would you let me console you by saying
that time empties with the waiting—
though you already know this by now.
Wretched
SEVENTH TESTIMONY: The Age of AIDS
Anywhere. Anyone. Men, boys—but women, too, and
Children, babies unborn in the womb. Doctors dispensing
Every kind of diagnosis, fear fueling rumors as the flowers
Germinate and spread, voracious; a purple hemlock
Inching trunk to collarbone, jaw to ear to eye.
Kisses sicken; loving any body but your own
May kill. Semen, needles, saliva, breast milk—
On and on the list unfurls, a dread epitaph proclaiming
Queer. Rail against the fleeing gods,
Spit into the wind; you’ll tire soon enough. The worst is always
Unimaginable, though you knew well before the verdict dropped—
Weakness. Fever. Chills. Those greedy, X-rated blooms. Now
You tell me: What’s a zero hour with no one left to count?
Limbs Astride, Land to Land
EIGHTH TESTIMONY: The Berlin Wall
Far away—can you hear it? Static pinging
at the edges of thought: the sound a wall makes
powering down. Can it be this easy—
one misspeak and crowds assemble;
the Evil Red Bear cuddles with the Cowboy
and Jericho topples under a jubilant swarm
of hammers chiseling for souvenirs?
Don’t brood or marvel, just enjoy the music,
death strip lit for photo ops, bananas for all—
History doesn’t cough up triumphs easily.
Even fear has grown tired of harboring rage
and sent it to play out in a desert
so far away, no one will notice. . . .
World-Wide Welcome
NINTH TESTIMONY: The 1990s
Hubba Bubba Bubble tape,
chicken pita wrap to go,
Pop Rocks, Push Pops, Dipping Dots:
Oreos!
Beanie babies by the handful,
wool or pleather, felt or straw?
Mood rings for internal weather:
Wonderbra!
Page my PalmPilot when you’re done;
I’ll cut through the traffic mess
and pull up curbside in my Saturn:
Thank you, GPS!
Who wouldn’t want to be a Millionaire,
or a real live Princess or King of the World?
Map your genes and pierce your navel:
Spice Girl!
Fire up the circuits in your PlayStation—
if you’re Game, Boy, I’ll tickle your Elmo!
How’s your Tamagotchi been hanging?
O, Mario!
Magic’s vanished from the court,
Great Gretzky has exited the ice,
Buffy or Baywatch, Cosmo or Xena—
Reality Bites.
Gimme a logo to go with my Windows,
eBay for old, Amazon for new;
a Hubble, a Canon, an Apple a day—
and we all shout Yahoo!
Imprisoned Lightning
TENTH TESTIMONY: 9/11
In cartoons, the arrow punches through
with a poing!— then quivers to a standstill:
our cue to laugh before Bugs or Elmer Fudd
plucks it off, and the hunt goes on.
That’s how I saw it: a classic slo-mo clip,
action drawn out so it can be savored,
the target shimmering in sunlight, oblivious.
Something big was about to happen, was happening.
No one had seen this episode before
so we did nothing but stare
as the second arrow struck.
Neat. Not even a “pop”
(but who remembers listening?)—
just a delicate puff
before the world crumbled into a roar
that went on forever, blotting out all animal
comprehension—not even a thought balloon survived
to place against the bluest of mornings.
Send These to Me
ELEVENTH TESTIMONY: Obama
Surely there can be no more princes—
yet here we are, reinventing the magic
Year of Love, though the music is scarred
and there’s always a war or two going on.
you’ve voted, done the counting, and there
he stands: America’s miracle, fruit of bold dreams
and labor. Ladies and Gents, the unimaginable
is open for business! Assemble your buoyant
prophesies: Who wouldn’t want to believe
in legends again, oblivious to everything
except astonishment? Well done; felicitations!
And now the story is yours.
Keep Your Storied Pomp
TWELFTH TESTIMONY: Trump
Granted, it felt good at first to snicker,
But now the rooster won’t shut up.
How exhausting, waking to that imperious caw.
Old MacDonald’s downsized to a flowerpot;
Here a body there a body sent packing,
caged—everywhere somebody muddied.
Welcome to the Age of Babble!
Here a twitter, there a tweet; a tiki torch march
back to the Good Ole Times of mayhem and murder,
hollow-points blossoming all over!
