T H E

B R A I L L E

D R U M

BY

JIF JOHNSON, Gent.

 

 

Nobody reads poetry anymore

So who the hell are you

I see bent over this book?

—Aleksandar Ristović

 

 

CONTENTS

The Victrola
Haunting
Garage Sale
Dinner Was A Nightmare
Cold Night
Ode To A Wooden Spoon
Devil Catching
Ode To Your Garden
Country Music
The Dark Ocean
We Won The Lottery
Between Tales
Orphan House
Emergency Room
Walking About At Low Tide
Dating The Dentist
Advice Column
The Bear
Regarding Bohumil Hrabal
You Have To Have A Job
Museum Troublemaker
Look It Up
My Time With The Famous Actress
Atlantis
Dinner At The Hawthorne Hotel
A Light Bulb Went Off
Kindergarten
Valentine
The Bookcase
Greenwich
Halloween
Bad Dream
The Bored Woman
A Fever
Report From Barstow
After Faking My Own Death
Ocean Beach
Stay Away From That Man
The Good Listener
The Moon Of Missing People
New Year's Morning

 

 

 

The Victrola

The inside of a Victrola is the inside of a windmill:
two gears wringing, dusted with flour.
Outside a crank where the sails should be.

The long dead musicians are in the shellac records,
like bent little wings in amber.

I see their skeleton hands on the piano
like the struts under an umbrella.

An umbrella is an inverted gramophone.
A gramophone a bronzed chanterelle.

The thick needle's steel wool scrubbing sounds like rain.
And the pages of music covering the floor
are leaves covering a deep pond.

 

 

 

Haunting
after Gyula Krúdy

From my sentimental coffin I blew up women's skirts
when they walked over my grave
on their way to the church.

The tsk-tap of their dismissive shoes clung to my heart.
So I crawled out my hole on a white dappled worm.

I found you in the last row your eyes up in the apses.
Like pillows the priest's Latin held up your narrow head.

A furious ghost already sat to your left.
I settled in on your right.
The blood in your face like hot punch.

 

 

 

 

Garage Sale


In the stranger's muggy and ramshackle garage,
all the dolls we've lost.
And laid out on a fishing cooler,
eviscerated books.
And the owner hooks us in further,
back behind the racks of matted coats
and children's clothes in plastic bags.
Until the tottering shelves of mason jars
full of striated fat spook us.

It's our third garage sale this morning
and it's only 7am.
Only very early do the neighbors' houses open,
with a smell of old beer.
And the pink isolates pull out their card tables.

Bald cowboys or older women with hairdos
that make me think of bad sportsmanship.
The backs of their dresses only half zipped up—
a widow's tell.

"You and the sunrise, you and mimosas,"
I say to myself over and over with my steps.
You say, "We should move to New York. And not tell anybody."

But we quiet down as we approach the next cave.
Barbells hold down a picnic blanket
so the corners flap and center bulges.
And BAM you find it—
too young to haggle, we dig around for singles.

 

 

 

Dinner Was A Nightmare

Tonight let's cook from the Black Book,
dump all the coal in the grill.

To start: Cannibals' breath on backs of plates,
then gulper eel choked with oil,
shredded by guillotine.

Now loosen your leather a notch, consider
a chronically simmering Original apple.

How scared should you be? No time, there's the timer!

Grisly gristle offal with slow-blurred flukes
flipped like fate upon steaks of steel
while the Black Book flaps around the kitchen.

Our poisoned children clap and the cookbook smacks the wall,
falls into my oven mitts. Dessert?
Shouting won't help, except MANGIA!

A rheumy drizzle of crackbrained, sweet Dutch lead,
painted to a frosting so thin it has panic attacks,
poured over the neighbor's kitty.

Now I insist a digestif: a heavy pour of pinkeye rye
drunk from a brainpan—Goodnight!

 

 

 

Cold Night

Crunch crunch crunch we walk on mirrors,
lose our hats in the wind,
end up at a bar of white-haired quintessences.

Acquaintances light match after match
but the draft has found us.
A bunch of grumps, we wait for the bus.

 

 

 

Ode To A Wooden Spoon

Ass smacker;
blackened
in a ring
where the sauce pot
scolded.

Supped from,
chewed on,
blown upon
like a death whistle.

The sauce begs:
keep moving
or my guts will stick
and burn
and you'll never be the same.

