Jun '02 [Home] Poetry Distance from the Tree

~ B ~ Macanudo Vicki Hudspith Star Wars: Episode One Luisa Igloria On Mornings After Nicholas Johnson The Next Funeral Ray Will Attend Dave King Seventh Inning Stretch Mark Larsen Shadow Boxer Discards and Possibilities Richard Levine

Elegy for a Bird House Diana Manister Never Darken The Father Ghost Tim McVeigh's Father Philip Miller Haunts Mark Nickels "Alice ordered me to be made" (excerpt) Alice Notley Contributor Notes ~A~    ~C~

~ . ~ . ~ Macanudo Vicki Hudspith Once I saw a man Hold an entire bus at bay With a lit cigar Indignant ladies pointed at the 'No Smoking' sign And moved to the front of the bus The driver barked into his mirror "Hey buddy, you can't smoke that in here!" But the man only waved his cigar like a smoking tree stump Sat back, and blew a mighty puff into the air A really good cigar, is rolled carefully By ancient tobacco stained hands Is smoked after dinner on Saturday night It is something men do When they feel good When life is okay It is a sign of privilege Of not being hunted by other men Or haunted by women with Windex bottles A good cigar is not stinky In a ventilated room the bouquet Is as good as sage burned by a medicine man And clears a room of unwanted spirits When my father smoked Cuban cigars Kruschev hadn't yet pounded the table with his shoe The CIA hadn't tried to make Castro's beard fall off At the end of the week there was nothing He liked better Than pushing back and filling the room with a fragrant fog Cigars have all the optimism of the 50's And none of the cynicism of the 60's Their richly wafting aroma is relaxing A peacetime ceremony A moment of consensus That pulls us together In the spicy haze In the warmth filling the room ~ . ~ Star Wars: Episode One Luisa Igloria In the summer of tales set in distant galaxies, worlds link themselves elaborately to ours the way ceremonial garments pile their silk in layers next to the naked body— purple and rose, alternating with hyacinth and gold; the way heavy plaits of hair braid with the sash, darkening over the back like a waterfall. The face, carefully prepared, rises like a disc of ivory above its formal collar. Two blood-red spots balance each other, in the center of each cheek. The lips, drawn as a hybrid bloom: a kind of calligraphy for fullness and trembling imperfection— as if in reminder of the rust that anoints bladed weapons laid in pairs upon the table, broken propeller parts, the long, dismantled torso of a machine changing into different matter. How old the sand is, its colors shifting always from tawny beige to honey and then to bone, over which the child has flown his ship to victory, over which now flies ahead of him the story of the father he will become. Around his shoulders, the hand- maiden shapes a cowl out of a blanket. The mother turns in her sleep. They feel a weak spot, a rending in the atmosphere. Beating under their skinned robes, this too has yet no name. In the summer, we want to remove our clothing, slip into the cooling waters of a stream. It has not yet become that season when the heart could choose to don its darker armor. In the meantime, the heart gives without calculating, risking all— even the smooth pelt of these golden days, so far unmarked by shadow. ~ . ~ On Mornings After Nicholas Johnson Did my father wake like this and wonder where all the cuts and bruises came from, the clutter of debris? Come to with a shutter image of hands reaching for a throat, numb with the vacant silence of his house, the absence of recall, maybe the picture of a woman raising up a kitchen knife, total nonsense? Bad dreams. He drank too much. There was no woman nor any child to answer to his stumbling up, lamp on the floor spilling light across his feet. I know what lit the fire in his brain. His cups crying out to be filled and emptied, the bittersweet search for company. Something that we shared: no familiar footsteps coming up the stairs. (Prior publ.: Poetry Wales) ~ . ~ The Next Funeral Ray Will Attend Dave King Will be his father's, and Ray will address his father's quiet humility and devotion to family. Smiling out at the sprucely-dressed congregation, Ray will feign surprise at their number; he'll say he never knew his father touched so many lives. Really: we always imagined Dad was our secret. He will describe his father's quiet modesty, using all the clichés he can muster, and if he can keep a straight face, he will say his father's romantic life effectively ended with the death of his beloved wife, Ray's mother. I often think some deep and private part of Dad passed with Mom that day—if he can keep a straight face. As Ray continues describing his father in these terms, the ceremony will be interrupted by his sister, herself no stranger to the spotlight. She will have been noticeably struggling to contain herself, and will dash off down the center aisle, her face a mask of ill-concealed hilarity; and her child, remaining behind in the pew, won't know whether to appear solemn or similarly overcome, and will be unable to explain the gag. How many times, Ray will say, did the old man tell me his golden hours were spent with us? Afterwards, Ray will stand in the chancel, shaking hands and pretending he's done nothing odd; and if he's lucky enough to be remembered at all, this anecdote will be an element of his legend: a testament to his gift for the well-timed fuck-you gesture. But if, as seems more likely, he's not remembered, then judgment will rest with his father's well-dressed colleagues, who, waiting confidently for a decent memorial to the cunning businessman they remember from São Paolo or Tokyo or