gold and frankincense and myrrh.
William bought a Russian icon
for his roommate: angel, horn,
lily, dove, and seated girl—"To
you a baby will be born."
Suzy wonders if this handmaid
crops up in religious porn.
Suzy thought of Robert writing.
Suzy thinks of William bound.
Suzy thought of Robert reading
to himself without a sound.
Suzy thinks that Bill's the hottest
son of man for miles around.
Suzy wants his what and why. She
wants his when and wants it now.
Suzy wants his where and whether.
Suzy wants his who—and how.
Suzy wants a new communion:
bread and wine and I and Thou.
Suzy Zeus is mad about him
(let her sing it in the rain!)—
crazy for her handsome sailor
(spin and twirl, a weathervane!).
Suzy Zeus is full of feelings.
Suzy Zeus is feeling sane.
SUZY MULLS IT OVER
Suzy Zeus knows guys are shallow.
Suzy Zeus knows life is short.
Bill says let the field lie fallow,
bring provisions to the fort.
Suzy Zeus says ride the storm out.
Bill says shelter here in port.
Suzy wants a whole new haircut.
Suzy wants a special gown.
Suzy wants to wear silk stockings
and a boa and a crown.
Bill wears jeans and cotton T-shirts.
Bill is calming Suzy down.
Suzy hears but doesn't listen.
Suzy looks but doesn't see.
Suzy Zeus is like a chipmunk.
Bill is stiller, like a tree.
Bill knows how to stop and notice,
sit (or stand), and breathe, and be.
Suzy needs to slow her talking:
slow her teeth and tongue and lips.
Suzy needs to slow her walking:
toes and ankles, knees and hips.
Suzy needs to slow her radar:
slow the sweep and slow the blips.
Suzy watches Robert blessing,
bowing down, diluting wine.
Suzy tries to be a grape and
think of Jesus as her vine.
Tries to be an upright sheep, be
graceful as she waits in line.
Suzy's stance is so unsteady.
Suzy's grip is none too strong.
Suzy's feeling so unready.
Suzy's feeling so, so wrong.
Maybe this is just too heady.
This week's service is so long.
SUZY MAKES AN EFFORT TO
APPEAR PATIENT
Suzy Zeus is trying softball.
Suzy's trying macramé.
At first base and tied in knots, she's
at a loss for what to say.
All that she can think is, Will he?
All that she can do is pray.
Falling in makes love sound deep. A
vat. Or is it more an art?
Suzy's feeling scared and shaky
as she watches something start.
Suzy feels like someone's playing
table tennis with her heart.
Suzy pushes, pushes harder,
wonders where she wants to get.
Suzy isn't sure what's wrong, but
something hasn't happened yet.
Why is Suzy so unhappy?
Why is Suzy so upset?
Suzy tries to sit and wait for
matters slowly to unfurl.
Not o'ernight a grain of sand in
oyster doth become a pearl.
Suzy doesn't need a guy to
tell her she's a pretty girl.
Bill is loaning Suzy books to
look at while she's on the train.
Bill is making Suzy tapes, and
Bill is causing Suzy pain.
Suzy falls asleep to Follies
and the sound of driving rain.
SUZY MAKES AN EFFORT TO
AVOID VIOLENCE
Suzy wants to take him sailing
just to smack him with the boom.
Suzy may just need to leave him
drowning in his elbow room.
Suzy wants to bean him with The
Book of] by Harold Bloom.
Suzy grants him room for elbows.
Suzy grants him room for knees.
Throw in houses while you're at it—
swing sets, cars, a couple trees.
He can find some other girlfriend.
Let her search for birds and bees.
Suzy has his number. Baby,
Suzy has his full address.
But how William thinks about her,
Suzy can't begin to guess.
Suzy, none too good at courting,
only knows the full-court press.
SUZY RETREATS
Suzy went beyond Poughkeepsie—
Suzy went to Holy Cross.
Looked and listened for the Lord, 'cause
Suzy knows the Lord's the boss.
Suzy went to shake her innards,
keep her soul from growing moss.
People try to contact God there.
People try the herbal teas.
People listen to their heartbeats,
to the wind through groves of trees.
Sometimes in the silence they
remember where they left their keys.
Suzy gazed across the Hudson
at a mansion on a bluff,
trudged through trees and wet her knees—she
had to put on all new stuff.
Suzy's going to dance her praying,
like King David, in the buff.
Suzy met a handsome monk there.
Suzy met an aging nun.
Suzy asked the Holy Spirit—
and the Father, and His Son—
how to tell her own unconscious
from the Transcendental One.