Pathetic oar.
Whittled,
shopped for.
Hand worn
and clanging the bars
like a con's cup.

Red-faced spoon,
lying next to the covered
all-day sauce,
or brown with beef stew
or green with pea soup.

Hold it like a spear,
riding crop,
flute,
pencil,
ponytail,
spade.

And afterward,
the pot washed out,
it's a stick
to beat the tin drum.

Or is the spoon
more like a guitar?
But this guitar,
strung with noodles,
drowned its angel,
sounds like a wet box
of silver dollars.
Like when you open
the junk drawer.
This guitar never tires
of a chord,
it just hums
and waits
for something.
The guitarist is stuck.
When the girls
can't swoon,
the guitar floats away
like a wooden spoon.

A smoking whirlpool
of thickening
whiteness.

Mashed potatoes perhaps.

When the spoon cracks
you throw it, always helpful,
in the fire.

 

 

 

Oda A Una Cuchara De Madera

Azotea el culo;
ennegrecido
un anillo
donde la olla
escaldo.

Sorbido,
masticado,
soplado
como un silbido de muerte.

La salsa ruega:
mantiene movimiento
o mis tripas se pegarán
y quemarán
y usted nunca será el mismo.

Remo patético.
recortado,
comprado.
desgastado
y un ruido de barrotes
como la copa de un prisonero.

Cuchara con la cara roja,
acostada al lado de la cubierta
salsa,
o marrón con estofado de carne
o verde con una sopa de guisantes.

Manténgalo como una lanza,
fusta,
flauta,
lápiz,
cola de caballo,
pala.

Y después,
la olla ya lavada,
es un palo
para batir el tambor de hojalata.

¿O es la cuchara
más como una guitarra?
Pero esta guitarra,
ensartadas con fideos,
ahogado su ángel,
suena como una caja húmeda
de dólares de plata.
Al igual que cuando se abre
el cajón de los trastos.
Esta guitarra no se cansa
de un acorde,
sólo tararea
y espera
por algo.
El guitarrista está atascada.
Cuando las chicas
no enloquecen,
la guitarra flota lejos
como una cuchara de madera.

Un remolino de humo
espeso y
blanco.

Quiza puré de papas.

Cuando la cuchara se agrieta
la tiras, siempre util,
en el fuego.

 

[Transl. Cristina Arellano]

 

 

Devil Catching

Everyone rents their demon nets like it's nothing,
runs around the park giving the succulents a hard time,
"feeding the mosquitoes."

And they catch the Devil—little wriggly dynamite stick.
And then the lightning comes to get him back,
a swastika of jagged white.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzt!

And as each player dies,
the Devil pins them to a tray of black wax, keeping score.

 

 

 

 

Ode To Your Garden

You pour
a shot of vodka
into the parched
purple flower
of a 6-foot
artichoke plant
gone to seed.

Set the timer
for 4 hours
and go to sleep
on the couch.

While you're away,
the dark
sprouts cats.
They spray
the green tomatoes
and the squirrels
nibble the nubs.

Beeping,
the alarm
sets off the bees.

You zigzag
to the flowerpot
and throw up
loudly.

Your mouth
is a purple flower.

 

 

 

 

Country Music

In the accordion bellows, ghost morels
broadcast from their hive of mouths
a greasy woolen sound, a warm scaling crimp.

These spores puff out the instrument, sowing.
And in your ears they thump the drum
with the stuff of the dusty sound holes

of violins. Rosettes of blood spread though our heads.
We start to sing and our dark bore blubbers
then squeaks like a choked balloon,

blowing florets off our tongues.
The notes parachute, impossible to catch, into the fire
being fed with newspaper in the square vault

of a wood furnace. Outside the smoke worries the manzanitas.
The sky is blank because it is raining.
All sorts of music in the woods without us.

 

 

 

 

The Dark Ocean

No one knows what's in the ocean.
Swaying girls with their faces nibbled off?
Cruelty, fixed fish smiles, a constant fizzy humming?
Could be there's nothing like in cold outer space.
Could be I'm there, another me, my hair fanning out.

Only 5% of the oceans have been searched.
Could be hospital gardens surrounded by sandstone sculptures.
Or green Baroque bronzes? Or dinosaurs, numbers, schools of Benandanti.
The Great Red Spot hugged with turbulence
or a tooth held in gelatin.

