Playlist for the Apocalypse

by Rita Dove

  Playlist

  for the

  APOCALYPSE

  Poems

  Rita Dove

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  in memory of my parents

  Contents

  Prose in a Small Space

  Time’s Arrow

  Bellringer

  Lucille, Post-Operative Years

  Family Reunion

  Girls on the Town, 1946

  Eurydice, Turning

  Scarf

  From the Sidelines

  Mirror

  Found Sonnet: The Wig

  Trans-

  Climacteric

  Island

  Vacation

  A·wing´

  After Egypt

  Little Town

  Foundry

  Sarra’s Answer

  Sarra’s Blues

  Aubade: The Constitutional

  Sketch for Terezín

  Orders of the Day

  Transit

  Declaration of Interdependence

  Elevator Man, 1949

  Youth Sunday

  Aubade East

  Trayvon, Redux

  Aubade West

  Naji, 14. Philadelphia.

  Ghettoland: Exeunt

  Spring Cricket

  The Spring Cricket Considers the Question of Negritude

  The Spring Cricket Repudiates His Parable of Negritude

  The Spring Cricket’s Grievance: Little Outburst

  The Spring Cricket Observes Valentine’s Day

  The Spring Cricket’s Discourse on Critics

  Hip Hop Cricket

  Postlude

  A Standing Witness

  Beside the Golden Door

  Your Tired, Your Poor . . .

  Bridged Air

  Giant

  Huddle

  Woman, Aflame

  Mother of Exiles

  Wretched

  Limbs Astride, Land to Land

  World-Wide Welcome

  Imprisoned Lightning

  Send These to Me

  Keep Your Storied Pomp

  The Sunset Gates

  Eight Angry Odes

  The Angry Odes: An Introduction

  Pedestrian Crossing, Charlottesville

  Ode on a Shopping List Found in Last Season’s Shorts

  Insomnia Etiquette

  Ode to My Right Knee

  Anniversary

  Shakespeare Doesn’t Care

  A Sonnet for the Sonnet

  Little Book of Woe

  Soup

  Pearl on Wednesdays

  The Terror and the Pity

  No Color

  Blues, Straight

  Borderline Mambo

  Voiceover

  Rosary

  Green Koan

  Last Words

  This Is the Poem I Did Not Write

  Rive d’Urale

  Mercy

  Wayfarer’s Night Song

  Notes

  Acknowledgments

  Playlist for the Apocalypse

  Prose in a Small Space

  It’s supposed to be prose if it runs on and on, isn’t it? All those words, too many to fall into rank and file, stumbling bare-assed drunk onto the field reporting for duty, yessir, spilling out as shamelessly as the glut from a megabillion-dollar chemical facility, just the amount of glittering effluvium it takes to transport a little girl across a room, beige carpet thick under her oxfords, curtains blowzy with spring—is that the scent of daffodils drifting in?

  Daffodils don’t smell but prose doesn’t care. Prose likes to hear itself talk; prose is development and denouement, anticipation hovering near the canapés, lust rampant in the antipasto—e.g., a silver fork fingered sadly as the heroine crumples a linen napkin in her lap to keep from crying out at the sight of Lord Campion’s regal brow inclined tenderly toward the wealthy young widow . . . prose applauds such syntactical dalliances.

  Then is it poetry if it’s confined? Trembling along its axis, a flagpole come alive in high wind, flapping its radiant sleeve for attention—Over here! It’s me!— while the white spaces (air, field, early morning silence before the school bell) shape themselves around that one bright seizure . . . and if that’s so what do we have here, a dream or three paragraphs? We have white space too; is this music? As for all the words left out, banging at the gates . . . we could let them in, but where would we go with our orders, our stuttering pride?

  Time’s Arrow

  Who is it that can tell me who I am?

  —Shakespeare, King Lear

  You blows who you is.

  —Louis Armstrong

  There are notes between notes, you know.

  —Sarah Vaughan

  Bellringer

  I am as true to that bell as to my God.

  Henry Martin

  I was given a name, it came out of a book—

  I don’t know which. I’ve been told the Great Man

  could recite every title in order on its shelf.

  Well, I was born, and that’s a good thing,

  although I arrived on the day of his passing,

  a day on which our country fell into mourning.

  This I heard over and over, from professors

  to farmers, even duel-scarred students;

  sometimes, in grand company, remarked upon

  in third person—a pretty way of saying

  more than two men in a room means the third

  can be ignored, as I was when they spoke

  of my birth and Mr. Jefferson’s death

  in one breath, voices dusted with wonderment,

  faint sunlight quivering on a hidden breeze.

