Summer Afternoon Silence

Arbiter of jaybird squabbles,
Beekeeper of fading light,
Unfurl yourself like a tablecloth
Over everything.

Silence of summer insects,
Soft-booted footsteps
And distant diesel engines,
Content yourself
Keeping a quiet, empty street
Just that quiet and empty.

You give no word of your arrival,
Just a brief hush afterwards
As after a little girl
Gasps in a silent movie.
Sunday afternoon silence
Falling like knives,

Leaving no trace of ever having been here,
Leaving only the street behind
Where it takes a trained eye to tell
You’ve ever made an impression.

Novembertime

In the secret room
He meant to draw
The clock as moving
In another secret room.

He had drawn grass outside
Like a green haircut.
He’d put up flowers
In a blue bowl.

Twice he came downstairs,
To get a glass of water
And at dinner. They had spaghetti
Which were like tiny legs.

Early next morning, his father shaving
As into a bowl of spoiled milk
His brother peeing outside
Onto a ground covered in slush.

The postman coming
Like a hobbled white cat,
Snow on a branch
Breaking apart politely.

.

To Autumn

You knew it was coming to an end,
their vast empire of gold and marble columns,
and you said nothing, piece of shit.
Was it jealousy? Did your yellowing leaves
not compare to some sparkling riches?
Of course they compared! They’re like madmen
rushing through the corridors of an equally mad house.
Or did you not have the time, busy as you were
with your vast changes, your rows of stately
decomposing trees, that you couldn’t
stop for one second
and whisper it
in some rush of dried leaves
or some river’s babbling,
the water grey because it was about to freeze,
the riverbank on fire with the setting sun …
And if you didn’t inform them
of their conflagration to come,
then what hope do I have?
I asked aloud
to the encroaching night
who meanwhile was descending the trees
like an actress stepping down a steep staircase
wrapping herself in her fog-colored coat,
wringing her hands
like she was planning a murder.

The Wax Museum

After closing hours
You stroll its dim, wandering paths,
The orange glow of memory’s candle
Illuminating the frozen figures,
Figures which, quite unlike you,
Do not gaze pensively

At the dusty, empty spots on the shelves.
The tragedy is,
The place looks great-
Elvis Presley looks heroic
As though he couldn’t even feel the prickling
Of the tiny tailor’s pins holding his suit up.

A grinning James Dean points
Across the room towards Amelia Earhart,
Like he found her after all this time
Lounging on her shiny pink Cadillac.
Now, much to your amusement
You’re as lost as she was,

Finding yourself leaning on Colonel Custer
Who was meanwhile busying himself
Sticking out his bristly moustache at the truth.
Even the WWII bomber
Strung up from the rafters
Looks like it could fly right out of here,

Right out of your life
Wherein, you’ll notice,
You’re slowly being covered in wax yourself,
Wax dripping from a candle
Which shuddered in anticipation
At reaching its end.

René Descartes

The moon
was a small
uncooked tortilla
Descartes was cutting
into little pieces
in the dark
while the Supreme Infinite
crawled under the table
for some scraps.
Elsewhere, I could feel
a slight itch
as though the fly
that had landed
on my soul’s
wobbly dinner table
was pondering
his next move.
Is he going to go
for the rusty
and bent fork?
Is he going to fly
right out of here?
He’s going to
fly right out.

Luckless

At 3 a.m. you’ll find me
Walking the black cat.
Suicide by bad luck-
Like a roach in his motel?
Here’s what I’d always find:
Waves that pretend to be hurrying towards adventure,
Ending up back in the monotonous sea
With a mouthful of sand.

Or the ants, with their massive armies,
Who can’t even succeed in capturing
That little sliver of honey-baked ham
Left unnoticed on the infinite grass.
Futility, you are the torn string
On the mask of tragedy
The world is clutching to its face,
Hiding his eczema!

Meanwhile, I’m still pacing
Inside my dark corridors,
Ducking under these tall ladders
And whispering into open umbrellas,

Stopping to break a mirror
And catching a glimpse of myself-
My face covered in cancelled stamps,
My solemn black suit sprouting angel wings.

The Long Novel

He was mixing up the characters
In the long novel he was writing.
He forgot who they were
And why there were there.

A dead man showed up for dinner
In an Easter Bunny costume.
A door-to-door salesman
Was huddled inside a large tent

In the middle of a department store.
A troop of soldiers marched
Down Main Street at midnight
To get their toenails painted.

A nun came rushing out of an aluminum trailer
Somewhere in West Virginia
With pantyhose over her face
And two bank bags under her arms.

Not me though.
I’m still repairing the same watches
Over and over.
He hasn’t even gotten around

To cutting my hair.
It’s growing long as willow branches
In a small town he describes as
“Dirty and forgotten.”

Constructing the Graveyard

Long past midnight they’re assembling it-
Shunting posts into shallow earth,
Filing down the gargoyle teeth,
Then stopping to turn up their thick collars.

Tonight they’re greasing the hinges of the front gate
With a grease that makes them squeak even more.
They’re stuffing a dead dog full of hayseed and twigs
To give it the impression of being accustomed to fear.

They’re carving faces on the trees-
Grotesque faces, with mismatched eyes.
And the ravens aren’t fooled: they keep right on
Congregating in the barren wheat field

Where the snow was falling
And the ravens kept respectfully silent,
Where the scarecrow was shuddering
Afraid his secret had been found out.

Afternoon

Autumnal silence
Like a drowsy old man,
The moon like his dog.
We ate the blueberries first
Then we let the honeysuckle
Enter slowly, swirling it around
In our mouths like a pretty redhead
In a white dress, sweet as wine.
We hopped the fence back out.
Then home laughing, the sun setting,
Old man hushed, his eyes closed,
His dog whispering in his lap.