Are there hills of luminous huts down there, like skyscrapers in the black and blur?
It occurs to me I couldn't tell you what's outside my own door.
I should take up walking and drawing.
I couldn't even draw you a map of my city.

That is what is in the deep deep ocean.

 

 

 

We Won The Lottery

The lucky number on your monitor spins into calligraphy.
The pencil in your hand dandelions.
The clock on the wall smiles, shamefaced.

When you descend the elevator,
the guy from IT doesn't even know.

A taxi. You take your last taxi.

Walk up the steps to your apartment and see your wife.
She is like a gold slipper.
Her questions are a song.
You suddenly decide not to tell her.

 

 

 

Between Tales

There is a red chestnut in the casket
hiding in the ground where you can't hear the clock.

A woman holds a bean. One day she'll throw it in a crib.
She'll hammer the lid on the crib with little nails.

I forgot, the casket has also a man in it.
He tries to grab the chestnut but his hands are pinned.

Did the man grow out of the bean? How?

Forget all that.

My third idea is blackened. My wife got tired of pulling it out of the fireplace
like a potboiler no one will publish.
Her hands are covered in small shiny pink lakes.

This third item is on fire. Pick it up with a stick,
make a wish and blow it out like a marshmallow.

 

 

 

Orphan House

A needle stuck in your thumb—it's wake-up time.
Kneel on the kernels and chew on newspaper.
Drink your ink. Now line up!

Soften your stare, little terrors,
get your fingers out of your beak
when you look at Matron B—.

The girl next to you slides her foot over
to touch your sneaker.
She is thrashed with the awful axe
and bursts into tears.
Another Devil's mark next to her name.
Now march! Out to the caged playground

of trampled pigeons and the smell of piss
to play "electric chair" and "pull the teeth."
Until the sun runs away—time for beddy-bye.

There's someone in your bed when the lock twists behind you.
Is it the girl from this morning?
And is she playing dead?

 

 

 

Emergency Room

Can't move, can only see through a crack, like a pistachio.
I see the nurse, stripped and laid like a butcher's sow next to me.
They paint her medicine-bottle orange with iodine,
now slit her with an Exacto.
I hear the iron lung. An electrical iron smell.

Everyone is on edge. An assistant drops an ice pick
and it rolls in a circle around its point.
When they open the fridge the test tubes tinkle.
"Just happen," some woman whispers.

And I watch something being lifted out of the nurse like a car engine.
Somehow I know this red spaceman is also me.
And that's how they made the swap.

They took the old me, crinkled like a snake's peel.
And they put it in the brick furnace to burn me up.

You could smell me in town.

And the nurse they just shoved onto the floor and kicked her to the wall.
Her mouth looked like a corroded battery.

It was funny the janitor said, how her swollen eyes looked like peaches.
And the other nurses have to watch. Lined up around the walls.

And the doctors laughed their muffled laugh
and syrup spun into a green grate.

The new me sat in a pan and splashed about.

The masked fathers wiped their hands on their aprons.

I saw myself in their head mirrors as they huddled around.
I saw I had horns.

 

 

 

Walking About At Low Tide

At the tidal pools the ten-foot stalks lie like shoelaces;
the thick sea grass is slush we slip on.
If the oceans dried up,
ten thousand miles of garbage, twitching filth,
low flies. Perhaps arm-deep something with a last bite.

It occurs to me: If they took away the air,
redwoods like overcooked vegetables
laying across the stinking roads.

Take the lid off the hothouse and everything deflates.
Everything flattened just waiting for the tide
so we can pop up just fine.

At the tidal pool, Claus Oldenburg's soft sculptures.
This sea anemone like a fright wig,
like a queen's mouth.
Hermit crabs with patience dragging pebbles
made from abusive waves.
Well, we stomp on all that trying not to fall.
Over there's another couple doing the same.

It occurs to me: If the sky rolled back,
Oldenburg skyscrapers soft and falling over the parade.
Miles of clouds covering us,
barbershop of the gods.
Pulling our boots out of jelly sun, crackling stars.
And the flies smear like cosmetics over my mood.

You try to breathe and you can't so you wait.
Covered in snails time slouches and noodles.
I step on a book and it squirts.

