You Must Remember This Page 4

a radio? We used to tell it in school, everyone

  standing in a circle and laughing like jackals, except for the one

  not in on the joke, which in this particular poem

  is you, because it’s not a joke at all

  just a misleading non sequitur

  designed to bait the unwitting

  into falling into laughter alongside everyone else

  so they could then be turned upon and savagely asked:

  What’s so fucking funny?

  As we watched them squirm to explain, grasping

  at the tuxedoed symmetry of nuns and penguins,

  the real laughter thundered out and made it

  clear how much we’d learned.

  The Shop Across the Street

  I walked outside and looked to where the sky used to be.

  The new laminate is better than I feared, I murmured,

  but why this watery yellow? Why not sky blue?

  The president’s voice crackled over the loudspeakers

  and announced that yellow was something-something

  but the spatter of white noise drowned him out.

  The shop across the street—the one that sells clay figurines—

  was not much help. Did you understand the president?

  I asked, a little out of breath from running across the avenue.

  The storekeeper smiled and said,

  I am not able to recognize the president

  even when I look right at him.

  How much is that, I said, pointing at a figurine,

  a little man, posed on a shelf behind him.

  Oh, that one is not for sale.

  Why not?

  Because it’s me.

  I leaned across the counter to peer at the tiny face

  and saw that it was true: a perfect likeness. Well, I said,

  whirling to leave, I guess now we know who the whore is.

  The People Who Came Afterward

  lived oblivious to the drifting veils of rain.

  There were no fences. The point of existence

  was to gather things in concentric rings

  so possessions formed the hive where you lived.

  It was the most effective prison ever devised

  by humans. When the downpour came to melt

  it away, filling depressions with grit and soft clay,

  pottery shards returned to their element—bones

  came unbound. Glass rose like fins from the ground.

  The Professional

  She arrived in a dark suit and a mask-like smile, explaining

  her services in a manner so polished it almost put us off.

  This is my specialty, she soothed. Both mind and house

  will be empty as a mountain wind once I’m done. I sensed

  she’d said those words before. We sat at the kitchen table,

  you and I, looking at one another, hoping the other felt more

  certain, more assured. Once we signed, it would take years

  before we acknowledged our mistake. She’d left the whole day

  open, and could begin immediately. Was there perhaps a guest

  room where she could change? Her assistant arrived with

  a black duffel, fresh white towels, and a stainless-steel basin.

  I didn’t know the basin would be so big, I murmured.

  We looked at one another warily. It isn’t always a clean process,

  she reassured. You do understand, once I’m sequestered, it is

  very important that I not be disturbed. We nodded. She closed

  the door with an audible click. For the first few hours, it seemed

  okay. Her assistant sat out in the van, with the windows down,

  reading. We sat in the living room and tried to do the same,

  ignoring the sounds coming from the guest room, sighs that

  sharpened into cries. When a few faces started disappearing

  in the photographs above the piano, you leapt to your feet.

  This isn’t right, you said. These things shouldn’t be removed.

  But what about the pain? I asked. Don’t you want it gone?

  No, you said, pointing to the image of a child, suddenly frantic.

  The eyes had faded to nothing. From forehead to cheekbone

  was just smooth skin. I ran to the window. The van was gone,

  as was the tire swing that had been there an hour earlier. I looked

  and saw the elm losing its limbs, one by one. Maybe we can still

  get some of our money back, I said. And then you said: I want her

  gone. The assistant had sealed the door shut with tape. It came

  off with a spattering sound, and the shrieks from inside paused.

  Then the voice came, a strangled croak as I opened the door

  and saw her, smaller than I remembered, perched on the dresser,

  her suit pooled on the floor beneath her. Her face had become

  a sort of beak, hinged open and hissing. But it was the children

  that were upsetting, sitting in a circle at her feet, quietly singing.

  Imperfection

  after Tomaž Šalamun

  Leather without history

  is merely the skin of the dead

  animals that once walked these fields.

  Strength without rickets

  can be seen on any playground.

  Consider the appetite

  of these children and remember:

  blood is silk.

  Walk silently away. Drop your empty

  cup in the receptacle. Note

  how the plastic helmet is stained brown

  from where your lips drew coffee

  out with a wet sound. Blood is like fruit.

  Maybe spend a moment

  thinking about the tanks and hunger

  but keep moving.

  There is no need to thrash yourself.

  I know a doctor who can pull that

  wire clean from your back. We

  will roar and get excited soon enough.

