his teacher the body.
This is how I came to dance a soft-shoe in size fourteen boots, grinding
my toes into the gritty spots he left behind on the ice. I was there:
I saw him turn the tundra into the beach with a wave of his hand,
Coney Island of castles for the laborers and ballgames on the radio,
showing the way across the ice and down the hill into the street,
where he spoke to me the last words of the last lesson: You drive.
THE SOCIALIST IN THE CROWD
Fenway Park, Boston, May 2013
A baseball sailing into the crowd makes monsters of us all.
Hands claw the air as if to snatch a trophy of war,
the enemy’s white skull to dangle at the gates of the city
as a warning to others. Big-bellied men chase the prey
do
wn the steps of the bleachers, hearts grinding like millstones.
Drunks tumble onto the field along the third base line.
The ball stings, fractures fingers, yet we stretch hands to heaven,
groping for a foul pop stuffed with the winning lottery number,
a line drive scorched with the face of Jesus on cowhide.
We are ravenous for the flesh of a baseball, mouths open
to tear the stitches and bite into the tough, white fruit.
We slap the ball away from the catcher’s mitt, the left fielder’s leap.
There are fistfights. There are lawsuits. There are baseballs
that escape in the tangle of bodies, skipping back onto the field.
This afternoon, the ball ricochets off the woman with a beer
in one fist and a hard lemonade in the other, then the man stuck
in his popcorn box like a bear with a paw jammed in the honey jar,
hopping into the hands of the socialist in my row. She hands
the ball to a boy wearing the uniform of the Red Sox, cap too big
for his head, and he gazes at the red stitches the way he once studied
the first caterpillar on his fingertips. I have never caught a ball
in the stands, at Fenway or the Polo Grounds or that ballpark in Havana.
Bad socialist that I am, I would have kept it. The crowd would jeer
the socialist who did not stand for the anthem or another sergeant
singing God Bless America in the seventh inning. Yet, within the monster
of the crowd grinds the gristmill heart of a socialist, so they clap
and whoop when she hands the ball to the boy, then gasp at the boom
of the right fielder’s body slamming off the wall, waiting for the next ball
to come their way, like the winning lottery number or the face of Jesus.
FROM THE RUBÁIYÁT OF FENWAY PARK
The hanging curveball hangs, and having hung,
Is hit: nor pitcher with his cursing tongue
Shall lure it back from deep in bleacher seats,
Nor all his tears from dugout towel wrung.
HARD-HANDED MEN OF ATHENS
Theseus: What are they that do play it?
Philostrate: Hard-handed men, that work in Athens here,
Which never labour’d in their minds till now.
—A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act V, Scene i
We are the hard-handed men of Athens, the rude Mechanicals:
the tailor, the weaver, the tinker, the bellows-mender.
Tonight, we are actors in the forest, off the grid, surrounded
in the dark by fairies and spirits, snakes and coyotes.
Carnivorous vegans live in these woods. They leave the drum circle
to nibble at the sliced ham I smuggle in the folds of my costume.
I am three hundred pounds. The director of the company
saw me and said: You are the Wall. Two weeks ago, I fell
off a wall, stepping into the darkness like a cartoon character
walking on air, waving bye-bye. I belly-flopped in a puddle of mud.
An elderly bystander, as if on cue, spoke her only line: Are you OK?
I am not OK. I have a fractured elbow. I wear a sling under my Wall costume,
the Styrofoam bricks and plastic vines, the wooden beam across my shoulders.
I cannot remember my lines. I hide the script in my sling with the ham.
The play begins. No one can find Lysander. He is in the bathroom
with dysentery. Theseus improvises dialogue in iambic pentameter.
His voice echoes and scares the coyotes in the hills. They howl
back at him. A snake writes his name in the dirt by my feet.
I tell no one. I don’t want the fairies to panic. Cobweb and Mustardseed
might run into the tiki torches, and then their fairy wings would explode,
and the nearest hospital is forty miles away. The tiki torches
are the only source of light off the grid. It’s Shakespeare in the Dark.
The woman playing Peter Quince is mean to small children.
When Bottom turns into a donkey and the Mechanicals flee,
I stand behind her and let her bounce off my chest. She falls down.
I want her to fall down. I ask: Are you OK? She is not OK. Fairy Queen
Titania’s bed sways in the trees, threatening to topple and kill us all.
At the wedding of Theseus, Duke of Athens, we play Pyramus and Thisbe.
