7.
Some of the prisoners were strung like beef
From the ceilings of their cells. “Gus”
Was led around on a leash. I mean dragged.
Others were ridden like mules. The guards
Were under a tremendous amount of pleasure.
I mean pressure. Pretty disgusting. Not
What you’d expect from Americans.
Just kidding. I’m only talking about people
Having a good time, blowing off steam.
8.
The earth beneath us. The earth
Around and above. The earth
Pushing up against our houses,
Complicit with gravity. The earth
Ageless watching us rise and curl.
Our spades, our oxen, the jagged lines
We carve into dirt. The earth
Nicked and sliced into territory.
Hacked and hollowed. Stoppered tight.
Tripwire. The earth ticking with mines,
Patient, biding its time. The earth
Floating in darkness, suspended in spin.
The earth gunning it around the sun.
The earth we ride in disbelief.
The earth we plunder like thieves.
The earth caked to mud in the belly
Of a village with no food. Burying us.
The earth coming off on our shoes.
9.
Tina says we do it to one another, every day,
Knowing and not knowing. When it is love,
What happens feels like dumb luck. When it’s not,
We’re riddled with bullets, shot through like ducks.
Every day. To ourselves and one another. And what
If what it is, and what sends it, has nothing to do
With what we can’t see? Nothing whatsoever
To do with a power other than muscle, will, sheer fright?
SOLSTICE
They’re gassing geese outside of JFK.
Tehran will likely fill up soon with blood.
The Times is getting smaller day by day.
We’ve learned to back away from all we say
And, more or less, agree with what we should.
Whole flocks are being gassed near JFK.
So much of what we’re asked is to obey—
A reflex we’d abandon if we could.
The Times reported 19 dead today.
They’re going to make the opposition pay.
(If you’re sympathetic, knock on wood.)
The geese were terrorizing JFK.
Remember how they taught you once to pray?
Eyes closed, on your knees, to any god?
Sometimes, small minds seem to take the day.
Election fraud. A migratory plague.
Less and less surprises us as odd.
We dislike what they did at JFK.
Our time is brief. We dwindle by the day.
NO-FLY ZONE
1.
She fears something but can’t say what.
She goes in reverse, mopping up her own tracks.
When she sleeps, it’s always the same foggy night.
The dead have stopped knocking. No answer.
Their big cars hover along her block, engines
Idling, woofers pumping that relentless bass
Into the bones of her house. All night they pass
Bottles cinched in bags back and forth
Through open windows.
I want to wake her. Drag her by the gown
Down into the street where her parents
Are alive again, laughing like stoned teenagers
At some idiot joke. Look, I want to say,
The worst thing you can imagine has already
Zipped up its coat and is heading back
Up the road to wherever it came from.
2.
She sends the air out of her lungs
Wanting to lie down
And fritter away like ash, thinking
Who would worry
If I marched into the sea
Till it rose around me like honey?
3.
Once upon a time, a woman told this to her daughter:
Save yourself. The girl didn’t think to ask for what?
She looked into her mother’s face and answered Yes.
Years later, alone in the room where she lives
The daughter listens to the life she’s been saved from:
Evening patter. Summer laughter. Young bodies
Racing into the unmitigated happiness of danger.
4.
Out where the houses are low to the ground,
Dwarfed by overgrown trees and the ancient poles
Whose wires carry gossip from kitchen to kitchen,
The dogs run in packs, like children. The true children
Live indoors like sullen sages. Pick up your bed and walk.
You get used to doing nothing pretty quickly. Fish on Friday.
Biscuits-n-gravy. It’s a sin to live behind curtains.
Pick up your bed and walk. Memory’s stubborn—
I mean misery. You sit in silence waiting to be chosen.
Behaving. Pick up your bed and walk. You want it all
Over again. Past Perfect. But go back and they make you
Start from the beginning. Climb out, they put you right back in.
You lie there kicking like a baby, waiting for God himself
To lift you past the rungs of your crib. What
Would your life say if it could talk?
CHALLENGER
She gets herself so wound up. I think
She likes it. Like a wrung rag, or a wire
Wrapped round itself into a spring.
And the pressure, the brute strength
It takes to hold things that way, to keep them
From straightening out, is up to her
To maintain. She’s like a kettle about to blow.
All that steam anxious to rise and go.
I get tired watching it happen, the eyes
Alive with their fury against the self,
The words swelling in the chest, and then
The voice racing into anyone’s face.