  The Horse

  When it says The Horse up there in letters slightly larger than

  these including that beautifully balanced H that could serve as

  a solid frame for a barn door and that s curving from the back

  of the e in rather uncanny imitation of how a horsetail curves up

  from meaty rump before falling downward in a swoop, you might

  think of a glossy coat rippling over musculature bred to quickness

  rather than the stiff and bloated thing toppled sideways in the ditch

  that we saw as we rolled downhill into the warm and humid sea air

  letting dusty mountains recede behind us with all that endless agave

  that tinged field after field with something much softer than blue.

  A family in a small red wagon: the girl eight, the boy almost five,

  the beach below us home for a week after nearly nine hours driving

  getting slightly lost in Guadalajara and suddenly two legs jutting like

  poles across the road and a man with a blue T-shirt wrapped across his

  face and sawing through the bone with the rusted buck blade kicking

  out a little pink powder with every pull and the smell mingling with

  green air and ripened mangos as we swerved momentarily into the

  oncoming lane and I looked at the barrel of those ribs swollen tight

  wondering about the gush of gas and stink if it were pierced when

  the boy asked in a tremulous voice if that was a horse and before

  anyone could think what to say the girl answered, Not anymore.

  Now Here, Nowhere

  The cow unfolds its legs and

  rises against the white sky,

  flickering among the tree trunks

  as we pass. The window

  glass is cold against my forehead

  and I can feel the pavement

  humming b
elow.

  A pine has overturned, roots

  ripped into the air. A dog

  trots along the road, another

  lies dead on the shoulder, fur

  frozen to the pavement like carpet.

  We drive on, not telling

  how a dusting of snow

  whitens shadows, it is still cold but

  water will run, insects will rise,

  these dogs will flower

  in sweet decay. We pass

  another broken tree,

  the heartwood split

  open in a storm.

  The car swings

  through rolling curves

  beneath the white sky,

  the sky that holds clouds and light

  and clouds and light and nowhere

  does it explain.

  In the Pasture Corner

  The earth beneath the oak is boar-broken,

  torn dark and furrowed, clods unearthed

  in a dirt-spray: fine roots stand up like hairs.

  There, where hooves churned turf to mud

  the gash is greased red with blood: the flung

  lamb snagged heavy on the branch a hair

  too high for the muscle of what pounded

  the earth and pounded the earth beneath it.

  How It Survived for a While

  It waited until we wandered home, then

  limped to the sea where the rasping

  mouths of hagfish cleaned its wounds.

  For a while it disguised itself

  as a hailstorm, but the constant

  clattering loosened its teeth and the cold

  became too difficult to bear.

  It chose instead to become a forest thing,

  gifted at disappearing. Yet it was

  the trees themselves that gave it away,

  frightened that one of them

  had somehow learned to walk.

  Now it will become our king! they whispered,

  wrapping their roots like rope

  tighter and tighter around its thick neck.

  The School

  The anaconda was useful. The youngest

  obeyed more readily and occasionally

  did not return from the boiler room.

  The older children paid attention

  to lessons in toolmaking and chemistry,

  forming acids that scald, then used boar-

  bristle brushes to outline the boundaries of their lives.

  Wolverines were introduced, worrying

  carrion out on the playing fields. Then

  jackals. We watched them seize viscera

  and tug, quivering the whole of the rubbery

  carcass, shredding the body into ragged skeins

  as the steady rain fell. When the teacher intoned

  Nature red in tooth and claw, we understood.

  They were out there, weaving drunkenly

  among the puddles, fur flecked with mud, our parents

  waiting in the road beyond: a line of black cars, idling.

  The Orangutan

  They were more than a little embarrassed when it turned out their

  orangutan was electric.

  They’ve gotten so good with the musculature, said father, who knew?

  Also the soft parts, said mother, who loved to stroke the wrinkled skin

  in the hinges of his body. Sometimes his flesh responded in the most

  surprising ways. And lord knows, she added, he ate more than his

  share of bananas.

  But then they found them, mashed in a brown pile, a syrupy mass

  stashed behind the furnace in the basement. He had always been a

  furtive monkey. Dozens of ants were trapped in the clear fluid

  leaking from the pile.

  We couldn’t have come up with a better trap if we’d tried, shouted

  father, picking at the delicate carcasses.

  Their daughter remained quiet through it all, which they attributed to

  shock. When the baby was born some months later, its face was eerily

  reminiscent of a calculator.

