there should be something
to commemorate the pain.
Someday we’ll forget that great Brazil disaster.
Till then, Richard, I wish you well.
I wish you love affairs and plenty of hot water,
and women kinder than I treated you.
I forget the reasons, but I loved you once,
remember?
Maybe in this season, drunk
and sentimental, I’m willing to admit
a part of me, crazed and kamikaze,
ripe for anarchy, loves still.
For a Southern Man
Bill, I don’t do laundry
and I don’t believe in love.
I believe in bricks.
And broken windshields.
And maybe my fist.
But you’re safe to take
the road this one time, buddy.
I’m getting old.
I’ve learned two things.
To let go
clean as kite string.
And to never wash a man’s clothes.
These are my rules.
I want to learn to say
see you next Tuesday.
Then drive away.
The windshield whole.
The rearview empty of regrets.
Though now and then
there are exceptions.
What I remember of
a room at dusk
and how your bones
continued from a single strand.
Finger knuckle spine.
To love too much to leave behind
a neon sign in northern Georgia,
pink and blinking THE PINES.
That laundromat in Landis
famous for the way
it makes you sad.
The blond waitress at Jay’s Diner,
counting passing cars,
dreaming of the one that got away.
THE RODRIGO POEMS
This is the Hour of Lead—
Remembered, if outlived,
as Freezing persons recollect the Snow—
First—Chill—then Stupor—then the letting go—
—EMILY DICKINSON
A woman cutting celery
is savage
because a car door slams.
But he does not come home.
Miles after thoughts
have turned from worry,
have turned to rage,
a car door slams.
And she is cutting
celery and more celery,
but no familiar stumble
of the key. Nor
crooked tug and coy
apology. No blurred kiss
to comfort this cruel
hour and quit those
sometime fears to sleep. Surely
love has strayed before.
Love has come and love has gone
and love has been away
before but ultimately
stays. It must be
the errant lover of the girl
across the way who arrives
at such an independent hour,
whose rude feet
startle gravel beyond the borders
of begonias asleep under the back
porch light. Not here.
A thin blond vein
rises from the corner of her jaw
like a crack in a porcelain plate.
A car door slams.
But he does not come home.
This is how the story begins.
Sensuality Plunging Barefoot Into Thorns
You’re sick.
So I bring over my television set—
(it’s okay I hardly ever watch it)—
soup,
cards,
a few books.
You answer the door
in pajamas,
fuzzy slippers,
a robe
two sizes too big
(a gift from your last wife)—
ridiculous.
I don’t take off my coat.
I mean to drop the things and go.
But just as I’m tugging the door,
you sneeze
and pull like a magician
from your sleeve—
a handkerchief.
Red.
Extraordinary.
Loud as timbales.
Already it begins,
all the miles home—
a slow smoke without warning.
In a few weeks
all you’ll have to do is phone.
By then
the handkerchief
will have done its harm.
Valparaiso
last night
we are a zoo
and you
were right
we are
blue
fur and the open night!
an animal dance
on cue
and continued
your cigarette
what are you thinking?
here
is the mis-en-scène
a man
a woman
a cigarette
silhouettes
against the landscape
of sheet and pillow
a pretty
setting
one might think
and why
should one know better?
correction
this is a case
of mutual
hunger
of polite
request and courteous
take
and love
that rude religion
is neither
diffident
correct
nor safe
ours
is a narcissistic
yearning
yours
a city
mine
my necessary
fame
no
do not
mistake
this myth
for love—
that
is a different
kind
of burning
I understand it as a kiss
but not a kiss. This
gesture, this burning.
But from an origin
furthest from the heart.
I recognize this
is for me, and yet
I sense I make no
difference. I know
if we say love
we speak of many things.
You mean the Buenos Aires moon,
the blond streetlamps,
the dance you danced.
But I know it as the wrist,
a shoe, a bruise,
a bone, a stick.
For All Tuesday Travelers
I am the middle-of-the-week wife.
The back-door sneak.
I wake the next-door neighbors
who wonder at who arrives so late,
departs so early.
Who yearn to know
the luxury of love delivered.
Love that comes and goes
without the ache,
without the labor.
It is a good life.
I would not trade it
for another wife’s.
I who am the topic
of the Wednesday-morning chatter.
Who in her lone society
politely sips the breakfast given her.
Correctly travels with a toothbrush,
her own comb. Says thank you,
please, goodbye, and runs along.
No Mercy
Your wives left
without a trace
Both of them
They plucked
their long hair
from the kitchen sink
did not forget the ring
nor the domestic combs
Not one stray stocking
did they leave
&
nbsp; Not a fingerprint
nor a subscription
to a magazine
They fled
Gathered their feathers
and bobby pins and string
Left nothing
Took their towels
and their initials
one child
expensive shoes
and vamoosed
Without a clue
You must’ve said
something cruel
You must’ve done
something mean
for women to gather
all of their things
The world without Rodrigo
moves
at a slender pace
does not mind to hesitate
undoes one button
exhales with grace
walks does not run
hums
Rodrigo Returns to the Land and Linen Celebrates
puffed with air
the muslin and satin
the fitted and flat
the dizzy percale
and spun cotton
billowing and snapping
sun-plumped and flapping
everywhere! everywhere!