Evening's Entrance

The crows on the branches Are a sewing circle of executioner’s wives Complaining about how their husbands come home Smelling like death, and about the long hours, And good God have you seen the laundry bill? Their husbands had all more than once Promised to quit. But they loved it too much. Working with your hands, outside in the sunshine, Crowds gathered just to watch them. Meanwhile, the trees were a steep staircase A woman was descending, wrapping herself In her night-colored cloak, wringing her hands Like she was planning a murder. Oh thick fog, Even you were not breaking character tonight!

Evening Wine

The explosions were like sunsets,
Like tiny suns exploding on the horizon.

Cooking

The moon
was a small
uncooked tortilla
God was eating
blindfolded.
Oh, the infinite!
Was she staying
home tonight?
Was she coming to
set my soul’s
dinner table?
Small, wobbly table
In a dusty basement.

No Thirteenth Floor

The elevator in my building was broken, so I went across the street to use theirs. It was summer, and the birds on the wire were too hot to say anything to each other, they just stared abstractedly into space. The people, too, said nothing, as though any wasted breath would cause them to instantly give in to sunstroke. Young men in suits and women with strollers and groups of girls with bright pink shirts, all silent as they hurtled through this orange-baked desert. Perhaps they had knowledge of their momentum and they simply couldn’t stop it, or perhaps they were just caught up in the grand ride of physics, little human pinballs. Either way, they made for a miserable painting, nothing like Nighthawks but set in broad daylight. People don’t slurp coffee as much as they used to, or if they do it’s to themselves. What all of this had to do with an elevator being out of order, though, I’ve not the faintest. I was standing in their elevator, waiting for the doors to open to a whole world for which I was not prepared.

Futility

You wrote novels, political ones, wielding the

paragraph like a dangerous weapon. “They

should keep their damn hands off our lives,”

you’d say to me when I got home. Greasy hands,

stinking of fish.

The owner of the Chinese Laundromat can

neither read nor write our language. He looks

through a newspaper like it’s not even there. He

keeps several spider-webs in his windows, to catch

the flies, he says, and to add a little decoration. Once he
showed them to me, one midnight when I found us
walking down the same ink-stain street, alone together,
the stars like tiny holes a child had poked with a pencil.

But now, it's one a.m. Your writer's block has returned. You could

understand none of it, you said. The computer screen
was a vast arctic wasteland, and you a lost explorer.

What is Needed Now

Are not those words, dressed as they are
In tall impregnable suits of gold and grey.
What are those but road signs
Which point to towns filled with accountants
And no good diners where we can lay our heads.

We don’t need phrases, metaphors, or towering paragraphs
Which can’t even stave off the night. It’s stupid to try,
If that’s even the right word.
But what else is there?

We’re down to just our socks
And we’re drawing the blinds
Over our eyes where, like children,
We forget that things are still there.

Dancing

Around, around, around
Till the rose is a blue streak,
The breaks in the couch
Are a grey-red blur,

And don’t look down, for now
Until you’ve found your feet.
You wish it would keep going

On forever, the spinning waltz
Which makes the ceiling fleet,
Until you realize,

It does.

Wearing Out Your Socks

Where do these people get off,
these midnight promenaders,
strolling and making sense of
a flickering blackness.
Strolls are for morning-time,
ask any mental patient.
Even they know the rules,
and they’re nothing like you or me,
in fact they’re so far away from reality
they might as well pretend to strangle themselves
with their imaginary kite-strings.

No, there’s no such thing
as a late-night smile.
Maybe a grin, or a grimace,
or a wide-faced hoot.
A big goofy gap-toothed monologue,
but never a smile. It has been shown
to be self-evident that
the subtle contracting
of all those muscles
in the dead of night is tantamount
to slapping the devil in the face,
which, everyone knows, is the secret
to eternal happiness,
but the height of rudeness.

Archaeological Finery

The pockmarked mirror, Mrs. Highnose
And the empty bed, still stretching his back,
Trying to get all the lumps out
Are barking at each other again like two dogs
In different yards.

Get all those secrets in, all those
Little milkbone scraps you’ve buried
In your mind, now is the time
For retrieval, you’ve only got a minute.

I can hear them from the other room,
Baying and beckoning, falling in love
In their twenty-second dialogue
Which seems to them to be their entire lives.

I don’t much care for all the drama,
All the posturing, but I guess it’s all they know,
All they’ve had time to learn how to be.
Still damn annoying though.

Making Love

Red wine dribbling
out of your laughing mouth
and onto your bare tits
as I pinched your hips
and told you how
I climbed Mt. Everest twice
and decided
it took some getting used to.
I thought,

I am a kid here again,
awkward and forgetful.

Tell me you want me
to carve “Arriving Soon”
on your tombstone,
I love that one.

And about your time spent
waiting for your soup
and experiencing eternal nothingness.
“It’s fine,” you’ll say,
“But you need hobbies.”
I love having pillow talk, even though
you always get all the good lines.

Like how rhubarb must be such a lonely thing
without strawberries,
or how Spinoza disproved God’s existence
by showing the impossibility
of getting a plumber on the weekend.

By this point
I had a hard on
and you were falling asleep.
Each day has a certain time,
and man was this it.