  I listen in on the lectures whenever I can,

  holding still until I disappear beyond third person—

  and what I hear sounds right enough;

  it eases my mind. I know my appearance

  frightens some of the boys—the high cheeks

  and freckles and not-quite-Negro eyes

  flaring gray as storm-washed skies

  back home; it shames them to be reminded.

  So much for book learning! I nod

  as if to say: Uncle Henry at your service,

  then continue on my way through darkness

  to start the day. This is my place:

  stone rookery perched above

  the citadels of knowledge,

  alone with the bats and my bell,

  keeping time. Up here, molten glory

  brims until my head’s rinsed clear.

  I am no longer a dreadful coincidence

  nor debt crossed off in a dead man’s ledger;

  I am not summoned, dismissed—

  I am the clock’s keeper. I ring in their ears.

  And every hour, down in that

  shining, blistered republic,

  someone will pause to whisper

  Henry!—and for a moment

  my name flies free.

  Lucille, Post-Operative Years

  Most often she couldn’t

  think—which is to say she thought of

  everything, and at once—

  catfish in the bathtub, a bowl of oatmeal

  nailed with a butter square,

  her disappointment

  palpable as bread.

  Then, sudden as a wince,

  she couldn’t remember a thing.

  So she got out the broom and swept

  the back porch,

  that anonymous, hoodwinked sea. . . .

  What bothered her: the gaps

  between. Her first camisole,

  then this morning’s scalding coffee.

  How men
became themselves while playing cards.

  How women became themselves while sleeping.

  When she was young she used to sit

  in the very top of the plum tree.

  She swept on until

  she heard Mama whispering

  Hush chile, time’s a-wastin’

  —dry leaf in the palm, dry leaf on the branch—

  and the porch was clean.

  Family Reunion

  Thirty seconds into the barbecue,

  my Cleveland cousins

  have everyone speaking

  Southern—broadened vowels

  and dropped consonants,

  whoops and caws.

  It’s more osmosis than magic,

  a sliding thrall back to a time

  when working the tire factories

  meant entire neighborhoods coming

  up from Georgia or Tennessee,

  accents helplessly intact—

  while their children, inflections flattened

  to match the field they thought

  they were playing on, knew

  without asking when it was safe

  to roll out a drawl . . . just as

  it’s understood “potluck” means

  resurrecting the food

  we’ve abandoned along the way

  for the sake of sleeker thighs.

  I look over the yard to the porch

  with its battalion of aunts,

  the wavering ranks of uncles

  at the grill; everywhere else

  hordes of progeny are swirling

  and my cousins yakking on

  as if they were waist-deep in quicksand

  but like the books recommend aren’t moving

  until someone hauls them free—

  Who are all these children?

  Who had them, and with whom?

  Through the general coffee tones

  the shamed genetics cut a creamy swath.

  Cherokee’s burnt umber transposed

  onto generous lips, a glance flares gray

  above the crushed nose we label

  Anonymous African: It’s all here,

  the beautiful geometry of Mendel’s peas

  and their grim logic—

  and though we remain

  clearly divided on the merits

  of okra, there’s still time

  to demolish the cheese grits

  and tear into slow-cooked ribs

  so tender, we agree they’re worth

  the extra pound or two

  our menfolk swear will always

  bring them home. Pity

  the poor soul who lives

  a life without butter—

  those pinched knees

  and tennis shoulders

  and hatchety smiles!

  Girls on the Town, 1946

  (Elvira H. D., 1924–2019)

  You love a red lip. The dimples are

  extra currency, though you take care to keep

  powder from caking those charmed valleys.

  Mascara: Check. Blush? Oh, yes.

  And a hat is never wrong

  except evenings in the clubs: There

  a deeper ruby and smoldering eye

  will do the trick, with tiny embellishments—

  a ribbon or jewel, perhaps a flower—

  if one is feeling especially flirty or sad.

  Until Rosie fired up her rivets, flaunting

  was a male prerogative; now, you and your girls

  have lacquered up and pinned on your tailfeathers,

  fit to sally forth and trample each plopped heart

  quivering at the tips of your patent-leather

  Mary Janes. This is the only power you hold onto,

  ripped from the dreams none of you believe

  are worth the telling. Instead of mumbling,

  why not decorate? Even in dim light

  how you glister, sloe-eyed, your smile in flames.

  Eurydice, Turning

  Each evening I call home and my brother answers.

  Each evening my rote patter, his unfailing cheer—

  until he swivels; leans in, louder:

  “It’s your daughter, Mom! Want to say

  hello to Rita?” My surprise each time

  that he still asks, believes in asking.

  “Hello, Rita.” A good day, then;

  the voice as fresh as I remember.