Munich, will probably put the whole thing down to the case of another reasonable fellow screwed by his own kids. (Prior publ.: Pierogi Press) [Dave King's poem, "Crocus," (May '01) was a Big City Lit 2001 Pushcart Prize nominee. Eds.] ~ . ~ Seventh Inning Stretch Mark Larsen You're not gone yet, but when you are, I will sprinkle your ashes over softball fields in Central Park. Do you remember telling me that's what you wanted? We sat on a bench, father and son keeping score on a Saturday afternoon. Someone hit a shot so far over the left fielder's head that it rolled to a stop at your feet. You picked it up and threw it back into the game. I realized then you did not throw a ball that well. I could probably throw a ball farther, and harder, than you. An inning later you turned to me and said, "When I die I want them to sprinkle my ashes over these fields." The 'them' you referred to will be me. I've never had to sprinkle ashes before. I wonder how you do it. Perhaps it's a bit like adding salt to soup, or barbecue sauce to ribs—no recipes. I'll bend down, pick up some infield dirt, taste it, and know I have just enough of you in the ground. ~ . ~ Shadow Boxer Richard Levine My father raised me to believe everything could be changed with one swing. In the first eighteen seconds of his first professional bout, he knocked his opponent unconscious. Fourteen thousand fans on their feet cheered like cicadas sweeping through August trees, for the man with the Star of David on his trunks, dancing foot-to-foot, listening, counting, spiking the air with gloved hands at ten. Madison Square Garden. A Saturday night in New York City. Ringside announcer and reporters trumpeted the story like news of a coronation. He was nineteen. This man, who would be my father and come home every day with freckles the color of rooms he'd painted, would never again look in a mirror and see the promise of that night, scrolled fist-tight in the rest of his life, like the chosen tract of scripture confined in the mezuzah he nailed to our front door jamb. He'd reach up and touch it before entering our apartment and bless his defeated hands with a kiss, though even this reverent devotion could not dismiss the contentiousness of his sparring shadow life. Home and tired of labor he had no grace for, he'd wait for dinner, making of his callused, knob-knuckled hands a cup his broken-nosed face spilled over. Looking like me looking in a store window—my face against the glass pane— he'd begin, in the only way he knew, to train me to better use the footwork, feinting and force that failed him. ~ . There are challenges in writing about fathers. I'm of average size and build, with a measure of grip, but my dad was the size and shape of Pantagruel, with the eyes and compassion of a python. If you get it right, or at least close to right, you're obviously hauling a lot of baggage into the reader's livingroom, so you shouldn't come uninvited, or have a plan for sneaking in. The trick is not to make a lot of banging noises or knock over or break things in the vestibule. Enter with your shoulders back, stomach in—just the way Daddy taught you. Whatever you do, don't let his ghost see you in Groucho Marx posture. Finally, and most obvious: do not break a sweat. One problem I always confront when trying to write parent (or children) poems is avoiding sentimentality. Given the subject, it seems you need to get up close to the sentimental to be successful, like walking up to the edge of a cliff to look, but then show the scene without tipping over. Another pitfall is creating fictitious parents. This can produce good work, but it is, nonetheless, a retreat from the truth. Sometimes this happens because if you are really recreating the emotional pitch between parent(s) and child—that is always dormant under the surface, even after they're under the ground—you find yourself going adolescent all of a sudden and, running to the bathroom, you see that you're breaking out. —RL ~ . Discards and Possibilities Richard Levine My father saw purpose even in what might have been discarded materials every project produced. Sometimes, I thought he found them more interesting than what he'd made: mismatched lengths of two-by-four, jagged-edged scraps of metal, powder-leaking pieces of drywall, Slinkies of wire, crooked nails. With the same exactingly tender and well-muscled hands that made and repaired all we needed, he stored them in what he called his 'Barrel of Possibilities.' I love this story. I need this story, but it's not true. There was no room for such shared industry or guidance anywhere I was raised. This is strict fabrication, a structure of imagination lonesome for a father it assembled from splinters and scraps of longing, from missed chances to close the stubborn, real distances shaped in silence and anger. Father, standing at your gave all the unconstructed words and embraces my children need now, take their discarded place, and I see all possibilities reduced to the father and son I am today. ~ . ~ Elegy for a Bird House Diana Manister I loved a man who built a bird house on Staten Island, a radiance that now has disappeared. The hands of the man were a worker's hands, containing in their muscles and nerves           memories of wires twisted,           boards sanded,           pipes turned and motors taken apart. O house-maker, seed-giver, builder of bright particular things, did the shadow fall here as well           on Staten Island? Did our day end like an old man dying           in a rented room? And will the bird house go under the sea, and the man go under the hill? Will the heart break and the heart fail and