Dispatch from the Future

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Dispatch from the Future Page 6

by Leigh Stein


  like this.

  DISPATCH FROM THE FUTURE

  I am wearing my librarian costume.

  Yes, I saved it from the fires.

  In the future, when we say antiquity, we mean

  state fairs and musicals. We mean affairs

  of state, amusement. You left me a message

  to say you were sad but you understood

  which state I was coming from and I’m wondering

  now which state you meant. West of us?

  Or did you mean a state of mind?

  I don’t have states of mind, I only have sweater sets.

  I get dressed up and then I undress. I’d show you,

  but this is a dispatch. I’m the dispatcher.

  The calls come into my call center and

  it’s my job to say, What’s the future

  of your emergency?

  Our new state flag is an aurochs—

  not to celebrate extinction, but

  to celebrate the wild part of us that died

  in 1627. They moved her skull to Stockholm.

  I wear my state flag like a dress.

  DISPATCH FROM THE FUTURE

  In the future, you live in Switzerland

  and you come to see us sometimes

  but I wish you could see us now.

  We’re certainly missable.

  We’re certainly sexy

  in a way that only gets better

  with age. As a child,

  I was not even a little bit sexy.

  I lived at a boarding school

  and I owned only one sweater,

  two cassette tapes, three pieces

  of string, and all my organs.

  Were they keeping us alive

  for our poetry?

  Of course not.

  They were keeping us alive

  for our lungs.

  They were keeping our mothers

  from us.

  The closer I get to completion,

  the closer I want to hold you

  in the make believe moonlight.

  PLEASE HANDLE YOUR CHILDREN

  When I see my one particular enemy I am filled with laughter

  and the good times, as if I do not know he sees through me

  as, how do you say, the fog? Do you know this reconciliation,

  as moderated by the United Nations? I thought we could

  send our representatives in the form of poets.

  My poet would have this letter to say, All the leaves

  have trees. His poet would have this letter to say,

  My client no longer wishes to see your client except

  as the fog. I am that child behind you on this airplane.

  I am screaming to hear the sound of my voice.

  Someone put me on regular sleep schedule please.

  Someone else tell my enemy I know he sees me.

  Then forget representatives. Let us send ghosts

  to act out our, how do you say, erotic dance?

  I know I am a child because I have been

  to more bar mitzvahs than funerals.

  I know I am a child because in the fields

  of ocean out the airplane window, I see

  fear. Do you want to be knowing

  if this is based on true story?

  When I see my one particular enemy

  I want to lie down and, how do you say,

  give it up. I am his enemy but he is not

  mine. I am a child. Please to handle me.

  REVISIONISM

  Listening to you in your sleep, pretending

  this is just as good as if I were asleep myself,

  the tender evening behind us like a jet trail

  that wants to be read as a cloud and it looks

  like a tiger tonight. I’m pretending your arms

  are your arms, which is to say I’m not

  pretending they belong to someone else,

  good for me, but I’m still not above keeping track

  of the anniversaries of everything I’m brokenhearted

  over and this goes for men, departures

  and arrivals, weddings I was not invited to

  for good reason, achievements of my enemies.

  I’m thinking of rewriting history so instead of jealousy

  my major themes are revenge and justice, and

  I’m going to the airport so we can miss each other more,

  because I want a future to look forward to,

  another new year already, noisemakers

  and dry champagne and songs I know

  the words to and the way you looked at me

  at the costume party: I want another chance

  for second chances. I never make the same mistake

  more than four or twelve times, but enough

  about you, tell me more about you.

  DISPATCH FROM THE FUTURE

  Someone told me that my life would be easy

  because my face looks like this.

  Did I win any prizes this week? No.

  And guess what else? I don’t belong to you.

  I hate to be the one

  to tell you, but phones are no longer in use.

  Please be patient while we try and fix this.

  We thank you for your patience.

  We’re putting your patience on our daily

  gratitude list. We’re getting our harmonicas

  and we’re standing in a row

  in our farmer’s wife dresses.

  Dispatch from the future:

  I have all the time in the world

  and I don’t want to spend any of it.

  Dispatch from the future:

  when I say I want to take off all my clothes

  I don’t mean what if we had sex. I mean listen

  to the sublime: sun on my shoulders, God in my ear.

  Dispatch from the future:

  life is only too short if you are having a good time.

  ADDENDUM TO THE PREVIOUS DISPATCH

  I just remembered every single thing I’ve ever done

  and now I’m embarrassed. I want my afterlife

  guaranteed, so I have ordered a tomb built at Giza

  for my remains. They are as follows: all my clothes,

  my harmonica, my body, letters to my enemies.

  The dictionary says you can refer to everyone

  who will be alive in the future as prosperity so

  Dear Prosperity, I used to live in the future,

  too, but I fear the past is a brushfire

  and I am a prairie. Now that I have what I asked for

  I see I should have been more specific.

  REMEMBER YOUR FUTURE

  True: time travel is tricky, but backwards

  is easier than forwards because at least you know

  the way. In my memory it is always autumnal

  and my weight approximately seven stones. Birds

  fly in droves, dervishes to their bird god

  on their way to Florida, and in their memories

  it seems always a season for leaving. I watch them

  hover above the temple where the police

  officer stands guard each Sabbath. I watch them

  while I listen to someone tell me about weddings

  where he comes from, how the groom must choose

  his bride blindfolded, from among her friends and

  sisters, feeling their bodies one by one down the line,

  checking for familiars. When I say choose I mean

  remember. When I say remember I can’t forget

  Konstantin, how he asked to carry my purse

  through the arboretum in July and let me know

  his mother is widowed in Kiev, though his father

  is still alive. As far as he knows. As far as he can throw

  a stone. When I time travel, I go to Oregon and skip

  stones with the boyfriend I left for a map, the sister

  who may one day stand in line at my weddi
ng

  to be caressed by the blind. True: when the seasons

  change, I get like this. It is a little like gymnastics

  and a little like a pelvic examination:

  uncomfortable, routine, and sometimes

  my life is at stake. I used to have a friend

  who got like this too, someone to go to yoga

  with at the end of the world, but then

  she found god and alternative methods

  of contraception and now we speak

  in halting cadence, like women

  from different tribes, separated

  by a river, a river filled with stones,

  a river you could only get to if you

  were from Kansas and thought you could fly

  around the waistline of the world,

  until you crashed somewhere

  in the Pacific, never to be found.