She likes to hear it, her throat hoarse
With nonsense and the story that must
Get told again and again, no matter.
Blast off! she likes to think, though
What comes to mind at the moment
Is earthly. A local wind. Chill and small.
RANSOM
When the freighters inch past in the distance
The men load their small boats. They motor out,
Buzzing like mosquitoes, aimed at the iron
Side of the blind ship as it creeps closer.
They have guns. They know the sea like it
Is their mother, and she is not well. Her fish
Are gone. She heaves barrels leaking disease
Onto the shores. When she goes into a fit,
She throws a curse upon the land, dragging
Houses, people to their deaths. She glows
In a way she should not. She tastes of industry.
No one is fighting for her, and so they fight.
By night, they load their boats and motor out,
And by day, they aim their guns at the ships,
Climbing aboard. It is clear what they want.
The white men scramble. Some fight back.
When one is taken, the whole world sits up
To watch. When the pirates fall, the world
Smiles to itself, thanking goodness. They
Show the black faces and the dead black bodies
On TV. When the pirates win, after the great
White ships return to their own shores,
There is a party that lasts for days.
THEY MAY LOVE ALL THAT HE HAS CHOSEN AND HATE ALL THAT HE HAS REJECTED
I.
I don’t want to hear their voices.
Rant. For once, I don’t want to know
What they call truth, or what flags
Flicker from poles stuck to their roofs.
Let them wait. Lead them to the back porch
And let them lean there while the others eat.
If they thirst, give them a bucket and a tin cup.
If they’re sick, tell them the doctor’s away,
That he doesn’t treat their kind. Warn them
What type of trouble tends to crop up
Around here after dark.
II.
Hate spreads itself out thin and skims the surface,
Nudged along by the tide. When the waves go all to chop,
It breaks up into little bits that scurry off. Some
Get snapped up by what swims, which gets snapped up
Itself. Hooked through the lip or the gills and dragged
Onto deck to bat around at the ankles of men who’ll beat it,
Then scrape off the scales and fry it in oil. Afterward,
Some will sleep. And some will feel it bobbing there
On the inside. The night is different after that. Too small.
Something they swear could disappear altogether,
Could lift up and drift off, leaving only the sun,
Which doesn’t have better sense than to cast its best light
On just anyone.
III.
Shawna Forde, Jason “Gunny” Bush and Albert Gaxiola,
Who killed Raul Flores and Brisenia Flores.
It’ll feel maybe like floating at first
And then a great current gets under you
And James von Brunn, who killed Stephen Tyrone Johns.
And Scott Roeder, who killed George R. Tiller.
And you ride—up to the ridge,
Over the side—feeling a gust of light
And Stephen P. Morgan, who killed Johanna Justin-Jinich.
And Andrew Dunton, who killed Omar Edwards.
Blasting through you
Like wind.
IV: In Which the Dead Send Postcards to Their Assailants from America’s Most Celebrated Landmarks
Dear Shawna,
How are you? Today we took a boat out to an island. It was cold even though the sun was hot on my skin. When we got off the boat, there was a statue of a big tall lady. My daddy and I rode in an elevator all the way up to the top of her head. My daddy says we’re free now to do whatever we want. I told him I wanted to jump through the window and fly home to Arizona. I hope to become a dancer or a veterinarian.
Love,
Brisenia
Dear James,
I walked the whole Mall today, from the Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial. I thought I’d skip the Museum altogether, but my feet wanted to go there, so I let them. I stood outside the doors trying to see in, but it was so bright my own reflection was all that shone back at me. I can choose to feel or not to feel. I realized that today. Mostly it’s just nice to move through the crowds like I used to: unnoticed. Only now they move through me too. Men, women, everyone, feeling untouched. But I’ve touched them. It’s funny. I feel like myself. The breeze off the Potomac is calm.
Sincerely,
Stephen
Hello, Scott!
I thought of you today from a small grey pod inside the St. Louis Arch. We inched up, notch by notch, like some Cold War rendition of the womb. At the top, the doors yawned open and we pushed through the people waiting to go back down. The view’s mostly of a stadium. On the other side, you see the old city in passive decline. You realize how small you are up there, but everyone still acts normal size. We were an assault on the sleek arch, silent and gleaming alongside the ageless Mississippi. But the guys on the ground keep selling tickets and sending more up. You can feel wind rocking the structure all the way at the top.