Everywhere a body bloody;
even the earth is bleeding out.
Oh indolent friends, bitter patriots:
What have you triggered that can’t be undone?
The Sunset Gates
Epilogue
I didn’t ask to stand under a crown of spikes
with my book and my torch, forgotten
like a lamp left burning in the corner.
My shoulder aches, my toes are throbbing.
I’d rather bathe in a park fountain
or cast benediction from the shadowy nest
of a cathedral’s gilded ribs.
Liberty’s pale green maiden, stranded.
Come visit! Ascend to the crown and gaze out
at the nation I’ve sworn to watch over.
I stand ready to tell you what I have seen.
Who among you is ready to listen?
Eight Angry Odes
Hell is empty and all the devils are here.
—Shakespeare, The Tempest
The Angry Odes: An Introduction
The Angry Odes are not satisfied with wonder:
birds prattle, clouds curdle then bust their guts,
mountains prefer their own splendid company.
Neither do they melt when music swells,
although they’ve been caught swaying
unaware, in a delicate self-embrace.
The Odes hate their names. To hell with urns
and nightingales, immortality and socks—
those artful self-immolations, pity parties
fueled by gloom or a gruff, enforced gaiety.
They snarl at affirmation, will laugh outright
when asked for declarations in return.
Do not try reason. The Odes are fed up with
misspelled signs accusing others of ignorance,
the belligerent purveyors of programmed rectitude.
Let them rage. Do your work, reap the ashes.
Perhaps they’ll muster a flicker of pity,
recall a time when all they did was praise.
Pedestrian Crossing, Charlottesville
A gaggle of girls giggle over the bricks
leading off Court Square. We brake
dutifully, and wait; but there’s at least
twenty of these knob-kneed creatures,
blonde and curly, still at an age that thinks
impudence is cute. Look how they dart
and dither
, changing flanks as they lurch
along—golden gobbets of infuriating foolishness
or pure joy, depending on one’s disposition.
At the moment mine’s sour—this is taking
far too long; don’t they have minders?
Just behind my shoulder in the city park
the Southern general still stands, stonewalling us all.
When I was their age I judged Goldilocks
nothing more than a pint-size criminal
who flounced into others’ lives, then
assumed their clemency. Unfair,
I know, my aggression—to lump them
into a gaggle (silly geese!) when all
they’re guilty of is being young. So far.
Ode on a Shopping List Found in Last Season’s Shorts
Wedged into a pocket, this folded paper scrap
has been flattened to a pink-tinged patch—
faint echo to the orange plaid cotton shorts
that even back then barely cupped my butt.
Milk tops the chart. Then bottled water,
my husband’s jurisdiction—meaning
we must have made several stops, together.
Then why is “Home Depot” scratched out but
not the light bulb we would have found there?
Batteries for him, styling gel for me,
emery boards, wasp spray, glycerin for shine:
What contingencies were we equipping for,
why were we running everywhere at once?
And now I see it: Ritter Sport, Almond Joy,
Mars bars and Neccos for the father
whose ravenous sweet tooth was not what finally
killed him. In the summer of that last birthday,
who could have known there would be
no more road trips to buy for, no place to go but
home? I’ll never wear these shorts again.
Insomnia Etiquette
There’s a movie on, so I watch it.
The usual white people
in love, distress. The usual tears.
Good camera work, though:
sunshine waxing the freckled curves
of a pear, a clenched jaw—
more tragedy, then.
I get up for some scotch and Stilton.
I don’t turn on the lights.
I like moving through the dark
while the world sleeps on,
serene as a stealth bomber
nosing through clouds . . .
call it a preemptive strike,
“a precautionary measure
so sadly necessary in these perilous times.”
I don’t call it anything
but greediness: the weird glee
of finding my way without incident.
I know tomorrow I will regret
having the Stilton. I will regret
not being able to find
a book to get lost in,
and all those years I could get lost
in anything. Until then
it’s just me and you,
Brother Night—moonless,
plunked down behind enemy lines
with no maps, no matches.
The woods deep.
Cheers.
Ode to My Right Knee
Oh, obstreperous one, ornery outside of ordinary
protocols; paramilitary probie par
excellence: Every evidence
you yield yells.
No noise
too tough to tackle, tears
springing such sudden salt
when walking wrenches:
Haranguer, hag, hanger-on—how
much more maddening
insidious imperfection?
