Archive for January, 2009

To pull crumpled straw fedoras
Dented crowns, bent brims
Out of mom’s closet, from under the couch
And never find my hat

To find a constellation of nickels and dimes
(No quarters, alas)
Scattered on a marble slab
At the lunch hour riverside

To see Jupiter and Diana,
Mighty lord, pale huntress
Drawn together in the evening blue
As we walk from the train

I replaced my stolen porkpie hat with something sad and floppy, no substitute for its crisply creased predecessor. I dithered in the piazza looking for a place to stash my metal hat form—an expandable chrome thing too heavy to carry—and so I missed the bus.

We left the basilica, or tried to, but as we descended the marble stair and its antique sculpted balustrade, one landing opened on to another broad flight of steps, an endless corridor of chapels, and cathedral nave upon nave. There was no escaping renaissance religiosity that day.

I had a nasty sore on the back of my hand, a scab like some crusty pasta in tomato sauce. I removed a wide flat bone and scraped it clean with my knife. There was a hole in the middle in the shape of the wound.

Constellations wheeled by overhead.
River ice rattled as it swept downstream.
An inauguration address acknowledged nonbelievers at last.

You traded your aging body for a younger and taller man’s. Your new face was broad and strong, if rather plain, with a rounded nose and chin. Your hair was blonde, but thinning a bit. Overall, the swap was favorable, except for a rash on your scalp, some small bumps or boils. You examined them in the mirror and assumed there was a topical medication that could take care of it.

The man whose youthful body you took possession of did not, however, decide to use yours. No, he assumed the body of someone who had recently died. At first this made sense enough, it was his choice if he wanted to reanimate a corpse. But when you mentioned it to the skinny little clerk at the registration bureau, he was disgusted. That ought to be illegal, he said with a grimace.

Then it suddenly occurred to you, for the first time, oddly enough, that the body you had been living in for all of your life was now simply abandoned. It was nobody’s skin anymore, and that struck you as sad. After all, it had served you pretty well for a long time. There was nothing really wrong with it, and it wasn’t that decrepit. You wondered if anyone would miss the old you.

Once there was an industrious little pig who constructed a very serious edifice out of sand, right beside a prison where a small-time inventor had devised a catapult to throw himself over the wall. A key component of his escape machine really hurt your feet, was famous for it, in fact. You can imagine what happened. Prison break, smashed castle. Unhappy pig. Aching arches.

I know you want the serious stuff,
Clear-eyed calling of things by their name.
Something bracing, but not too.
I punched the governor right in her nose,
Which was maybe heroic or a bit much.
Hey, she started it.

Lightning struck the construction crane,
Knocked the hook right into the garden.
The neighbors took no notice.
Talk about gathering gloom.
English class ran all afternoon.
You couldn’t leave your coat on your chair
Or the professor would put it on stage.

I went home for awhile and tried to sneak back on campus but got caught by the librarian while I was climbing around the pedestals and pediments. As punishment I had to ride a tricycle backwards up the driveway. My poem was prepared but printed on black paper so I couldn’t present it.

As part of some freshman initiation rite
You had to screw an apparatus into
The drain of the sink in the dorm.
Then you could eavesdrop on your neighbors
For when they said something sensitive,
Coughed up the goods,
Called things by their name.

Another blackout in the city.
This time it seemed like great fun,
Lying on the floor, bundled in blankets,
Making jokes about tin can telephones
Until it dawned on us that the power
Was not coming back on. Ever.

Tell me what you love.
Give me an example.
The sun on your face in November
As the wind sweeps yellow leaves around your feet
And the whitecapped Hudson river flows
A billion diamond facets?

The lunch ladies in England
At the school you went to?

In a surprising turn of events, France reverted to the monarchy and crowned me king. I took my new responsibilities very seriously, and would often forego evenings at court to visit a pediatric clinic housed in the royal residence, an apartment tower that substituted for Versailles.
There I would announce to all and sundry, Je suis le roi. Little girls would grow wide-eyed and laugh. Maintaining some of my previous habits as a commoner, I got lost on the elevator. Plus ça change …

The Star of David was in his way. He was proud of his Jewish heritage, but only as some people are vaguely protective of an idea about their grandparents. He couldn’t posit his existence without crediting their efforts to … oh, hell. When he wanted to get his truck out of the temple driveway, the arch was too low, that’s all. He would have fit underneath if he hadn’t insisted on standing on top of the rig so that the star hit him in the face.

He didn’t know he was walking the wrong way until he was already at 114th St. While it was nice to have the help of so many friends as he loaded the truck, he wished they had a better idea of what he wanted to take with him. Those empty grocery carts, for instance. Why would he need them?

When the rubble of the crumbling sidewalk reflected the face of a terrier walking behind him, he knew something was up. He said, Pavement. We’ve got to make friends with the tooth.

Harriet Smith, oil on canvas, 2008

The spring day was overcast but warm.  I felt privileged to be meeting with Jim, the magazine’s managing editor, and his big white hair, on the terrace of his summer home.

It was oddly unsurprising to find red-haired Becky, my middle school crush, flushed and crying there in a chair. She was asking for a month off.

She looked terrible after all these years and it made me wonder if she thought the same about me.

Jim balked about giving her a break. He chuckled softly. He seemed to think her distress was funny. While Becky sniffled a waiter brought small plates of food, antipasto dishes and raw oysters, and balanced them on my arms and legs as I reclined on a chaise longue.

The tweedy, ambitious editor of the milestones page, Claudio, was driving Becky crazy with endless pages she had to fact-check.  He wanted to add recipes and restaurant reviews to the obits and stuff. He was the one in the kitchen, whipping up the dishes.

All those plates I was holding were making me pretty nervous, so I told Jim he should maybe limit what the milestones page was about.

When you look down your lonesome road
We know you’re terrified
Join the club, feel at home
We’ll meet you out in the unknown
Where a little green and yellow finch
Sails down to take tiny sips
From the melting ice

Another thing I wanted to confide
Was about the moments when
Everything is drained
Of color, texture, shape and volume
That nauseating void is not without value
Not a hole in your pocket you carelessly overlooked
Nor a punishment for weakness or lack of will
In our gang we call it
A window and a wing