When an insight comes to Suzy—
what to wear, or what to do—
could it be a gift from God, or
is it her? (They're not all true.)
Is the voice divine or human?
Suzy Zeus has not a clue.
Ancient Greeks, with nine to choose from,
sipped their ouzo, heard their muse.
Suzy wonders, was that real, or
was it maybe just the booze?
Suzy hears a thought. His roommate
isn't just his roommate, Suze.
CHAPTER 7
Suzy in Hell
SUZY CONSIDERS THE SITUATION
Suzy wants to kick his head in.
Suzy wants to hear him scream.
Suzy wants to lacerate him,
whack him with an iron beam.
Suzy's going to get revenge. New
ways occur in every dream.
Never last, or limp, or lazy,
always first, and fast, and fun,
now she's boiling, out for blood and
tears and sweat and number one.
Wishes she could get some bullets.
Wishes that she had a gun.
William stands beside his boyfriend.
By his boyfriend will he stay.
William stands to sing the hymns. He
sits to listen, kneels to pray.
How can William live without her?
She can change him off of gay.
At St. Jude's this balmy morning,
William's got a front-row seat.
Even way back by the organ
Suzy Zeus can feel his heat.
William's boyfriend looks like Ringo.
William's boyfriend can't compete.
Suzy Zeus is barely breathing,
still as stonework, mad and mean.
Suzy bows to sing the Sanctus.<
br />
Suzy's face goes gray, then green.
In her mind she tosses matches
into pools of gasoline.
William's boyfriend is a nebish.
William's boyfriend is a gnome.
Men can kiss in backstreet bars, but
men can never make a home.
William wants her. He's washed-up: a
Greenwich Village Ethan Frome.
SUZY CONSIDERS JUSTICE
Suzy's served the homeless homefries,
got them warm and got them fed.
Suzy's volunteered with kids. A
Softball hit her in the head.
Suzy Zeus deserves attention.
Knows she should go back to bed.
Suzy Zeus is all for justice:
"As ye sow, so shall ye reap."
Hell was built for such as William—
men who dare make Suzy weep.
Suzy needs a team of lawyers.
Suzy needs a night of sleep.
Suzy's futon's full and fluffy.
Suzy's nightie's just like silk.
On the table by her bed, she's
got a little book by "Rilke"—
very deep, and good for sleep. She'll
count some sheep or warm some milk.
In the kitchen, whiskey sours,
sour grapes, and sauerkraut.
Suzy swimming, like a salmon,
upstream, driving, leaping out.
No, she knows she's hooked on William—
more like some dumb rainbow trout.
SUZY CONSIDERS MURDER
Suzy's living in a fishbowl,
in a fishbowl that's a font.
Living, through imagination,
what she's not supposed to want.
Feeling flattened, like a flounder.
Like those fans at Altamont.
William says it's called committed—
just like married, but for gays.
William says he's been acquitted,
says that Suze was just a phase.
Surely he's not that dimwitted . . .
Can't he feel her blood ablaze?
Suzy Zeus is his all over.
Suzy Zeus is his, all right.
Melting, boiling, steaming, Suzy's
glowing with a liquid light.
Suzy Zeus is his forever—
well, forever here tonight.
William's broken, like a record.
William's broken like a horse.
William's broken like a vacuum.
Get this man a gay divorce.
William sputters dots and dashes—
much like Samuel F. B. Morse.
Suzy's sure he's hiding something.
Suzy's sure—but God knows why.
Suzy, in the church hall kitchen,
hears him heave a heavy sigh.
William isn't going to kiss her.
Isn't even going to try.
SUZY CONSIDERS HER ROLE
Suzy's chest is cracked and hollow.
Suzy's muscles ache and strain.
Suzy's insides lie around her
on an open, windswept plain.
Suzy is an empty pelvis
and a burnt, exploded brain.
Suzy cannot walk on water.
Can't turn water into wine.
Can't make fishes into bread loaves.
Jesus can. In God's design,
God's the center. Is the church the
bride of Christ, or Frankenstein?
Suzy's always been important—
never some old also-ran.
Suzy's kept the whole world going,
since before the world began.
Where would Louie's be without her?
Who would take her shift?
Joanne.
SUZY CONSIDERS HERSELF LUCKY
Suzy Zeus saw Harry Sunday,
on the subway, in a suit.
Working on the Internet with
students, making loads of loot
teaching them communications.
(That, she thinks, does not compute.)
Harry had a better haircut.
Harry had a bigger place.
Suzy Zeus had vanished from his
daily life without a trace.
Suzy's going to write a novel:
Stupidheads in Cyberspace.