We found a dead starfish and flipped it over.
In the background the suede sea lions bloat and bark.

 

 

 

Dating The Dentist

He lives in a tall apartment building full of other dentists.

He only asks you about yourself when your mouth's full.

All his mirrors covered in floss-flung stars.

Swigging vodka and then spitting it out into a bowl.

He excuses himself and runs off.

There's a drawer in his kitchen you never saw before and you pull it open,

all his thin weapons get messed up; he'll know.

He comes back with sharpened teeth.

He bites you through your lead apron.

Your head tilts back and you stare into the light.

 

 

 

Advice Column

Women covered in gold snoods and wattles
should roll around in mint
instead of shouldering bags
that would only look at home
in a dictator's bedroom.
Leave the sack for the bomb squad.

Soft-boiled boys should have their phones cracked
and their tweeting sisters
ought to write long letters in pure Latin
until their hands reform.
All curved spines and lice, the sissies.

And the men should be thrown out
to sleep owl-eyed on couches left on city corners,
dreaming of the grunt work behind forgery.

But no one takes my advice.

 

 

 

The Bear

The keeper forgot and left a board over the moat—
now the dirty bear is loose in town,
eating local honey to blend in.

Did you hear he let the monkeys out before he fled—
they're popping up in people's houses,
yanking the ceiling fans and throwing the Precious Moments—
the cops can't handle all the calls.

Listen, shh, the bear he broke into a Big and Tall last night.
Clothes were missing.

+ + + + + + + + + + + +

At work all we blab about is the missing bear.
They should close the zoo.
Why have tigers and hippos in a city?

The polar bear butting its head over and over into concrete ice.
The Satanic Serpentarium. The depressive widowed ape.
And the alligator pit where a kid fell in only to be ignored by the fat stub-tailed thing.

It's not a safe situation.

+ + + + + + + + + + + +

On the news they said they shot the bear.
It was riding a little bicycle.

And all the monkeys have been rounded up.
The zoo gave free tickets to anyone who returned one.
The tigers and hippos are under electric nets now.

Oh what will they find in the black bear's belly?

It'll take four keepers to lift the beast onto a table.
Then they'll slice him open like an avocado and squeeze out the pit.

They'll unravel the hairy bezoar and find...

A little boy? or girl? Important papers? The doctors won't say.

 

 

 

Regarding Bohumil Hrabal

He stuck out a huge handshake.
After my mother read his book she said, "I miss them."
And he filled up his pages like beer mugs.

If he ever read Mercè Rodoreda, or Wisława Szymborska,
he'd smile like he just snuck a brandy and say, "Beautiful women!"
If only every little town had such a warm champion.

And he fell out a window.

 

 

 

 

You Have To Have A Job

...and I'll tell you why.
First, if you see a bum you have to throttle him,
stomp on him and toss him in the church.

Second, a vocation is a calling, where you spend your life,
so much time—why spend it being miserable?
You have to mean it to manage. Then you can drink.
You can get drunk and no one will say shit.

Once, I left the office and the moon was too big.
Pregnant, making everything orange.
The dome of the Palace of Fine Arts was orange.
And the marsh was orange.

And once the office filled with squiggly lines.

But these things happen. We make jokes about it.
For example, a girl in Account lost her phone in a tidal pool over the weekend and ate her own hands.
At the 9:30 meeting they mentioned it and we all clapped.

 

 

 

Museum Troublemaker

If you put on the wood mask with white sharp teeth
and look through the cowrie-lined eyes, you can see
the Invisible Man moping. He is another escaped mummy.
Well, he sees you see him now.
Covers his blurry face with his rotten paws like a child.

Next floor! If you lick the Vermeer, for a moment you are nothing.
But a room of thick brushwork can make you cry.
Escorted out, the sculpture garden smells like an old penny.

It's a bit of a joke to climb the priceless blocks and watch
these aquariums of do-nothings steeling themselves for death.
There's a stop sign right outside the glass exit
a thousand people have covered with their validation stickers.

 

 

 

Look It Up


Need the bus? Consult your watch.

Lose your dog? Meow its name.

Need a date? Ask for directions.

Got a pain? Your mom's a nurse.

Broken chair? Search the park.

Kid ran off? Check the paper.

Don't know a word? Call a ghost.

Stumped by a trick? Turn on TV.

Can't find the prison? Take off your clothes.