Whatever You Do, Forget the Jellybeans

Joe called me and asked me if I wanted
to go hiking with him. I told him I wasn’t
sure. “C’mon, it’ll be great. I know this
great little lake where you can talk
to the birds.” Joe had always been out there,
out in his own little ether, but I agreed
to go with him, mostly because it seemed
a good excuse for some exercise, and plus
no one had seen or heard from Joe in months.
We met at the trailhead the next day. “Ok,”
Joe said, “just follow me and you’ll be fine.”
The first day was ok. We got lost once or twice,
but the trail was wide and clear and we
always found it again. The second day wasn’t bad,
though my feet started to hurt by noon, and once
Joe said he thought he saw some wolves, but it
turned out to just be an abandoned pick-up truck.
The trail was narrowing though, and by the third day
we could hardly see it at all. Several times we had to
guess which way to go, though we always guessed right,
and Joe found an old arrowhead, which
we both took as a good sign. The fourth day we had to pick
and hack our way through to keep on the overgrown trail.
I thought about turning back, but I didn’t want Joe to be
disappointed in me. He had been talking about the birds
all day, and it seemed nice enough. By the fifth day the trail was
completely gone. We were subsisting on nuts and berries and herbs
we found. I asked him how far away the lake was,
which got a good laugh. I hated the thought of going on,
with my feet as sore as they were, but the thought of those
talking birds just kept me going. We made camp that night,
not even bothering to put up tents we were so exhausted.
When I woke up the next morning, though, Joe had vanished.
He hadn’t even bothered to leave a note, and all his stuff
was gone. So I just kept walking in the same direction,
crossing over roots and trees and cutting clear through
the forest. I had a vague sense that I should turn around, and
once I looked back, but the trees behind me looked so
alien that I never bothered with that again. Then, just
as the sun was setting I came across a lake. It was nestled
between some hills and the trees were perfectly mirrored
in the water, two long stitchings of green beauty.
There was no one around for miles. Then I
remembered what Joe had said and, sure enough,
I saw a turkey come strolling out of the woods, a majestic
red thing with a proud neck. “Not a bad lake, huh?”
he said, looking out across the flat expanse of water.
And truly, it wasn’t.

Double-Crust Seven Tomato Pizza

I was walking back from the bookstore when I decided
to stop for a slice of pizza. I’m not sure what came over me,
because really I’m not that into greasy foods.
Give me a mushroom fricassee or some zucchini stew
or even some walnut cake if I’m feeling indulgent,
but never something like this. I abide by a strict
dietary code. Still, by the time I had thought all this
I found myself at my table, excitedly waiting
for my two slices of pepperoni and black olive. I could
smell it now, cooking in that big round beehive,
mozzarella cheese bubbling and crisping to brown
and the thick red sauce dancing in the limelight.
It was going to be fantastic, and besides, I could
afford to indulge. As I was thinking all of this
I noticed a woman a few tables away
looking at me. Not in any way, just staring,
the way that people do when they’re
adding sums in their head, so I tried
to politely gesture to her to let her know
she was staring. To my surprise, she stood up
and started walking over. She was in her mid-thirties
but had a wedding band on and could have
used more makeup. Still, she wasn’t the
worst-looking thing I’d ever seen. When she got
over to me, she put her hands on the side
of the table and looked down at me.
“You’re not allowed to be here,” she said plainly.
“Well, if you need this table, I’ll certainly move,”
I said. “No, I don’t think you understand,” she said,
“you can’t be here.” I wasn’t sure what she was
talking about, so I said, “I’m not sure what you’re
talking about.” “You signed away your rights to eat here,”
she said. “I have the documents to prove it.” I still had no
idea what she was talking about, but I was determined
not to let this woman ruin my perfect meal, so I said,
“Listen, it’s a free country, I can eat wherever I want,”
which surprised even me. Then the pizza cook shouted
my name and rang the little bell, so I excused myself
and went to get my pizza. “Please, Mr. Novak,”
she said, following me to the counter, “we have
the documents right here. You’re no longer
allowed this kind of indulgence. In fact, this
is just one of several other infractions of your
contract which have been festering for quite some time.”
I sat back down, admiring the bubbling cheese,
the shining black olives, the crimson pepperoni.
Even the crust looked delicious. “Oh yes,”
I said, “those pesky infractions."

A Black Pill Box is Her Paperweight

Holding open her fine-leafed King James Bible
To the Sermon on the Mount
On her nightstand with the oval mirror.

Her raven-black hair is undone over her pale shoulders.
Then she straightens her back, looking up as though
Contemplating something she just read twice.

Funeral Service Clowns

One dances with the deceased’s
Wedding gown. Another
Holds a raccoon skull
While reciting Hamlet.
A sad-faced one
Has a squirting flower
Adorning his very solemn

Funeral tuxedo and a
Trick buzzer in his hand.
Six comically oversized
Black mourner’s shoes-
They came to make us feel better.
And some preliminary reports
Suggest they succeeded.

Nightmares hold as much truth
As the mind who dreams them
Was what most of us thought
As we exited the funeral home
Still smelling of cotton candy,
Bourbon, and allspice.
Mrs. Bradley shook her head at me,
Wiping her brow with a frilled hanky,
Her eyes shining all the while.

Flying Through Clouds So Pink

Can be daunting.
Is your seat belt fastened,
Mr. Potato Head?
Do you have your
Neck pillow, your
Cheap magazines?
Are you chewing
Your grey gum?
It helps, trust me.
Did you pack
Your boredom?
No? Then ask
The stewardess,
She should have some.
And your fast-acting sleep,
They’ll provide that as well.

Look out your window,
Mr. Potato Head. Tell me,
Do the mountains look
Like painted miniatures,
The cities like winter sidewalks?
Do the waters of Lake Eerie
Look like a spilled glass
Of aquarium water
From your favorite
Childhood cup?
Give it time,
It will.

The Muses are Sewing Nightgowns

I’m no longer concerned
By the visible. It’s the invisible
Which worries me. The butterfly
Knife of silence flicking to life
Behind the blackboard, the shark’s-tooth
Of nothingness tucked between
The constellations of city lights.
This is what keeps me up
At night, lying awake and listening
For that dripping of God’s faucet,
A sound like pigeons pissing
Onto my balcony. Get off!
I want to shout at them,
But then they’re already gone,
Off to keep watch
On the mast of some lonesome fisherman
Who baits lines with his poems.

The Birds' Conversation

There was a warbler outside my window this morning, so I decided-
A priest limbo’ing at the Good Friday mass. Why not.