Membranes matter-of-factly
corroding, crazed cartilage calmly chipping
away as another arduous ambulation
begins, bone bruising bone.
Leathery Lothario, lone laboring
gladiator grappling, groveling
for favor; fairweather forecaster, fickle friend,
jive jiggy joint:
Kindly keep kicking.
Anniversary
This is not for you, this is not a gift.
Anyways, ribbons would have been overkill.
(I thought I could make it to the store
before closing. What kind of crap town
is this? I shouted, kicking the locked door.)
So I messed up a little. Not that
it would’ve changed things if traffic had flowed
as proscribed or those knuckleheads
had learned to follow the rules:
When turning left, pull into the intersection,
use your blinkers to indicate lane change
and when merging, take turns—it’s called
scissoring, dumbasses, it’s also how
I made the fringe on the wrapping,
which you are permitted to appreciate
even though this is not for you.
No gifts! you said, and I got it.
I’m not stupid. I know the rules.
Shakespeare Doesn’t Care
where Sylvia put her head. His Ophelia
suffered far worse, shamed by slurs, drenched
merely to advance the plot. “Buck up, Sylvia!”
he’d say. “Who needs a gloomy prince
spouting iambs while minions drag the river?
Sharpen your lead and carve us
a fresh pound of Daddy’s flesh
before the rabble in the pit
starts launching tomatoes!”
Shakespeare’s taking no prisoners:
he’s purloined the latest gossip
to plump up his next comedy,
pens a sonnet while building
a playlist for the apocalypse.
When you gripe at reviews,
he snickers: How would you like
to be called an “upstart crow”
just because you dared write a play
instead of more “sugared sonnets”?
How’s them apples next to your shriveled
sour grapes? As for the world
going to hell (alas! alack! whatever),
ditch the dramatics: He’s already done a
number on that handbasket,
what with pox and the plague
bubbling up here and there,
now and then—afflictions
one could not cough away nor soothe
with piecemeal science. So chew it up
or spit it out, he might say,
although more likely he’d just shrug.
What does he care
if we all die tomorrow?
He lives in his words. You wrestle,
enraptured, with yours.
What time does with them
next, or ever after,
is someone else’s rodeo.
A Sonnet for the Sonnet
You have occupied the rose-garlanded throne for so long,
no one remembers a time when love wasn’t a portable feast,
metaphorical conceits sung to the gimpy tread of a heartbeat.
That true rhyme equals contentment, a neatened song
we’ve learned to yearn for? My Dumpling, that is
entirely your doing, a glittering fait accompli
we’ve been duped into trying to make reality, complete
with lute-plucked warbling under a moon-splashed lattice.
Let’s face it: love is messy or boring or hurts like hell and then
is gone. Even when we’re satisfied, beyond the garden gate
the rest waits, all those years you never thought to mention.
No matter how the cake is sliced, some choice bits break
off. It’s nearly wide enough for two, this sugarcoated ledge:
We clamber on for one more lick of the jagged edge.
Little Book of Wo
e
It could not be predicted. The condition had a name, the kind of name usually associated with telethons, but the name meant nothing . . .
—Joan Didion, The White Album
Illness is the most heeded of doctors: to goodness, to wisdom, we only make promises; pain we obey.
—Marcel Proust, Cities of the Plain
Soup
When the doctor said I’ve got good news and bad news,
I thought of soup—how long it had been
since I had had the homemade kind,
the real deal where you soak the beans overnight
and everything is apportioned in stages:
first the onions and meat browned in oil,
then the broth added for hours of simmering,
all that saturated glistening scent stoking the house
with memories: the Jewish boy I kissed
until we both sank to our knees in the grass,
my mother’s frown as she plucked weeds
from my hair—oh my mother will die from this,
my mother whose soup is the best
even though it was always oversalted because
it was labored over, it was ladled out
unconditionally, tendered sweetly
without consequences, a nonjudicial love—
and it was always soup I got first thing
in the sickbed, and there’s the way tomatoes are added
at the last moment but the minor vegetables
(peas and corn and tiny diced potatoes)
come in thirty minutes before that, and how
the spices—ah, the spices—are to be doled out
sparingly, then waiting to see how strong they’d become
in the brew, their hidden aptitudes unlocked
only by time and the heat of a burbling mélange;