  I don’t know what to say, the girl announced, pressing the function key

  on her new son. Every time I run the numbers, I get a different answer.

  Manhood

  Sherman tried to show the extent of his manhood

  by insisting his wife wear the pants in the family.

  This allowed his manhood to extend

  well below his knees, wrinkled as the head of a vulture,

  and then coil damply beneath him

  as he settled onto the porch steps to read the paper.

  I’d be more inclined to apologize for that image

  were it not for the fact that the buzzard head

  was at one time attached to the body of a snake

  replete with a simile evoking crinkled hosiery

  and thus this is the mild version and contains

  significantly fewer genital-animal parallels

  which editors do not typically recommend

  for inclusion in general-interest publications.

  Why there was only one sturdy pair of pants

  between the two of them remains a mystery.

  And that those pants were stitched of leather

  with supple creases worked into their knees

  and embroidered detailing on the pockets

  is perhaps as close as we will get to the reason

  for their existence in the first place. At this point

  it would probably be wiser to return to Sherman

  reading on the porch, nude from the waist down.

  Yet nude would be an overstatement

  given the pair of tire-tread sandals he is wearing

  which of course have the effect of making him

  even nuder—which is not a word—but was

  nonetheless included for purposes of double entendre,

  just as the sandals were conjured to amplify his nudity.

  And look, there is his unnamed wife doing some

  gritty task, mussing the knees of those disturbing pants

  as she vigorously trowels the root-base of her rosebush.

  I’m sweating like a pig in these trousers, she mutters,

  not to him exactly, though there is no one else there.

  He is so long in responding it seems the moment

  might pass when the newspaper rustles and he says,

  Fine . . . give them here . . . I’ll wear the damn things,

  sighing like a beleaguered king who must wear pants

  he does not like, rank with the sweat of his wife,

  shoveling his soft flesh into that leather that pinches

  like church shoes on a child’s feet in August.

  Foretold

  he shot the bird through the eye

  then plucked the pouch

  of the belly clean and cut it

  open with scissors

  so the gut breathed

  steam in the chill air

  Could you read these for me? he asked

  pulling gray-pink strings from inside

  Boy or girl? and will the labor be easy?

  It seems an odd way

  of finding such a thing out, I said

  but I think you can wager

  on a cesarean

  and the child will not go

  hungry

  Binary

  He wore a slightly rumpled shirt,

  its buttoned placket off by one

  so a triangle of cloth flapped loose

  over his belt buckle. It struck me

  this was possibly a studied move

  meant to indicate joie de vivre.

  He set his coffee down with a clack,

  sat in the chair opposite and said,

  “How would you like to be a zero

  in a world of ones,” and he paused

  like that after the zero, for effect

  yet did not wait to see what effe
ct

  this tidbit of drama would generate

  before plunging forward in what was

  either intellectual vigor or arrogance:

  “As a zero in the Arabic numeral system

  you could increase by tenfold the value

  of any one you chose to stand beside.

  And as a zero in a binary world of ones

  you would quite literally contain

  within the orb of your nothingness

  half of all the instrumental information

  needed to reduce the world’s chaos

  into straightforward propositions.”

  He smiled broadly and settled back

  in his chair to await the response,

  and that is when I slowly raised

  my revolver level with his chest

  to help him understand the world

  is not in love with certainty.

  Recollection

  Sometimes, after waking,

  I take a moment to collect myself.

  My mind wanders to the cabinet

  where I keep one leg neatly folded,

  held snug by a canvas strap.

  The other is toppled like

  firewood beside the bed.

  The embroidered box on the bedside table

  that once housed a blown-glass ornament

  now holds my tongue,

  that dark knot of sleeping muscle.

  My pale twinned arms

  lie nestled together in a battered cello case

  fingers tangled like amorous starfish.

  The cradle of my pelvis sits on a wooden saddle

  designed specifically for that purpose

  and the hairy coil of my privates

  rests on the dresser, next to a pile of coins.

  How I’m writing this is anyone’s guess.

  I’ve always been somewhat

  scattered in dismembered places,

  maybe you can remember

  and mis-

  take me, yes,

  take me for my assemblage.

  The Last Time I Saw God

  was different from the first two times.

  I’d fallen asleep and when I woke

  it was just the two of us rocking

  gently through each rumbling curve.

  (It was on a subway car at night.)

  I thought you’d be a woman, I said.

  You always say that, he said and laughed.