It had something to do with Purgatory. Boy, could that priest bend.
The candles were all burning on the altar of St. Julian’s

As he arched back and inhaled. It was a regular Catholic Cirque de Soleil,
Cheered Mrs. Potts. Someone said a joke about pretzels being rewards for prayer

When the priest went into a crab walk. There was a round of applause
And the organ started playing the theme to Alegria.

A few people were clapping along, and some were standing and cheering.
His white collar fell out as he started doing a headstand, smiling upside-down.

We’re so small in this universe. Comets travel at 108,000 miles per hour
And we see them once every lifetime. This is how I feel now, feeding the warbler.

Our Numbers Grew Daily

I was sitting in the park watching the pigeons on the line when a boy with an ice cream cone stopped to talk to me. “Hey mister,” he said, “You ever eat ice cream?” I replied that I did, that I ate it all the time and it was in fact my favorite food. “Sometimes,” I told him, “I went whole weeks eating nothing but the stuff.” “Yeah,” he said, “Well you’re not getting any of my ice cream, if that’s what you’re after.” “No, no,” I assured him, “I’ve got plenty of ice cream, enough to last me for the rest of my life.” He clutched the ice cream cone to his chest. “You’re weird, mister. My dad says to stay away from weirdos like you.” With that, he walked off, and I resumed my watching of the pigeons. They had this way of craning their necks up and into the sunlight, and I thought it seemed interesting, so I gave it a shot. It felt good, stretching like that, but then a woman with a baby carriage came along and gave me a dirty look, so I stopped and tried to look as apologetic as possible. Later, a balloon salesman came along. He had a metal cart and was holding a dozen balloons. “Nice balloons,” I said to him. And really, they were. They danced and floated in the afternoon sun and were a thousand perfect colors. “What did you say to me?” he asked. “Nothing, I just said you had some nice balloons.” The man walked over to me. “Now what in the hell is that supposed to mean?” He seemed genuinely angry. “Nothing, forget it. Today isn’t my day.” This really got him going. “Yeah,” he said, “You think you got it rough? You know hard it is selling balloons? You think I got time to just sit in the park all day?” “Listen,” I said, “I’m sure you’ve got it hard. I should be thankful for just being able to sit in the park. Good day.” “Oh,” he says, “So now you’re trying to get rid of me? No one’s ever got time for Sam. Everyone’s too important to talk to Sam. You people, you think you’re so high up, but really you’re lower than dirt.” With that he walked away, and I felt terrible. I felt like I was shrinking. The trees were as tall as skyscrapers, the bench was a giant wooden bus. Even the pigeons seemed like giants to me. People stopped in front of me, and before long a small crowd had gathered. “What’s that?” someone asked. “I think it’s a pile of dead leaves,” said someone else. “No, I think it’s a porcupine.” “No,” said a woman, “It’s just a shrunken person. They’re very common around here.”

The Anecdote of the Cherry Tree

Roses can be black or white, but never both
Wrote Immanuel Kant, who never dared
To walk beyond his front door.

I saw that door once, briefly, before Marie took us
Behind a cherry tree where,
With her nibbling my earlobe
And I biting her neck we exchanged
Our relative perspectives on beauty

And decided that it is in the I of the beheld.
We talked for sixteen days one night.
The French are the only ones
Who ever figured out
What a tongue is truly for.

The painters have it backwards,
She had said to me once,
The woman in red is just tired.

At the Petting Zoo

They smiled
Silent and slow
In the afternoon light
That comes sometimes
To this particular petting zoo.

The mother with
The red-cheeked child
And the uncle
Of one Miss Sylvia Hathaway
Are discussing clarinets
And Burgundy wine,
Which is best served in winter.

Behind them,
The kid who told you
About the fireworks
Is feeding the emu.
Jean laughs,
And you think you know why.
You see it too.

A Gray Vacation

That bone-rot hand
Wrapped in mummy’s rags
Clutching at your shoulder,
That chill breath you felt
On your neck,

It blew out your candle.
You saw it float across
The blackened room,
You saw its rat’s whiskers,
Or were those just the strings

Holding you here?
You watched it take your cheeks
And put them in its pocket,
You felt it stroke your arm
With its dried-butterfly hands.


*

The grey man impatiently
Wiping flies from his mouth,
The ghost train howling,
Its single hollow whistle
Bisecting the orange field.

She’s crying, that woman
Clutching her newborn.
Isn’t she too young
To be doing that?

There should be laws
Against such macabre spectacles,
Replies the ventriloquist
With Hamlet’s skull as his dummy.

*

The wailing and the stoic,
But you will not notice them,
So wrapped up in the neon tubes
Humming orange through hell’s windows.

You will be jostled through like sightseers
In a carnival, cattle in a neat bloody line.
It’s warm down here, and you will make
To remove your jacket, forgetting you traded it
To some chap for some wings of melted wax.

Pity will keep you rooted to this spot,
Watching as your black-hooded
Tour guides motion to Beelzabub’s
Hanging gardens. Scraps of yellowed parchment
Hang from bronze sconces. Dried butterflies flutter
In the evening breezes.

Our Life's Work

I have been lying for fifteen years. Every day, when I kiss my wife on her strawberry cheek, I lie. When I pick up the dew-speckled paper from our bentgrass lawn, I lie. When I compliment Mrs. Shasty on her carefully pruned hedges – well, do I need to say it?

I work in a lie factory. My ID card reads “Clayton Boothshoulder, a man with green eyes who loves corn-on-the-cob.” My eyes are blue-grey.

I sit at a desk made of plastic wood-grain and type nonsense into a computer equipped with the latest nonsense-reading technologies. At ten fifteen, my boss, Mr. Hamilton, tells me what an acceptable job I’m doing, and that “What we do here will be of utmost importance in several generations.” He is always drinking Chai Tea. I get the feeling he’s a coffee man.