Beatrice
No doubt you are still
waiting endlessly
for your Beatrice.
Sudden on the steps
of a bridge where
as a boy you waited.
Hopeless even then.
Kiss me.
I am an odd geometry
of elbows and skin,
a lopsided symmetry of sin
and virtue. And you.
I can feel your eyes
burning over the horizon
of my shoulders.
Rodrigo de Barro
You are red clay
and river water, Rodrigo.
Simple enough.
This is your skin.
And from what
my hands and mouth
have memorized
I could shape the myth
of bones
into the flutter of collar,
the arias
of ladders and spirals.
Collect the necessary
snail shells
and bits of yellow stone.
Crumble them in my palm.
Here
are your eyes.
I know by heart the salt
and smoke
elixir of your neck and fingers—
my new intoxicant, my bitter liquor!
And could I tether a thousand
bees together,
I would create the zoo of dreams
that you dream each night.
But where to find enough
ignited Alexandrias,
an explosion of heliotropes
and roses,
all the mutinies and revolutions,
the Hannibals
and Nebuchadnezzars,
an army of
Russian bears,
25 dancing Lippizaners,
and one rare white Bengali,
to burn in the veins,
to march without end,
a dagger and
a silk heart. Oh my cruel
Bonaparte,
my loveliest Caesar.
Rodrigo in the Dark
Rodrigo, your red tie
slips from the neck
with a serious sigh.
The shirt of many buttons,
the woolen trousers, and
the handsome shoes
forget their reasons for formality
and take their eager liberty—
delinquent and lovely without you.
I like the rudeness of the moon
that lets me look at you
without permission,
the slender bones tossed
careless as tulip stems,
the bouquet of shoulders
the dip and hollow of the skin.
Without your uniform of havoc
you are simply a man
like any other.
No longer white tiger,
my rival and keeper.
Good night, my Bengali.
This is my pirate hour.
Count one, two, three—
Rodrigo snoring beside me.
Then it is I can begin again,
to speak of love without apology,
with only the black mustache listening,
the beard cynical and stiff.
The So-and-So’s
Your other women are well-behaved.
Your magnolias and Simones.
Those with the fine brave skin like moon
and limbs of violin and bones like roses.
They bloom nocturnal and are done
with nary a clue behind them.
Nary a clue. Save one or two.
Here is the evidence of them.
Occasionally the plum print
of a mouth on porcelain.
And here the strands of mermaids
discovered on the bathtub shores.
And now and again, tangled in
the linen—love’s smell—
musky, unmistakable,
terrible as tin.
But love is nouveau.
Love is liberal as a general
and allows. Love with no say so
in these matters, no X nor claim nor title,
shuts one wicked eye and courteously
abides.
I cannot out
with such civility.
I don’t know how to
go—not mute as snow—
without my dust and clatter.
I am no so-and-so.
I who arrived deliberate as Tuesday
without my hat and shoes
with one rude black tattoo
and purpose thick as pumpkin.
One day I’ll dangle
from your neck, public as a jewel.
One day I’ll write my name on everything
as certain as a trail of bread.
I’ll leave my scent of smoke.
I’ll paint my wrists.
You’ll see. You’ll see.
I will not out so easily.
I was here. As loud as trumpet.
As real as pebble in the shoe.
A tiger tooth. A definite voodoo.
Let me bequeath
a single pomegranate seed,
a telltale clue.
I want to be like you. A who.
And let them bleed.
Monsieur Mon Ami
And now, my pretty one,
you have announced
perfunctorily and promptly,
you will be offing in the morning.
You say it audibly.
You say it calmly
so as not to alarm me.
I understand the words
and yet hardly comprehend.
Where to and when with no warning?
Paris? Marakesh? São Paulo?
Where, love, and how without me?
You pack the lovely clothes.
The handsome shoes move
back and forth across the wooden floor.
Back and forth. Ignore me.
I trace arabesques in the table dust.
Say nothing. Not a sound, in fact.
A good sport.
Bon voyage, I say,
and kiss each cheek goodbye.
Though all the drive home
the thick heart bleeds.
An ulcer.
A toothache.
A plum.
Something begins its slow hiss.
Hysterical. High-pitched.
The brain clicks like a gun.
Drought
Because of pride
I don’t phone.
Not me.
On the contrary
I place the telephone
over there.
Against the wall.
At the far end of the room.
And stare at it for days
like cigarettes.
Oh I’m greedy like a drowned lady.
I want and want my grief—
each cell must have its fill—
and I want more of it.
It’s worse at night.
Sky tilts.
All the dark pours in like sand—
a gun against the brain.
Hopeless.
I dial.
Ring once…
twice…finally!
It’s you.
Although the voice is little—
a bee inside a bell.
Hello; it’s me.
Then silence like a seam.
How are you?
Silence again.
Fine, fine, I mumble, fine,
unraveling like string.
And then I can’t hear myself
above the racket in the brain.
By Way of Explanation
There is—
I suppose—
a bit of
Madagascar
in me
I never mention.
And somehow
Amazons
have escaped
your rapt
attention.
The nose
is strictly
Egypt
for your
information.