the house go under the sea? And will the light that was given be taken again, and the heart go under the hill? What do we do when there is no consolation? In darkness, how are we to see? My father too was a maker, builder of bird houses, doll houses,           transmission-fixer,           valve-adjuster, a radiance that now has disappeared. What can we do when there is no consolation? When the sun falls into the landscape, how are we to see? All the madness and innocence of my love could not save him;           wrenches lie on his bench;           nails of different sizes are organized in bottles in a row. All the madness and innocence of my love           count for nothing. When the shadow falls, the father will go under the hill and the man who is like the father will be taken in darkness, and the light that was given will be taken again, and the house, and the madness, and the love, and bright particular things, will all go under the sea. ~ . ~ Darken Philip Miller Never darken my door again is something no father every really said I suspect to his drunkard son or to his daughter—as it was sweetly said— in the family way which doesn't mean the father's brows didn't furrow, eyes gain a gravity as the shadow fell between him and his offspring—his issue— eyes wide with fear or anger, as the father offered silence, maybe an empty hand waved toward the door before it shut for good ~ . The Father Ghost Philip Miller Usually we go first: I know I did, now years of watching— wife and daughter my only son, the way they fall away just as I did, and I still try to talk some sense in them, work up a heat make hard fists, pitch words into the wind just like in life, I still catch one of them staring all day at nothing, eyes blank as a cock spaniel's: I say out of pure habit: "We need to talk," but he looks right past me; when I block his way he walks through me toward the door, wild as I was headed toward dives and all nighters, one night standers and my daughter I can't even find her from my high perch— oh don't think it's heaven It's just a place to sit forever and not remember, recollect, and there's my old woman still gazing out the windows as if she's on the look out yet for me to wobble home beer bottles clanking on my calves like chains. ~ . Tim McVeigh's Father Philip Miller If he could He'd run away On that Monday morning But he knows He'll be surrounded, Eyes outside, Watching his gate, Inside the dark eye, Of TV screen, The digital clock Glowing in the dark: That something would catch him As he crept out In the dark before dawn Like a convict himself, Looking for a cool cave To find refuge Before, just a glance at his watch, Or at the old mantel clock Still ticking away Tells him it's 7 AM, When hope against hope He'll be alone Looking behind him At the silent house At the familiar old sticks Of furniture, Sitting in their accustomed places And the rooms in the shadows beyond, Every door shut. But if he could On that Monday morning He would slip through the walls Find an empty field And stare at the sky As a child would Naming animals The clouds made Disappearing into one. ~ . ~ Haunts Mark Nickels One day, in fall, a toxin entered into me. I expelled it then, but not before an impress. I sidestepped, shuddered, froze, and turned into a scarab, avoided looking in the mirror, and shaved by touch, and shaved my head. Altogether I became a sliver, a shutter, a shadow in the Prado, a maneuver to become someone about whom nothing was known. I fished, made inexpensive meals for myself, and recorded on a tape broods of cicadas, wastrels, new shelled layabouts with husks, eternal loafers, like the dead, at once companionable, and disinterested. Thinking of the people I had met that day, with love and fear, and up all night to welter in the wake and by the haunt of others, I reckoned the whole thing a haunt: my brain, the world, the diorama clouds, somehow love's hardware damaged, a signal curse of watchers and of waiters, descending in the bitter blood of ancestors, a fold in air I delved out for myself, an envelope to shelter in. When my father, lowered by a winch into the ground, was lowered by a winch into the ground, the others in the family clustered while I stood apart and dealt myself this little wound. At least it has not worsened over time. By indirection I survey dimensions of this spell of otherness, the volume of the violence there, and sourceless grief, self-loathing in a short parade that trails me with its panoply of fireworks, a train of invisible pull-toys clicking, and whirring. I hardly see it anymore, a festival creche for my Brooklyn fire ants. Still, when good things happen, look into my ear: two creatures in the mind still slash and bite each other. But I have weighed these things, and now I work. It is what happiness costs. ~ . ~ "Alice ordered me to be made" (excerpt) Alice Notley .  .  .  I wicked as a lens or wine or legendary queen shimmering lets fall a light tear. Did this ever happen? She who is only a little thing first. The shining wine and pleasuring the heart. Divine salt to lighten the ship, sacro- sanct, we are all held in a single honor, light as the strip. But around my own shelter and beside my black ship I think.                Well.  .  .  .           The sea stood apart rejoicing                she bewitched her shining eyes. Shamefastness and lovely with a veil: pattern- pierced zone tears like a dark running sheer is the heart my love loves me                          Near my father dying in hospital                          April 1975 (From Selected Poems (Talisman, 1993). Reprinted by permission of the author.) ~A~    ~C~   [Home]