One day, when the sun was hung with all the care of a Christmas ornament, the phone rang. It was Sunday: the phone never rings on Sunday. I panicked, couldn’t breathe, got a paper bag, and nearly blacked out. The paper bag smelled like croissants. When I had recovered, I answered the phone:

“Hell- hello?”

“Is this Mr. Hamilton?”

“I don’t believe so. Let me check.” I took my ID card out of my wallet. I tried to read it, but the words seemed jumbled together.

“Well?” The voice was getting impatient. I got the feeling it had some power over my life. I didn’t want to anger this voice.

“I can’t seem to read my ID currently. All I can tell you is that I have green eyes.”

There was typing on the other end of the line. The voice coughed. “Yes, you’re definitely Mr. Hamilton.”

I waited for a moment, thinking that the voice would continue. After an uncomfortable eternity, I asked, “So, what does that mean?”

“Nothing. Just confirming. Keep up the acceptable job.”

Click.

My office was spinning, and I sat down in a chair. I wanted a jar of honey, but quickly dismissed such a foolish notion.

A few months later, the company building disappeared. Our work was finished before it even began. The ramifications would not be felt for several generations.

Least Common Denominators

That afternoon, on what would be the last day of my life, I went to see Marshall Roquefort’s lecture, entitled “How Things Are.” When I got there, the sky was cloudy, and I think I felt a drop or two. Inside, Doctor Roquefort’s head looked like a hot-air balloon. He began his sermon with an anecdote about two cranes who found love: they smelled very similar. Mid-way through, while he was discussing the effects of disco music on South African Tapirs, his microphone cut out. He pulled a megaphone out of his shiny leather briefcase and continued, not even bothering to start his sentence over. His concluding remarks were: “Life, you see, is simple and grey.” Then everyone seemed to acknowledge the end, and shuffled out, their dull green parkas making a sound like crumpling paper. Outside, everything – every car, every coffee shop, every second-hand book store – had become a pile of unfinished bricks. I wasn’t sure I liked it, but it was sure easy.

Spanish Leather Sofa

On Marabeth’s Spanish Leather Sofa sat a gavel. I looked at it for a long while, asking it many questions. It mostly ignored me. Finally, I decided to get to the bottom of this gavel. I picked it up: it seemed light, but then again, what did I know about gavels? “Grace,” I yelled, for her blender was running, “why do you have a gavel?” I finished, in what was almost a whisper, as her blender stopped running midway through. “I found it at a bus stop last Halloween.” She turned back on the blender. I still had questions. What did it mean? Who were its previous owners? Why had they abandoned a perfectly good gavel? There was a mystery here, and I intended to solve it. I sat down on her Spanish Leather sofa. Boy, was that thing comfortable.

The Expected Arrival of an Old Friend

It was sunny, and I sat cross-legged on the soft ground, smoking a cigarette and admiring a tulip. I had never seen such a deliberately hued creature. It was white and gold and perfectly tulip-shaped. Suddenly, it spoke: “You shouldn’t smoke. It’s bad for you.” Upon retrospection, the fact that a flower spoke to me seemed oddly normal, surprisingly expected. “I’m allowed to smoke,” I said. “I’m a writer.” “Still,” it said, and continued swaying in the breeze.

That being the end of that, I looked around. My, it was a glorious day. The sun was shining and the birds were singing. A woman with a baby stroller whistled a little song as she walked. I then noticed a man wearing an overcoat, strolling down the street at what I thought to be a bit brisk of a pace for strolling. “You should tell him. As a fellow stroller, I’m sure he’d appreciate your input,” the tulip said. So I got up, didn’t toss the cigarette in the grass, and walked over to the man who, on noticing my approach, began to speed up. “Hello, friend,” I said, as he quickened even more. At this point he was strolling at near-supersonic speeds. “Can you be helped?” He said in a voice like an iron poker. “I just wanted to inform you that you are going rather quickly for strolling. I have always found my strolling to be best accomplished at a slower speed, something near a canter.” “Well, that’s because I’m not strolling. I’m traipsing.” “I don’t mean to call you a liar, but you were very distinctly strolling a minute ago, and if I am not mistaken you still are now.” “Listen, you wouldn’t know strolling if it hit you in the head with a kettle. Who are you anyway, Mary Queen of Scots?” “No, I’m Quincy.” “Ya, and I’m Babe Ruth. Now get out of here before I hit you. And you shouldn’t smoke, it’s bad for you.” I considered informing him of my literary status, but I decided against it, instead trudging back to the tulip.

“It’s ok,” the tulip said. “That always happens.” I thought, this is a tulip that’s been around the block more than once. He sure knows the score.

The World's Greatest Breakfast

I was sitting in my kitchen watching the birds on the line when the phone rang. “Hello, Mr. Stockton?” it said. The voice on the other end of the line cackled like an old radio. “Speaking.” “Congratulations. You’ve won.” I didn’t remember entering anything. “Won what?” “The World’s Greatest Breakfast.” “This must be a mistake. I never entered any such contest. I don’t even eat breakfast.” “Well, let me just check here… No, the records definitely show a Mr. Reginald Stockton was selected.” “That’s not me. Everyone calls me Reg. Only my mother ever called me Reginald, and she’s been dead for years. You’ve got the wrong guy.” “Do you live at 149 Southlake Avenue?” I said I didn’t, that I’d never heard of the place. “Do you love boats, particularly small dinghies?” I said I hated boats, but that even if I didn’t, I would certainly go for something a bit more majestic than a dinghy. “When you were seven, did you want to be an opera singer?” I said that when I was seven, I was far too serious-minded for any such business. I said that I think I wanted to be an accountant. “Yep, this is definitely you. Now, when should we pick you up?” “Listen,” I said in my most assertive voice, “this is some kind of mistake. That’s not me. I hate breakfast. I can’t stand to even look at an egg.” “Now, Mr. Stockton, you’re not going to talk your way out of this one. You’ve won. It’s best just to accept your fate.” So, we agreed that this Tuesday would work best. He told me a car would come by then to pick me up.