  I feel autumnal tonight. Let’s go

  to the future, where our bird god

  lives, and ask for stronger wings.

  WANT AD FROM THE FUTURE

  I just realized I am out of currency, food, and time.

  I am, how do you say, bereft of necessity.

  Not only you were at that party, but your wife

  was dressed like a board game and she spoke

  to me of every thing that matters not at all.

  Want ad from the future: we are seeking

  anonymity. Birds came. They told me

  I would be more happier without a face.

  I said but what about these enemies.

  The birds said even with no face

  your enemies will know you

  by your body. I said let us

  get rid of it then. I am,

  how do you say, not having

  a body anymore. Hello

  from the future, where

  we are seeking reasons

  to keep our clothes on.

  Except me. I have no shoulders.

  I fed them to this dingo.

  I’VE WRITTEN ALL OVER THIS IN HOPES YOU CAN READ IT

  Welcome to sparkly tomorrowland.

  We have prepared this room for your arrival.

  We hope you like the view.

  We hope you like the Nile.

  Birds came; they told us a mournful

  cadence and a flustered two-step

  is your kind of Friday night and

  we said we’d never seen

  this kind of trembling before.

  Blame the colonizers, the birds

  said, before flying off to Oaxaca,

  never to be seen again. Yes,

  there are people here, but only if you

  want there to be people

  here. We can cater. Our people

  are puppets and our puppets

  are incredibly lifelike, like people.

  Most of our staff will not bother you,

  but anyone who does we guarantee

  will be hot, and covered in spring grasses.

  No regrets. And no hope either.

  We pride ourselves on this:

  somewhere, it is already tomorrow.

  DISPATCH FROM THE FUTURE

  In the future, we pay our debts with blood.

  Always more where that came from.

  And the white noise sounds like sun.

  Lily, I’m gonna run

  and run

  until I’m back where I started.

  I’m gonna invert my body, bathe

  my brain in blood.

  This is a devotional.

  Lily, don’t cry.

  This is a devotional.

  Listen to the sun.

  Isn’t there some Eden we can meet in?

  Bring your prayer

  to your third eye.

  In the future, we temper our irreverence

  with beauty. What a stunner, we tell

  our ancestors, retroactively.

  I used to have to try so hard to look

  like I wasn’t trying and now look:

  I’m bending to the altar wall.

  This is a devotional for the living.

  Lily, don’t fear the future.

  I’m in it. We’re here.

  DISPATCH FROM THE FUTURE

  In the future, we are tender.

  We temper our irreverence

  with intimacy.

  It’s, like, slightly wonderful.

  We pronounce magic

  like we’re from Michigan,

  and all our mothers continue

  mothering, like harbors,

  indefinitely.

  There’s a sense of indeterminacy

  with mothering and we take

  turns standing like breakwaters.

  Life is dangerous, wild, and yet

  we welcome it.

  We’re in therapy.

  It’s called water.

  DISPATCH FROM THE FUTURE

  Yes, I am writing to you from there.

  Yes, in the future, we have excitement.

  Also: a forgiveness economy.

  All IOUs are tied to balloon

  strings and released into the atmosphere

  in an environmentally responsible way.

  Lunch is free for everybody. Lunch

  is peanut butter sandwiches, sliced

  on the diagonal, by mothers. We are sparkly.

  Everything is pleasure, but we are

  also acutely empathetic, like children.

  When one starts crying, another answers.

  A fugue state.

  We are sparkly but we also remember

  what it was like before we were. We can

  relate to our past selves: dull like mercury,

  alluvial soil, just after the earthquake.

  It’s hard to know which disaster to expect, yet

  no one ever thinks, I don’t want to do anything

  except sleep forever maybe. Yes, in the future

  we are prepared for what we cannot prepare

  for. We are sparkly for a reason, our country

  depends on us for a kind of warning entertainment.

  In the future we never make pilgrimages to disaster

  sites, we lay flowers on the brows of the living.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Thank you to the editors of the following journals, in which some of these poems first appeared: Absent, Bat City Review, Can We Have Our Ball Back?, Catch Up, Diagram, h-ngm-n, horseless review, InDigest Magazine, Jellyroll, LIT, Low Rent, MiPOesias, No Tell Motel, Nöo Journal, Ocho, OH NO, Sixth Finch, Softblow, and Washington Square.

  Many poems also appeared in these chapbooks: How to Mend a Broken Heart with Vengeance (Dancing Girl Press), Summer in Paris (Mondo Bummer), and The Future Comes to Those who Wait (Grey Book Press).

  The poem that begins “In the future, you live in Switzerland,” takes much of its content from a letter Elizabeth Hildreth’s five-year-old daughter wrote to their Swiss foreign exchange student, Julia.

  The poem that begins “In the future, we pay our debts with blood,” is dedicated with love to Lily Ladewig.

  The title “I’ve Written All Over This in Hopes You Can Read It” came to me in an email from Nate Pritts.

  “Epistolaphobia” is a word Edna St. Vincent Millay invented to describe the feeling of being unable to write letters.

 

 

 


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