Poems
Jellyfish Brains
Seems like we'd just started to make tools,
to bury our dead so predators couldn't eat them.
Didn't we domesticate animals just yesterday?
Wasn't it only a month or so ago we first hollowed
out grindstones? Didn't we just master pottery?
It all happened so fast. How long since we first
learned to herd camels, since we figured out how
deliciously wind fills the bellies of sails? Didn't we
start carving figurines only recently, the ones
we hang round our necks, little pocket gods to rub
when we're scared? Feels like we raced straight
from clay tablets to parchment to paperbacks
in a day. Invented medicines along the way.
First danced to bring rain yesterday. Minted
coins only lately, money playing no small role
in our downfall. I read that a jellyfish's brains whirl
in her skirts, that plants are really slow, rooted
animals, that elephants dig their own wells. Who
begat this miraculous world, shaped from nothing
but sunlight and mud? Who let loose that universal
music, more lovely than anything made by the hand
of man, that sometimes arrives out of silence?
Microdosing
People say
a little of me
goes a long way
I phone
say hi
maybe moan
once or twice
then hang up
that's enough
social interaction
for one day
For E.
Pardon me for pretending I might wish
you back into existence so we could chat.
Better yet, I'd remain silent and bask
in the sound of your voice--music I'm
ashamed I can no longer quite call
to mind. I do remember your habit
of chattering your teeth in a cartoonish
manner when you got nervous or
bored. And I'm easily re-seized by how
keenly I once yearned to be your home
away from home, your quiet, tree-lined
street between the park and that old stone
church. But you slipped out of the party
too soon, just as you always threatened
you'd do. Remember being breathless
together on the observation deck of the
Empire State Building? We took the last
elevator up to the 86th floor, at 1:15 a.m.,
inhaled what drugs you had, and damn!
they were good. How dizzily I miss you
this minute in which I find myself so much
older, darling, than you ever lived to be.
My Late Wife
Does it surprise you to learn that I once had a wife?
Someone to whom I showed my wounds, who made me
dangerous because, at unstrung moments with her, I was
so happy? It's not something I talk easily about. She vowed
to help me get my fate straight, a task obviously not
within her power, but she seemed to have a great fondness
for lost causes. I miss her sometimes, and at other junctures,
not at all. Her skirts swished discreetly. She once disguised
herself as a beech tree. Actually, it was a beautifully conceived
Halloween costume. What did it mean that she often talked
about The Exhaustion of the Masculine, that she took a course in
Spiritual Warfare, that some nights she seemed to have spared
my life, or that one evening after I'd said something unkind,
she acted confused, pretending not to know what had hurt her?
She liked a lot of ice in her drinks. She loved to propose toasts.
She was a terrible photographer. More than half the people and
animals she took snapshots of ended up decapitated. I gave her
money I didn't even have. It's possible there were days I felt
hollow when she wasn't home. It’s possible that I held
that against her. She always seemed to know what time it was
by instinct. She cried extremely easily. She played cello
pretty well. She's still alive, but since we parted, I prefer to
think of her as late, as in tardy or delayed, to believe that someday
when I return home she'll be here, having decorated the house
with white bougainvillea, which she knows I like, to surprise me.