Tuesday was misty, cold, and moist. I wore a heavy wool sweater, but I was shivering. Finally, there was a knock on my door. Two heavy men with dark sunglasses stood in my doorframe. “Mr. Stockton, would you come with us.” I invited them in for a cup of coffee, a game of darts, anything. “I’m sorry Mr. Stockton, I love darts, but we’re on a tight schedule.” The car was a black limo, windows opaque. They insisted on blindfolding me. “We can’t afford to let the location be known by anyone. It’s for your own protection.” I assented. I had lost the will to fight. We drove for hours, at first over smooth roads, then over increasingly corrugated dirt paths, until I got the feeling that no human had ever traversed this terrain, that it was uncharted, a square of pale parchment on an ancient map. “What time is it?” I asked. “I’m sorry, but we’re not permitted to give out that information.” We had left the city behind: I could smell pine trees. Finally, the car cruised to a halt. “We’re here,” they said, and ushered me out of the car, removing my blindfold with surprising care. Despite it all, they seemed like men their mothers would be proud of.

The house was plain and wooden. It seemed to be carved from one solid piece of wood, though it was fifteen feet high. At the door stood two more sunglassed men. They nodded to their fellows, never glancing at me. Inside, several portraits of a child who bore a remarkable similarity to me were hung. Sailboat-print wallpaper, faded almost beyond recognition, lined the back. In the center was an older woman. “Please, Reginald, sit,” she said. She smelled like opium and moved as though the wind floated her about, like a dandelion. She had a milky eye and I knew she was the boy’s mother. Without a word, I sat in the straight-backed wooden chair. It was the most comfortable thing I’d ever been a part of. She brought a modest plate of over-easy eggs, pumpernickel toast, and two strips of bacon. I ate them in silence, tasting every bite. I felt like a convict, eating his last meal, and when this was over, I would be sent to the electric chair. I could see it now. The clocks striking five-till-midnight, the priest reading me my last rights. He was a nice guy, the priest, but a bit short at times, and I got the feeling he was afraid of me. Then I noticed my plate was clear, just a little yolk here and there, whatever had managed to escape. I felt great, like I could take on anything. “Mr. Stockton, please come with me,” someone said. I wasn’t sure who this Mr. Stockton was, but this guy sure had some spiffy sunglasses.

The Sweetest Music You've Ever Heard

Ahead of me, I saw a man, clad in all white, felled along the roadside. He was clutching his sandalled ankle, in obvious pain, and as I drew near he called out, “Sir, sir please, could you help me?” Beside him lay a small harp, cracked, with a split string flung out obtusely. “What happened?” I asked, when he lay in my shadow.

“I have fallen, and I think I’m injured.” His voice sounded like a far-off flute.

“How did you fall?”

“I came down here to pick some blackberries from that bush over there, but I guess I got distracted.”

“Those blackberries do look delicious. I could see how they could be distracting.”

“Yes, well, can you help me? I just need you to walk me to that barn over there, and I’ll rest up and be on my merry.”

“I suppose I could help, but you see, I’m a very important man in my time. I have a reputation. I can’t be seen helping just anyone.”

“I’m an angel, and I could play you the sweetest music you’ve ever heard, music that would make you forget all about your troubles.”

“But you’re harp’s busted. How do you plan on playing music with a busted harp?”

“Look, are you going to help me up or not?”

Deciding that I had nowhere better to be, I stooped down, and the angel draped his arm around my shoulder. We walked – plodded, I should say – the half-mile to the barn. He stumbled twice, the second time nearly pulling me over with him. He gave me an apologetic look and said “My name’s Hal.”

“We’re almost there,” I said. And, indeed, we were. I pushed open barn door with my free hand, guiding Hal between rusty farm implements and piles of manure.

“Just lay me down over there,” he said, motioning to a bale of hay near the donkey. I did so. Hal took a deep, smooth breath, relishing every oxygen molecule. A shotgun cocked.

“Who’re you two?” A thick voice asked from behind.

“This… my friend has been injured, and he needed to come in here to rest,” I said, turning around to meet the newcomer. He wore dingy overalls; his face hid behind three days of stubble. His eyes were slim, like pistachios. He held a shotgun.

“Came here to die looks more like it,” said the farmer. Turning to Hal, I saw that he was right. I knew nothing about angel physiologies, but I knew that this one was dead.

“Why’d you help him?” the farmer asked, turning to spit out his tobacco juice.

“He wanted some blackberries.”

There was a pause. “Well, I would never waste my time on a fool who’s too distracted by blackberries to see his nose in front of his face.” He turned and walked out. “Don’t worry, I’ll bury him in the morning.” But I knew that angels didn’t need to be buried.

On the way back, I picked a handful of blackberries. I had to avoid the thorns from the bush to get at them. They were plump, the size of golf ball-sized hail, and they shone in the afternoon light. Grabbing four, I popped one into my mouth, then another, and before I knew it all four were in there. They were so delicious, and I forgot all about the election, and the McCarthy’s drowned kid, Martin’s frozen peas…

Three Special Weeks

My wife, Helena, bought me a new shirt. It was pink, and frilled, like some guy in a Shakespeare, and it looked expensive. “Only wear it on special occasions,” she said. I hid it I the back of my closet, and mostly forgot about it, except when I saw a Shakespeare.

One day, a fine Tuesday with sunlight streaming in through the cracks in my face, I went to the doctor. Routine Checkup. I hadn’t had one in years, and I decided to give it a shot. I think it was all that sunlight, I worried I might get skin cancer, or that I might shrivel up into a little ball of dust. Routine Checkup.