The aristocrats laugh at us, real actors on loan from the highbrow
Shakespearean company in the valley, and we snarl back at them.
I am the Wall. I am inspired. I lift Pyramus and Thisbe into the air
and slam them together for their kiss. The beam across my shoulders
cracks. The crack alarms the carnivorous vegans on picnic blankets
watching the show. Some think the crack is my leg breaking. Some think
the crack is a gunshot. Suddenly, it’s Ford’s Theatre and I’m Lincoln.
Or maybe I’m John Wilkes Booth. The jagged beam presses into my neck,
against the artery in my neck, like the fangs of a vampire hungry for ham. `
One stumble and A Midsummer Night’s Dream ends in a bloodbath.
Five people pull the Wall costume over my head. Somebody asks: Are you OK?
I am not OK. Then, I see my son onstage. He is twelve. He is Moonshine.
He cradles a half-blind Chihuahua and says: This dog, my dog.
He lifts his lantern high, and his lantern is the moon. Even the sneering
Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons, must admit: Well shone, Moon.
This moon shines like an uncirculated Kennedy half-dollar from the days
when Kennedy was a martyred saint. The coyotes do not howl.
The crickets fall silent. Even the fairies cease their gossip and giggling.
We are the hard-handed men of Athens. This dog is our dog.
MARSHMALLOW RICE KRISPIE TREAT MACHU PICCHU
We stormed the abandoned railroad station in the city to play
As You Like It set in the Summer of Love. We wore bell-bottoms
and painted our faces. We entered to Hendrix and Purple Haze,
tossing roses to the lovers on picnic blankets. We yelled the words
of the Bard over the pandemonium of freight trains, the blues festival
thumping down the street, the demolition derby. All the world’s a stage,
cried melancholy Jaques, more melancholy still when loudspeakers
ecstatic at the crash of cars drowned out The Seven Ages of Man.
We leapt in hippie costume off the stage to chase the teetering drunks
away from the baby carriages in the crowd. We spied on the crowd
behind the curtain, and somebody said: Why aren’t they laughing?
I was Charles the wrestler. I would wheeze my lines like a man punched
in the throat, a tribute to Anthony Quinn in Requiem for a Heavyweight.
I wore a rhinestone belt across my belly that said Champ, dragging
my leg in a brace offstage to kick down a stack of aluminum trash cans,
the clamor of their collapse simulating defeat in the match with Orlando,
the hero strutting through the play, who couldn’t puzzle out that clever
Rosalind was a girl dressed as a boy, teaching him how to woo her.
My son was Touchstone the clown, smacking Corin the shepherd
with a rubber chicken till the vegans protested the abuse of the chicken,
flinging a dozen rubber snakes in the face of William the country boy
till the vegans protested the abuse of snakes, squirting a plastic flower
at everyone and offending no one, since the flower would backfire
and the water woul
d darken his pants. The director’s half-blind dog
barked whenever Silvius the shepherd chased the spitting Phebe
through the lovers on blankets, the baby carriages and the drunks,
who cheered the loudest till we drove them from the Forest of Arden.
Today is my fiftieth birthday. The company storms my house to celebrate
like the brawling Shakespeareans they have seen in movies. On the way,
they stop to raid the liquor store, pirates plundering a merchant ship
to carry off every last bottle, singing pirate songs. Enter Touchstone
the clown, melancholy Jaques, William the country boy, Orlando
the hero, clever Rosalind, Corin and Sylvius the shepherds, Phebe
spitting at everyone even out of character, and Phebe’s mother,
wheeling her creation through the door: Marshmallow Rice Krispie
Treat Machu Picchu. I anticipated a pound cake with one candle,
not this homage to Neruda and his epic, this place of pilgrimage
high in the Andes served up as a blasphemous and crunchy snack.
Centuries ago, laborers raised tons of stone without the wheel
to build Machu Picchu; Pizarro and his army of conquistadores
missed it, leaving the stones untouched. Now, hands snap off towers,
crack walls, wreck temples, stuffing sticky rubble into mouths.
Marshmallow Rice Krispie Treat Machu Picchu lies in ruins.
The sugar is the ember of a cigarette flicked into the combustible sewage
of beer, wine and rum. Soon, William is on all fours in the bathroom,
emptying his belly inches from the toilet, pink foam bubbling
on his lips like the bubble reputation even in the cannon’s mouth;
Sylvius staggers across the living room to escape Phebe, banging
into a bookcase, scattering the balsawood egrets of Nicaragua