Forgot a name? Fall down the stairs.


It's really not about what you know.
It's about knowing where to find it.

 

 

 

My Time With The Famous Actress

1.
We got drunk and cursed reporters.
I was different now, our problems were no longer true.

The special meal came but it crumbled when we touched it.
I helped the goat onto my beauty's bare shoulders and hurt my back.

I tried to take her home but no one knew where she lived.


2.
The projector blinded us. We rubbed our eyes clean of lashes.
It was raining outside so the cameras shorted out.

In her long couch we drove to my apartment.
I didn't touch one tassel,

even when she yanked out her underclothes like a magician's kerchief.


3.
I got a phone in the mail. When I learned how to use it,
it said not to call the famous actress anymore.

I studied her picture in the magazine. Her eyes looked like oysters.
I saw her tiny in the French kingdom of my mind.

I want to send her to a diamond planet.

 

 

Atlantis

I stroke my green beard,
like the fur of a kelp bed.
And the women in their jellyfish blouses sway.

All around, living houses
full of pink flagellated strangers.

I walk backward
so I don't trip on my fins,
holding my cup of air upside-down.

Find you furious
in the turtle grass.
The moon breaks
apart
in slivers
and
comes
together
again each time you shout.

 

 

 

Dinner At The Hawthorne Hotel


The sound of a spoon tinkling off your teeth as the rain turns to snow.
I watch the rain give up, it softens and settles.
Once I wrote all day. Now what am I to make of it?
Now everything is five years further back than my first guess.

The mirror we go into isn't silver. It looks silver.
And when the window's a mirror, it's getting late.
You're an inkblot sitting in a suggestion of chair.
Silent but for the sound of someone drinking.

Clear sound of wine breathing. The stubborn redness in the glass.
Soon no one will understand what cigarettes meant to me.
It's hard to care much about the meal. But I do.
Your dress looks lazy in the Salem draft.

Somewhere all the girls I made up are crying.
All their novels are shut up, shoulder to shoulder on a shelf.
I wish I could wash my hands after every word.
And let the waitress disappear with the check.

 

 

 

A Light Bulb Went Off

Now she was full of plans.
We would have or make boxcar children, etc.

We should do what we knew was right.
This from a woman who never read Erasmus.

She started the injections, I'm like, "There's no plan."
But she's so pretty, like the little bumps on a Red Delicious.

She looks at me like sunstroke,
grabs every one of my lapels.

"I want to be a doctor I want to help people."
This from a woman who doesn't know Trakl.

We would have a red dog, a light heart.
Oh, tears were running down the walls and under the oven.

I got out of town.
There's nothing worse than someone who sees the light.

Now I think of her when in museums.
I want the priceless walls to crush me.

I had an idea. She was applying sunblock
like pouring a bit of cream on a saucer for the cat.

 

 

 

Kindergarten

They communicate through schoolyard song, the spies.
Climb over everything like fire ants.
They've the morals of a cat, murderers.
If only some fresh disease would sweep them up,
rot their horse teeth,
pock their raw chicken faces,
lock their jaws and joints.

I find their droppings in the cabinets:
gnawed blocks and doll parts and gum.
Stickers on the walls, insane scrawling.
They write with a fist.
I should write all their names down. Their little nicknames.

 

 

 

Valentine

I'm my shadow flying miles, elongated until unrecognizable, from here to Anthony of Egypt.
You're the light on a magnifying glass hovering over The Book.

I'm the skeleton in your bed and you are locked in my ribs. My blue and red bird, stay in my bike basket!
Your sweetness holds me together like monkey bread.
Be mine again under the bursting acacia.

Perfume of the whistling thorn—My brains!
Outside my name is written out in earthworms.

I yell for you through the hole in the roof: Hey wake up!
I go down to our cellar and fetch the brandy cherries.

Your polished eyes are so nice we all like them.
Mine are liverish. No one wants to see through them.

But here are a bunch of flowery words:
Your smile is everyone in town having a good time.

My teeth will fall out as candy hearts, you'll pick them up and read:

YOU'RE SWEET

BE MINE

GET WINE

 

 

 

 

The Bookcase


The hardest part is getting started.

I will build it, to fit the home we can't quite find.
And we will fill it.
Each book a suitcase with a Calder circus.