When I get to the office, rich with the smell of ammonia and the sounds of keyboards clicking, I told the nurse my name. “Well, we haven’t seen you here in a while,” she said. “Ya, I normally don’t do things like this, but I thought it was overdue, and today seemed like that day.” “We get a lot of that. Balls of dust and all that. Take a seat, Mr. Klein, the doctor will see you shortly.” She returned to her typing, leaving me vexed over how she knew so much about me.

A little later, the doctor saw me. He wore glasses without frames. He said, in a voice like corrugated gravel, that I had only weeks to live. They weren’t sure what it was, but I was definitely done for.

The drive back home was, obviously, long. I pondered things, but then they got away from me, and I decided I really should be focused on driving, anyway, and I got home, dazed. I went to lie down.

If you go to my former mantle now, next to a picture of her father and mother at a Bat Mitzvah, is a picture of me, fly-fishing, in that pink shirt.

Learning to Surf

Grace had charcoal lips, desultory eyes, and hair like stormclouds. When she laughed she yelled, and stood fully erect. Charlie had loved her, when they lived in Pensacola, a place on the Florida Gulf Coast. Then, the town was nothing but virgin white beaches and shadows that sloped like sleeping archangels. They had learned to surf there, under the watchful eye of Mikhail, a man known first by his reputation as being a fantastic lay-about. When Mikhail would doze off, lolling in that nebulous breeze that sometimes drifted through, Charlie and Grace would kiss, the saltwater lapping at their ankles. After Mikhail had his stroke, Grace talked much more vaguely and laughed much more quietly, and eventually moved off to live with distant relations in a wooden town in Colorado.

It was a year or two later, after he had developed an Adam’s apple but not the force to use it, that he found her again. Christmastime, and lights were strung up from the gutters of the flat roofs. Grace had returned to see him again, but she never admitted it. She told him that her dog had died, and she wanted to see her mother again. (It would be years later that she would admit to anyone, including herself, that these were both lies, which she did in a confessional in Wichita). Her mother, Elmira, had never looked the same after Mikhail passed. She seemed to age for the first time in her life, and the process moved with a startling rapidity, making up for lost time. She was of indeterminate age, but her cheeks sagged like the shirts of old men seated in a row at a bus mall. The day after Christmas, she too died. Elmira’s last words were, “I could have used some new gloves, but I suppose a waffle iron is just as well.”

Grace lived in Colorado still, and Charlie and her brief exchanged letters for an even briefer interval, correspondences smelling of pipe tobacco and pine needles. Once, she promised to enclose some snow for him, for he had never seen it, but it just melted, and all he got was a soggy letter. In return, he sent her some grey sand. It seemed less colorful out of the sun’s warming spotlight. She never sent a return; he didn’t even know if she got the sand, but he figured she must be having fun out there. He imagined her whooping laugh like an Indian war-cry reverberating through the desolate Colorado pines.

A Sonnet on the End of Man

It wasn't even raining!
But the repentant had umbrellas
And folded hands and sandwich boards
Proclaiming the end of days.

There wasn't anything left.
But the desperate had pickaxes
And dusty claws and burlap sacks
Full of fool's gold.

But I wasn't there.
I was busy thinking of a

Beautiful woman

I'd known long ago.

I leave the room,
Turning the lights off behind me.

The Championship Horse

It was a beautiful sunny day and across the street a man was breaking into a van with a coathanger. He was a handsome man with a head of thick brown hair and he wore his black overcoat proudly. He seemed to be enjoying the weather as much as I was. A woman came up and stood next to me to watch. “What’s he doing?” she asked. “Trying to get home,” I said. “That makes me proud to be alive,” she said. He was making headway. He was on his tip-toes now, glancing around savagely. I wanted him to win and I could feel that woman did too. He was closer, he seemed about to get it. Then a car drove by and opened its passenger door. It slammed his knees into the white of the van and he crumpled. The car sped off. He was on the ground clutching his knee as cars whirred by him. The woman next to me was tearing up something and throwing it in the garbage. “I never have any luck here,” she said. She put on her sunglasses and walked away.

Final Memories

The branches of the trees leaned like eavesdroppers
Over this Halloween night.
“A bit of weather, we’re having,” one tree remarked,
Checking his watch nonchalantly.

They were waiting for something, and killing time
Or maybe simply bored-
Like men in an elevator,
Having nowhere to go but up.

Us, on the other hand. Our hands were sticky,
And we could still taste the butter
Flowing over the squashed pumpkin
And the roasted hazelnuts.
You asked about the constellations.
I didn’t know the answer.

Cheap Lightning

Like a flash on some old distant highway
Where not even the carrots dared grow.
I, I was seven.
I remember breathing through my heels
As a sound like a distant comet
Shot through, Obliterating
Our rust-bucket earth, our cigarette garden.
My grandpa’s beard scratched the floor.
My mother’s skillet scrawled the will.
Outside, a rusted hubcap rolled by, bag packed
And headed for Georgia, which was ripe
That time of year, or so his cousin said.

I remember it all so clearly,
But I’ll be the first to admit,
This sepia-toned present.

The Holy Grail is a Long-Lived Conspiracy

The woodpecker on the tree
By the bird feeder should mean something.
Its feathers, red as lamb’s blood,
Should contain some deep, enigmatic truth
Known only to certain tribes of ascetics
Who spend their days
Deep in the Himalayan winter, standing on poles.

The corrugated iron gate,
Dressed in its finest suit of moss,
Seems about to lean in close
Like a fellow confederate,
And tell me the Tao of pouring hot water.

Once, there was a wise philosopher
Who spoke of teacups,
And of the great, all-powerful noumena.
Sometimes, I think I’m close-
Then an old friend comes along,
And it’s too late. We’re back at the fair,
Watching the ventriloquists.

