Category: Poems & poem-like things

~ after Paula Rego, “The Dance” (1988)

So late in the season, so blue
on this beach pearled by the moon—

and still it seems I haven’t learned
how not to be so stiff, or what it takes

to be taken into these circles that move
with apparent easy regard— how everyone’s

hand slips so easily into another’s, how
each seems to know perfectly the role

they should play. The woman’s gold-sheathed
hip pleats into the man’s, and then a child

flowers in that space between them. Soon the child
herself grows into mother, into crone. Above them all,

only the ramparts of the old fortress seem un-
changed. But the one that holds herself apart lifts

one edge of her dress as if testing its weight:
she can still choose, can’t she? She can twirl

in silence, observe how the silks of her dress
open and float like a parachute in the wind.

Decades later, and still
I arrow toward you, even if only
in the mind— my flint pieces,
chipped from this lifetime

of toil: some sides dull, some
burnished to the sharpest they
will ever be. All these birds
resting at the hem of the river,

picking through bittercress
and spurge, wild garlic, white
clover: how often must they leave
and return, leave and return,

that karmic cycling
the price of whatever stillness
any one of them craved while rowing
through the long, blind stretches.

Like them I raise my voice
mournfully, asking why it should be
taken for a kind of mistake or failure
to desire rest; to want the shimmer

of silence that means only welcome or
absolution or release. But what kind
of love keeps asking for more than what
a body can carve out of itself to give?

It’s the season of the holiday
office party, where the buffet

tables are decorated with foil-
wrapped plastic pots of poinsettia

that will be raffled off as door
prizes at the end of the afternoon;

where the crab dip is still good,
and the cold shrimp platters with

cocktail sauce, though the egg rolls
look overly soaked in their own facial

oils. Everyone’s talking about
the grading they still need to do,

or about the Thursday we all lost
because someone called in a bomb

threat and the entire campus
shut down so the police and Feds

could go to work to try and sniff out
whether it was real or a prank. But

everything is real: much too real.
A colleague says she has two rubber

door stops she carries all the time
in her purse, to slide under the class-

room door at any hint of danger from
outside. Another says she’s read

that more than half the college
population in North America today

is on some kind of psychotropic
medication— all of which makes

for less than cheerful conversation
by the cheese tray. Meanwhile, no one

seems interested in the drink tickets;
instead, they’re trying to get rid

of them, all while also navigating
the tricky protocols of social banter.

It’s hard enough that most feel socially
awkward, despite their sense of worldly

or academic accomplishment. What to do
when you can’t talk about the weather

anymore, or ask again about someone’s
holiday plans? But then you’re mortified

when you ask what your colleague’s daughter
is doing now, having forgotten that she’s

taken some time off from college to step back
from the pressure. But all is saved when

the university photographer comes along; orders
everyone to come closer, hold the pose, smile.

Maybe snow by Sunday, wind strong
enough to spiral away a balloon held
loosely in a child’s hand… Not that one
sees many balloons in children’s hands

nowadays, unless they’re popping them
in games on their phones. The local
grocery store used to have a little area
beside the fake cacti and potpourri bundles

with a shell or sand dollar— where thin,
stretched membranes of helium-filled petroleum
byproduct in pastel shades bobbed against
the ceiling. In a true nor’easter or hurricane,

all the ships in this navy town pull up anchor
and head far out to sea. Half the population
rushes to the stores to panic buy milk, eggs;
beer, whisky, water. The other half boards up

their houses before racing against the clock
to leave town. Last time, we actually got
an evacuation order. I stood for about five
minutes in the middle of the room, unable to form

any coherent thought about what one could possibly
fit in a box or stow in the trunk of the car to take—
where? Not any amount of money in the world can stop
the inevitable plunge into endgame. Still, I stashed

my house keys in the bottom of my backpack, passport
and important papers ready in ziplock bags. All the bells
and chains, all these things we call possessions, piled
in closets and just waiting to get soaked or decimated.

Don’t get me wrong— I love any whiff of a good sale,
the price tag showing up under scrutiny to have lost
one or two digits. Between that and lounging in a bath
with a book to keep the encroachments away, I long

of course to take a trip somewhere preferably
without noisy train terminals, without headache-
inducing muzak, or bills and memos and bills. I want
to just throw these in the fire to forget. I don’t

want to know the future, really. Or who’s
going to call soon. I want to bite into a bright
red apple and then another, and not have to bear
the blame for a whole world going to ruin.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Snack.

banal, Tagalog: adj. 1. holy; 2. virtuous; 3. blessed; 4. spiritual

Thin line between mundane
and divine, between the holy and

the nondescript. In other words,
slip on a halo made of bronze

or a gold-leafed garment and
the barefoot peasant cradling

an animal, the boy in the fields
talking to the doves, become

saints. Some days, the light
shining through the curtains is

aloof and foreign. Other times,
it pours into the cup and

spills over into the saucer;
and you pick it up and drink

from it knowing it both is and
isn’t more than what it is.