Bookcase for lost works and lot books,
for hiding rooms—rooms with beds of nails
dusted with after-feather
from so many secrets.

Shelves of uneven spines.
Fat and thin, green or blue,
the books reach for the roof with varied success.

Empty bookcase like a plunging canoe.
Awaiting its shelffuls of my five-dollar finds,
of use to no one.
The most futile load to move.

Libraries are only handed up now.
Useless tinderbox.

My wife bought me the circular saw—
I would start my safety lessons now
but I don't want to jinx our house hunting.

 

 

 

Greenwich

Behind the brick domes of the observatory,
I straddled the prime meridian.
It looked at first like a cable car track.
But it cut through the world,
and framed in ecclesiastical gold.

Dipping my fingers in the slot,
I watched my wife put the Canon on the ground,
turn away, and consider the English elm next to her,
its bark stricken with beetle feeding galleries.

I called to her to look at me
as I separated the Earth with the slightest effort.
My wife hopped over to my hemisphere;
the camera became space junk.

 

 

 

 

Halloween

The trick-or-treaters know we're really home.

We slice through the floor.

The forgotten basement shrieks.

We hack through the ground.

Chip our blades on bones.

Someone in a costume is following us down.

The center of the world is hot Blow Pop.

Once again the knocking is loud.

Caught and burning we carve each other up.

Our eyes have melted but in your belly I feel a ring.

I choke as inside my chest you wrench a watch.

In the morning we crawl back up to Earth.

The trick-or-treaters are gone.

The trees show us their mummy rags.

 

 

 

 

Bad Dream

Night of the shining saw
in the forest
of black fingers
and your knees are milk,
legs won't work.

Dead men float in the pool
behind your parents' house.
How did we get here?
Now your mouth
fills with moths.

Your eyes are open
but you don't realize
your wife has woken you.

 

 

 

 

 

The Bored Woman

She will drink from the champagne pail,
spit out ice into the sink like little soaps.
Push the towels with her triangular foot.

She can hear the echo of maids deep down the hall.
She's fogging the floor-to-ceiling mirror by the door.
Always at the door with its contract and blowhole.

Sidesplitting bed, anxious cheap lamps.
She should start a fire with the cotton
plucked from medicine bottles.

She could feed it with the Gideon.
Grab the curtain and squeeze out the window.
But she looks at herself now in the flat black TV.

Better to call a car and enjoy the city
than wait to hear yourself called "ma'am."
The woman picks up a purse and drops it.

She remembers she is the maid.
In the next room she sees a sailboat:
a pair of pants thrown over a desk chair.

 

 

 

 

A Fever

A summered woman
shutting a window
gives the wind a low-grade fever
And she sleepwalks
back to bed,
resuming usual dreams.
I take my sickness with me;
run home
to fill up on pills.

There's a dead
mall in the pit
of my town
because all the students got old.
A vacant stale mall,
a moon.
Inside it is dark
and sleeping women
glide around.

I stand now before
the wrong house
confused.
Whose house?
I see a woman
appear in a window.
She raises her arms
and tugs
down
my
eyelids.

 

 

 

 

Report From Barstow

I should admit a child saw me and scooted off.
So you might want to watch out.

I've been looking at the ants and getting too much sun.
I should report the sky is flat.

I caught a lizard and tried to drown it.
It made a tight bubble around itself and lived.

Their moon was out all day how odd.
It looked like a mistake, in my opinion.

I saw a bunch of old people.
They made me drink their Earth water.

I believe we should destroy this world as soon as possible.

I miss our water. And my wife the talking What.
There's no goldfish here they said there would be goldfish.

I miss the normal air, thick skies.
Where blue rain stains.

I even miss the screeching cleanings.
Back to my report, I heard a crow crowing.

My hands look milky.

I don't know why nothing is happening.

 

 

 

 

After Faking My Own Death

Lonely, I would walk into the bedroom of my
blacked-out house,
sneeze in the silence,
and then walk out of the bedroom.

Finally, I paid a psychic to give you a message:
Fake your own death.
Now we sit on the kitchen floor of the blacked-out
house playing chess.

Whenever I draw the curtain
I see an angel smoking on the sidewalk.

 

 

 

 

Ocean Beach


Past the sandy Great Highway—
the sea where no one swims.
A windmill with an eye at the center,
inspecting with tied hands.
And a few blocks down
another one, motionless
in all this weather,
bookends the park,
minding the waves.