By now, the woodpecker has flown off,
And all that remains
Are the meaningless shadows, free to leap about
On the hissing summer lawn.

People-Watching

The woman over there,
The one with the red hair,
Has just poisoned her husband,
With hemlock from her garden.

The man with the trench coat
Is returning from suitcase shopping.
He’s planning his spontaneous getaway,
Scheduled for mid-March.

The woman with the dog
And the nun’s face
Once loved a man in Munich
And never since.

All of these people going to
And from the party –
And our invitation,
Lost in the mail.

If the Devil Won

‘The roses would talk. They would tell passerbys
The wrong direction to “She loves me not.”
The cats would be the only ones who knew.
They would stretch out all day, silent as thieves
Who lost their pants.

‘The old men would sit in the sun,
The sound of the banjos
Slowly making them blind.
The houses would look at each other
And tell their life stories
In the dead of night.

‘All this will come to pass,’ he says,
And then we ate some bread, in silence.

Bad Movies

The clouds were grey, as though
In their Sunday dress. The trees hid from view
By pretending to be a forest.
The mountains, covered in frost,
Pondered a deep, impregnable truth.

A flock of starlings ran off
To catch an earlier show.

‘Let’s get the fuck out of here,’ I whispered,
Only to see her crying
With her eyes wide open.

To Write

Is to be in the dark reading a picture book,
The lances and swords of the invisible horsemen
Piercing our heart, dragging tattered scraps of our mind
Through the bare spring branches.

We enter a coal mine by way of a tattered rope.
We burn wax, and pieces of our hair, for light.
Blindfolded, we grope for a cat made of solid opal.
Finally, something!

Thinking we have found truth, we ding a small bell
Which sounds like a barbershop door opening
For a cavalcade of cockroaches.
When we get to the surface, we hold four yellow feathers
From the corpse of the miner’s canary.

Nothing Ever Happens in a Ghost Town

The cancelled postal stamp told war stories.
The wastepaper basket turned Hamlet into a musical.
The magic mirror, who was going blind,
Told us the secret to Cinderella’s perfume.
The mountain-maker had better things to do.

The potted plant, as always, drank too much.
Lips so loosened, he talked about his days
In a doctor’s waiting room, shuffling the sick
Like so many crumpled cards.

When it came to be my turn, I ate a pear.
Everyone was impressed, even
The two-headed coin, who was also incredulous.
Then I talked about my first love,
And the room shook with laughter.
We all became old friends overnight.

Accidental Photographs

Angels never sleep alone.

I was lying on my back, suspended
On the complacent earth. It was cloudy.
I was noticing how the clouds, in drifting,
Looked awfully like familiar faces,
Turning, to leave.

The cold wind tasted sweet, like embryonic wine.
It whispered to me, something,
Then blew away, without explaning.

It was cold, like a fire that had run its course.
The cry of a bird sounded, like a sleeptalker
From across the twin bed.

A leaf, unattached, floated so just up.
It may have been beginning to rain.

I went inside, and relit last night’s fire with pages torn from a cracked calendar. I drank the remainder of the wine, and I crawled back to the twin bed, and I slept.

His Father Didn't Want a Funeral

With the eyedrops in, he looked
Like he was crying, looking out onto
A sea of immobile buses
With his eyes closed.

The wind had picked up,
As if its father had just died.
We watched the old men
Who sat like pieces of
A disassembled watch,

Each of them wearing a red scarf,
As though it was their birthday.

The tears rolling down his face
As he held his bags,
Carefully packed for the long ride away

The Encroaching Silence

The grasses keep quiet, sharing no secrets,
Though they hold many. The man with the sunglasses,
And the birds with the black heads,
Whistle, as though to appear nonchalant.

I can’t keep my hands steady.

The park is growing still. Even the ants,
With their snowmen bodies,
Have packed up, have taken back
Their pieces of a broken feast
To the queen, who has a milky eye.

I sit, shifting, on a bench.

Night approaches with a rumble
Not unlike the sound of a jet engine,
Turned off for unknown reasons.

The tree watches a silent movie,
Laughing to itself, crying to itself,
And never showing it.

Memory's Yellow Fingernail

The criss-cross wicker, worn taut by the long conversations
With so many imaginary guests.
The brown hat on the floor, busy dispensing dust,
Lying more than half-forgotten
After such an off-putting bus ride.

The trickling faucet, tired from keeping perfect time
To so many sleepless midnights.
A yellowed poster of a slowly aging film star,
His eyes half-filled with a small amount of wonder
And much bemusement.

In the cupboard is a brass key,
The heart-shaped lock for which
I no longer have, though
The neighbors in 5C laugh often
And fill the hallway with the smells
Of simmering tomatoes:
I suspect theft.

All Our Yesterdays

Father writes textbooks,
Big thick fat ones littered with Greek.
Mother knits, her criss-crossing needles
Keeping you awake
Long after you reintroduce yourself
To the almond darkness.

You imagine princes with sharp swords
Dancing a jig. You imagine them laughing.
You think of their hats, covered
With the feathers of a dead bird.

*

In days past,
You would have been a fruit vendor.
You love papayas
(Did they have those back then?)
And pineapples remind you
Of a love you might have.

At night, you sing yourself to bed
Then sleepwalk to opera houses.
Every one of your friends is someone else.
Nobody breathes.

*

Your mornings go the same way, usually.
The sleeptalker from afar the twin bed
Mumbles something about blue moons,
And you fall back asleep for two days.
Then your eggs are getting cold.

There are no trees where you live.
You mow your own lawn,
Imagining each blade to be
A one-half inch soldier
Off to war,
And you their barber.

*

You have a mirror you have never looked at,
In a similar room. You eat mangos at odd hours,
The juice dripping down your rough chin,
Staining the current pages
Of your yellowed King Arthur fable,
All the while being reminded
Of someone else, met in a dream.