See you around,
George
S—
I’m happy. I’ll probably be in Greece soon, or the mountains of Chile. I used to think my body was a container for love. There is so much more now without my body. A kind of ecstasy. Tonight, I’m at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. I don’t know where I end. The night is starry and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.
—J
Dear Andrew,
I’m still here. I don’t think of you often, but when I do, I think you must look at people slowly, spinning through the versions of their lives before you speak. I think you must wonder what’s under their coats, in their fists, what words sit warming in their throats. I think you feel humble, human. I hardly think of you, but when I do, it’s usually that.
Yours,
Omar
Harlem, USA
V.
Or was it fear
Forde, “Gunny” and Gaxiola.
Like a bone caught in the throat
And James von Brunn.
And Scott Roeder.
Nicking at every breath, every word at the lips
And Stephen P. Morgan.
Like a joke that was on them
And Officer Andrew Dunton.
And no one to trust for help?
VI.
Line them up. Let us look them in the face.
They are not as altogether ugly as we’d like.
Unobserved, they go about their lives
With a familiar concentration. They pay
Their debts down bit by bit. They tithe.
They take the usual pride in their own devotion
To principle. And how radiant each is,
Touched by understanding, ready to stand
And go forth into that unmistakable light.
The good fight. One by one they rise,
Believing what to do, bowing each head
To what leads. And, empty of fear, buoyant
With the thrill of such might
they go.
FOUR
THE UNIVERSE AS PRIMAL SCREAM
5pm on the nose. They open their mouths
And it rolls out: high, shrill and metallic.
First the boy, then his sister. Occasionally,
They both let loose at once, and I think
Of putting on my shoes to go up and see
Whether it is merely an experiment
Their parents have been conducting
Upon the good crystal, which must surely
Lie shattered to dust on the floor.
Maybe the mother is still proud
Of the four pink lungs she nursed
To such might. Perhaps, if they hit
The magic decibel, the whole building
Will lift-off, and we’ll ride to glory
Like Elijah. If this is it—if this is what
Their cries are cocked toward—let the sky
Pass from blue, to red, to molten gold,
To black. Let the heaven we inherit approach.
Whether it is our dead in Old Testament robes,
Or a door opening onto the roiling infinity of space.
Whether it will bend down to greet us like a father,
Or swallow us like a furnace. I’m ready
To meet what refuses to let us keep anything
For long. What teases us with blessings,
Bends us with grief. Wizard, thief, the great
Wind rushing to knock our mirrors to the floor,
To sweep our short lives clean. How mean
Our racket seems beside it. My stereo on shuffle.
The neighbor chopping onions through a wall.
All of it just a hiccough against what may never
Come for us. And the kids upstairs still at it,
Screaming like the Dawn of Man, as if something
They have no name for has begun to insist
Upon being born.
EVERYTHING THAT EVER WAS
Like a wide wake, rippling
Infinitely into the distance, everything
That ever was still is, somewhere,
<
br /> Floating near the surface, nursing
Its hunger for you and me
And the now we’ve named
And made a place of.
Like groundswell sometimes
It surges up, claiming a little piece
Of where we stand.
Like the wind the rains ride in on,
It sweeps across the leaves,
Pushing in past the windows
We didn’t slam quickly enough.
Dark water it will take days to drain.
It surprised us last night in my sleep.
Brought food, a gift. Stood squarely
There between us, while your eyes
Danced toward mine, and my hands
Sat working a thread in my lap.
Up close, it was so thin. And when finally
You reached for me, it backed away,
Bereft, but not vanquished. Today,
Whatever it was seems slight, a trail
Of cloud rising up like smoke.
And the trees that watch as I write
Sway in the breeze, as if all that stirs
Under the soil is a little tickle of knowledge
The great blind roots will tease through
And push eventually past.
AUBADE
You wake with a start from some dream
Asking if I want to walk with you around the block.
You go through the things that need doing
Before Monday. Six emails. A presentation on Manet.
No, I don’t want to put on clothes and shoes
And dark glasses and follow the dog and you
Down Smith Street. It’s eight o’clock. The sun
Is toying with those thick clouds and the trees
Shake their heads in the wind. You exhale,
Wheel your feet to the floor, walk around to my side
And let your back end drop down onto the bed.
You resort to the weather. A high today of 78.
But that’s hours away. And look at the dog
Life on Mars Page 3