Where as a warning
a child or dog is sucked out to sea
with a shush,
every hundred foggy days.
Beach I go to at night with a girl,
and unable to see the waves,
walk home with wet shoes.
Beach of bonfires like far cities—
I resist going star to star to tell stories
and look at their women.

In the freezing sea off Sunset
the sea-god shifts back and forth—
white as the calves of tourists,
he wears a seal's face
and pumps ink, oil, fate—
his spit washes up as piles of foam.

O the sand and the washed up masts,
the camping tents like sails of ochre ruin,
unmanned fishing poles with their lines long out,
hooks like anchors,
into the Pacific.
We meet no one, just their bottles,
half-burned pallets.
And always behind us the dual windmills:
stalled old plane of the city.

O sad Siberian ocean; beach without lotions.
Waiting for our kind to pass.
It knows there's a weakness in the mountain:
with planted ledges of green branches,
and the doomed restaurant on top,
hunched now, twice rebuilt in resigned beige.
A hope of a cocktail perhaps that's all.

Gray and white birds in the ruined buildings and baths
lifting and beating the air,
and black birds on the burnt out fires.
The cliffs, they float in cloud
like ideas about a beach,
scrubbed out,
the cliffs where I once almost fell,
windmilling my arms.

Every few feet a sigh of a sign:
People Swimming and Wading Have Drowned Here.
And way way out the stateless freighter,
like a rubble of coffins and children's toys,
slides from heap to foreign heap.
And if you turn around,
the park shivers from this windmill to that…

 

 

 

 

Stay Away From That Man

He says things like "Over and over again" and "What's funny is…"

He wears sunglasses and then winks at people.

When you say something he mouths it right after.

A girl I know swears he's all tongue like a mussel.

He only eats appetizers.

This is something you won't believe: he spreads yawns at church.

Imagine his stubble on your sink, your soap, your neck, in your ears.

He has hardly a square inch of French.

You give him a drink, he says, "I don't drink."

He has one of those watches with numbers all over it.

He sits on his wallet.

Who smokes?

What sort of creep sleeps on the bus?

He lingers under water towers. This is a fact.

A few of us followed him home—he lives in a haunted house.

I can tell you won't stay away from this man.

 

 

 

The Good Listener


Stop pushing the couch
in front of the door,
pulling down bookshelves
behind you
and running out the back.

Stop trying to hide
in the peach trees,
bending branches down
over your head.
Hiding in the dead
belladonna flowers,
rubbing dirt
on your face.

Stop climbing
over the neighbor's fence
and banging on the window.
I've cut the wires
to their ears.

Stop eating your hands and legs
trying to disappear.

You can't eat your mouth

and that's what I want.

 

 

 

 

The Moon Of Missing People

The girl was playing in her backyard
when she was swept away, carried away,
her mother said, floodwaters pulled her
like in Greek myths.

The girl saw fish pink as combs, and the gods
wrapped her up safe in foil
until she was tossed upon the lap
of a furred murky king.

Just when she stopped crying and started playing with bubbles,
a waterspout spurt her into the air

to a moon with an underground sea.
She crawled into a shell and crouched and afraid,
lived for as long as it takes to reach the bottom.
Then she came out. White children and blue children
stopped playing their game and stared at her.

Meanwhile on Earth, crews are searching culverts
and scouring drainage ditches
for her red shoes.

 

 

 

New Year's Morning

People wake up sneezing, next to their skins.
They can barely hold their aching heads.
You have to sort of ball up.

At first it's hard to move.
You have to lick the end of each breath
and stick it to the next.
Soon everything passes for normal.

A nice rain falls.
The drops hang in the windows
like champagne bubbles
so we can look in them.
Little snakes roll around in each.

Then the clouds blush and the sun takes a peek
down some street somewhere,
watching the bats swoop down from the bell tower
to mix with the pigeons
in the square where people sell
the silverware of neighbors who disappeared
or rub a certain spot on the nearby bridge for luck.

Still in bed, I write a few lines:
"The tree wears a hat. The church wears a hat."
Wings stick up from the road,
blown flat then popping up again.

A little anxiety sticks me:
that my heart has stopped moving.
A woman staggering by my window
sees me sit up in bed and presses her face to the glass.