  I close my eyes to savor it

  but don’t need the dark to see her

  younger than my daughter now,

  wasp-waisted in her home-sewn coral satin

  with all of Bebop yet to boogie through.

  No wonder Orpheus, when he heard

  the voice he’d played his lyre for

  in the only season of his life that mattered,

  could not believe she was anything

  but who she’d always been to him, for him. . . .

  Silence, open air. I know what’s coming,

  wait for my brother’s “OK, now say

  goodbye, Mom”—and her parroted reply:

  “Goodbye, Mom.”

  That lucid, ghastly singing.

  I put myself back into a trance

  and keep talking: weather, gossip, news.

  Scarf

  Whoever claims beauty

  lies in the eye

  of the beholder

  has forgotten the music

  silk makes settling

  across a bared

  neck: skin never touched

  so gently except

  by a child

  or a lover.

  From the Sidelines

  It seems I have always sat here watching men like you—

  who turn heads, whose gaze is either a kiss

  or a slap or the whiplash of pure disregard. Why fret? All

  you’re doing is walking. You’re this year’s It, the

  one righteous integer of cool cruising down a great-lipped

  channel of hushed adoration, women turned girls

  again, brightening in spite of themselves. That

  brave, wilting smile—you don’t see it, do you?

  How she tells herself to move on; blinks until she can.

  Mirror

  Mirror, Mirror,

  take this this take

  from from

  me: me:

  my blasted gaze, gaze blasted, my

  sunken sunken

  astonishment. Resolve resolve, astonishment.

  memory & rebuild; shame’ll Shame’ll rebuild & memory

  dissolve dissolve

  under powder pressed into into pressed powder under

  my skin. skin, my

  Oh, avalanche, my harbor: harbor, my avalanche. Oh

  can I I can

  look look

  over you, you over,

  pit & pustule, crease & blotch, blotch & crease, pustule & pit—

  without seeing seeing without

  you through you— you, through you.

  if all I am Am I all if

  (Am I all?) all I am

  is Woe is is Woe is

  me? me?

  Found Sonnet: The Wig

  100% human hair, natural; Yaki synthetic, Brazilian blend,

  Malaysian, Kanekalon, Peruvian Virgin, Pure Indian;

  iron-friendly, heat-resistant; bounce, volume, featherweight,

  Short ‘n’ Sassy, Swirls & Twirls, Smooth & Sleek and Sleek & Straight,

  Wet and Wavy, Futura fibre, weave-a-wig or Shake-n-Go;

  classic, trendy, micro-kink; frosted pixie, tight cornrow;

  full, three-quarter, half, stretch cap, drawstring, ear tabs, combs;

  chignon, headband, clip-in bangs; easy extensions and ponytail

  domes—

  long or bobbed, hand-tied, layered, deep twist bulk, prestyled updo,

  Remi closure, Swiss lace front, invisible L part, J part, U;

  feathered, fringed, extended neck; tousled, spiky, loose
cascades,

  sideswept, flipped ends, corkscrews, spirals, Rasta dreads, Ghana

  braids;

  Passion Wave, Silk Straight, Faux Mohawk, Nubian locks, Noble Curl:

  Cleopatra, Vintage Vixen, Empress, Hera, Party Girl.

  Trans-

  I work a lot and live far less than I

  could, but the moon is beautiful and

  there are blue stars . . . . I live the

  chaste song of my heart.

  Federico García Lorca to Emilia Llanos Medina

  Nov 25, 1920

  The moon is in doubt

  over whether to be

  a man or a woman.

  There’ve been rumors,

  all manner of allegations,

  bold claims and public lies:

  He’s belligerent. She’s in a funk.

  When he fades, the world teeters.

  When she burgeons, crime blossoms.

  O how the operatic impulse wavers!

  Dip deep, my darling, into the blank pool.

  Climacteric

  I look around and suddenly all my friends have flown:

  gone shopping, on a bender, off playing cards

  while stink bugs ravish their boutique vineyards,

  cooing over grandkids in lieu of hugging their own

  frazzled issue—who knows? They’re anywhere but

  here, darkening my stoop on this sun-filled, vacant day. Not that

  I’d welcome their airy distraction—not as long as the pages

  keep thickening as I stir, lick a finger to test the edges

  (illicit snacking, calorie-free)—but I’ll confess this

  once: If loving every minute spent jostling syllables

  while out in the world others slog through their messes

  implies such shuttered industry is selfish or irresponsible,

  then I’m the one who’s fled. Ta-ta! I’m not ashamed;

  each word caught right is a pawned memory, humbly reclaimed.

  Island

  A room in one’s head

  is for thinking

  outside of the box,