Long, long ago, while humankind was still emerging from the Dark Ages, this appeared in the Denver Quarterly.
Homer was not Homer,
but a Homer whom
we, by mis-misnomer,
call a name the other's.
Histories assume
economy of mothers.
Fungible poets sink
into LaBrean bogs.
Editors may think
editees alive;
cockroaches and frogs
generically survive.
This, before some revisions, appeared in Staple.
More crystal chandeliers in New York City
than in the whole of Ecuador. I'm sure
that everything you ever saw for sale
they have here, and delivered too. The night
terrifies the inhabitants, all from elsewhere.
Thus it is told by Ahmed, who was once
a jazz man, but moved on from that. I saw
him giving Plastiklips to little kids,
asking them if they thought he should keep kosher.
Everything is different in the city,
he says: if you can think it, it has happened
and will again, though not when you are watching.
Thus there are Mayan gods in his apartment,
a defrocked priest named Twee from 502
with a baptismal font on layaway,
and Ahmed. He has been a breathetarian;
he snorts at all the riff-raff in the street.
Caste and kind are important in the city.
Love is on sale, returned if satisfactory.
Ahmed says not to stick to your own kind:
love across lines is all about distinctions.
There's more cash here than in all of Peru,
he learned, having once rented for a week
a girl newly arrived from Lima. She
did anything, without much wanting to,
and asked his help in managing to stay.
No help, but there are plenty others left,
all of whom can buy something, so can dream
of waking beautiful beyond their wounds,
thinking about, but never going, home.
This appeared in Chimaera.
A little town believes it is immune
From simony and tsores; lesser folks,
The big’uns from the City, pay to fret—
They’re born to fret, conformed to fret; the shapes
Of worry make the fortune of their faces.
A little town does not believe that woe
Is overnighted by the sun: the bill
Of lading comes due elsewhere. Yes, they know
About the sparks and how they fly, but still—
A little town? Our lucky life, they say.
Their daughters, up to Megaplex, keep pails
Bedside to catch the tears, while sparking boys
Think murder is an artform, and their spite
Colors the closet red. The roads escape,
Then disappear into an empty plain.
And yet the cornflakes keep on selling out,
The hotdog buns replenished. Say, the Post-
Gazoo is covering the Aphid Fest.
You’d think, the kind of life a small town leads,
Pies in each pocket, cakes in every bed,
You’d think the roads ran both ways, but they don’t.
This woman in her vinyl raincoat runs
Up to me—it’s not raining—and she asks,
Are you The One? (I hear the capitals,
The edge of majuscules, the sharpened height
Of serifs as they play about her eyes,
Wide to let all the light in that there is.)
I’m not. I thought I was once, but I’m not.
She coughs. No one should make mistakes like that,
She tells me, and she takes two backwards steps:
You might have missed your chance to save. The truck
Repaving Colorado beeps reverse,
And I shall never know what I have lost.
Her raincoat’s black, of course. I know she keeps
Asafoetida bags about her flat,
Merde du Diable; I know she cannot sleep
Because she has misplaced The One, the leaf
Marked with a grosgrain ribbon and a spoon.
This appeared in the Deronda Review.
The pattern of the rain on glass
Is law bound, but I've never known
That law, and when the drops surpass
All reason in the shape and speed,
Only a textbook could have shown
An explanation or a need.
This is a horsie, that me mum.
There is Aunt Sophie, warped with pain.
I see three rodents, deaf and dumb
And blind. If God would play this game,
There would be floods on plains in Spain.
There would be dead without a name;
But God knows what God knows. He may
Have planned the shape of little drips,
Which drops abscond and which seek stay
Of execution. I don't know.
Stream after stream, the water slips
Where wracks of able seamen go.
I've heard it said that when the horn
Is played in court, the waters will
Reveal lost bones, and men reborn
Will dance upon their former veins.
Deep waters run till then and still,
The windows clean, those shining panes.