Harry'd learned a foreign language.
Harry'd found a lovely bride.
Harry'd opened up a business.
Harry'd traveled far and wide.
Harry'd seen her back at Louie's.
Harry'd seen her classified.
Harry cannot live without her.
Needs her there, a constant prop.
Look how hard he tried to hide that
minus Suzy, he's a flop.
Suzy sauntered from the train as
if she hadn't missed her stop.
SUZY CONSIDERS SUICIDE
Someone's standing in the bathroom,
staring into Suzy's eyes.
Someone with the look of voices
Suzy doesn't recognize.
Someone living in the mirror.
Some fat face that cries and cries.
Suzy's skull is packed and pounding.
Suzy's teeth are shaking loose.
Suzy's hands are slow and tremble,
covering the glass with mousse.
Suzy studied knots one summer.
Suzy doesn't know a noose.
Suzy feels a veil get lifted.
Suzy hears a veil get torn.
Then the truth lies, pinned, before her,
stark and struggling, woken, worn.
Hunger pangs are all that's certain,
all we're given when we're born.
SUZY TAKES A WALK
Suzy's crouching on the sidewalk.
Suzy's crawling in the street.
Suzy's weaving through the blackness,
catching headlights with her feet.
Suzy's tears are warm and tasteless.
Suzy's blood is hot and sweet.
CHAPTER 8
Suzy Committed
SUZY COMES TO
Rolling on a padded stretcher.
Someone says the taxi veered.
So, has she been hearing voices?
No, she thinks, just thinking weird.
Suzy's doctor wears a sweater,
brogues, a bookcase, and a beard.
SUZY CONFUSED
Suzy's roommates stare and mumble
on their creepy plastic cots.
Suzy's locked on Ten West A, a
safety zone ("no sharps, no hots").
Pencils at the nursing station,
no real vases, flowerpots.
Trying pills in sunset colors.
Some look like a smiley face.
Suzy's doctor shows her pictures
(modern artwork: messy ink).
Asks her first to count by sevens.
Panthers, bison, bats, a moth.
Suzy's thoughts are slow and sluggish,
Suzy's brain waves long and tall.
Asks her what the pictures look like.
Backward, down from eighty-one.
Suzy doesn't feel like moving.
There's no outlets in the wall.
SUZY CONFINED
Group is where they welcome Charlie.
Hair like wire, eyes like plates.
Calls himself a whirling dervish.
Says he's full of altered states.
Into Suzy's room at midnight
Charlie sneaks to read her Yeats.
Charlie's hushed and too excited.
Charlie's voice is moist and deep.
Charlie has a pair of glasses
like the headlights of a jeep.
Suzy wants to say good night now.
Suzy wants to go to sleep.
Love has built a castle somewhere.
Words come faster, lower, more.
Charlie speaks of Jove and Jesus
,
heaven as "the farther shore."
Charlie brings up tears of joy and,
sobbing, rolls around the floor.
SUZY CONNECTS
Suzy Zeus got off the unit.
Said she needed space to pray.
In the chapel, Suzy read where
Jesus said "I'm in the way."
Then the priest arrived and blessed them.
Had them all sing "Day by Day."
Suzy feels a little better.
Suzy feels a little worse.
Suzy picks a favorite doctor.
Jim is Suzy's favorite nurse.
Jim thought church was really boring.
"Day by Day" has just one verse.
SUZY CONVALESCES
Every day she gets a menu—
dried-up pork, or dried-up steak?
Usually she asks for chicken.
Usually it's Shake 'n Bake.
Jim starts saving Suzy Jell-O,
squares of crumble, squares of cake.
Suzy's told to draw a picture:
"My Imagination Land."
Suzy has to sway in rhythm,
dance a color on demand.
Suzy bumps and grinds as purple.
Suzy draws a sun, and sand.
Jim says can he have the picture.
When she's discharged. Don't forget.
Jim says why's the beach towel empty.
Suzy hasn't got there yet.
Jim is into gene pools. Jim is
into genealogy.
Says that he's half Irish, which is
good to know, and good to be.
Says that Zeus is Greek, and that's the
reason Suzy loves the sea.
Suzy gets a pen from Jim. Draws
in a tiny ballpoint jet.
CHAPTER 9
Astroland
There's a loose in your walk
and a long in your bones
There's a scratch in your laugh
I'd like to own— own— own— own— own—
Donnez-moi your secretest secret
Donnez-moi your privatest part
Donnez-moi a new way of wishing
and I'll donnez-vous a place in my heart
There's a look in your smile
And the crook of your knee
Suzy Zeus Gets Organized Page 4