Strange and Classic, Still

Strange and classic, still as two
Flies left on a windowsill,
Two blue flies who had dueled

To the death when no one was
Looking, so that now they look
Only like the usual,

Just two flies trapped by the pane
Who wore themselves out pinging
At sky in futility,

When, no. These flies were heroes,
Gangsters, boxers, Achilles
Vs. Hector, furious,

Brave adversaries who now
Lie down. Strange and classic, still.

Book Group

There’s a character in chapter thirty-four
Who’s very invested in what happens next,
To the point, one might say, of being
Obsessed. Which is funny, in a way,
Since the character knows that the story,
Wherever it eventually goes, is going
Away, away from, without, the character,
Soon. The rest hasn’t even been written,
Not yet, but it’s already certain it won’t
Use this character as its protagonist.

So why does the character care more
About chapter thirty-five or six than four?
Offspring make a good excuse. What will
Happen to them after all? After all,
The future of the story will be theirs, too.
But, if a reader could ask the character,
Ask the character privately, directly,
Pull the character aside for one moment,
One blesséd, quiet moment without
The nosy author finding out, the character
Would confide that it’s neither denial nor
Parental concern that keeps the obsession
With what’s next in the big mess burning—

It’s habit. It’s just addiction, really. It’s
Probably also partly inherited disposition.
Remember in chapter twenty-four, how
The character’s father was going on
And on, re how amazing all the changes
In the world in his lifetime had been?
That kind of narrative setting just gets
Itself under a character’s skin.

The Weighty Accomplishment

When he finished the first draft,
At the wheelchair-height table
That used to be his father’s

In the yellow back-bedroom
That used to be his sisters’,
And printed the whole thing out—

But before he mailed it off
Down south to his advisor
For feedback and corrections—

He carried it to the shop
Where his father was at work
At the roaring table-saw

To show him. —Here’s what I’ve been
Working on for seven months.
His father turned off the saw,

Lifted the brick of pages
With both hands, tilted it up
To glance at the title page,

Then dropped it on the table.
Picked it up. Let it go. Thump.
Higher, and let it fall. Thump!

—That’s a lot of words. You wrote
All of this? His son nodded,
Not confessing quotations.

—Hey, look how much my kid wrote.
Can you imagine writing
This much? (Lift. Drop. Thump!) A book!

Hoards Happen

She lost one of the rings
Climbing into the car.
It dropped between her seat

And the center console,
And she cursed she’d never
Find it in there at night,

But if she didn’t look
Now, she’d just forget it.
And so she did. The ring,

From a cheap novelty
Package of six, stayed lost.
Sometimes her father thought

To dig around under
The car seats, in the mess
Of old coins and wrappers,

But he never found it.
Once, it reminded him
Of something about poems,

Something about writing,
And he meant to write that,
But he forgot that, too.

What Isn’t It Telling You?

Stop reading, watching,
Listening, stop paying
Attention to others, stop
Trying to get hints
From people about people.
If you were a person
Alone to the horizon,
You’d be the representative
Of all of them. Enough.
Pay attention instead
To the bare spot on the sidewalk
Just past the door ajar,
A bit of construction
Left behind, now void
Of humans but busy
With sunlight and occasional
Lizards and ants.

After the Sermon

The slow drawl of propeller
Engine over the canyon
On a Sunday afternoon,

Like a memory trawling
For other memories
Of other engines over

Other days decades ago—
Every newest noise becomes
Nostalgic in a lifetime,

And maybe that’s part of it,
Why bodies go on living,
So that they can reach the point

Where any old memory,
By mere virtue of being
Memory, their own, and old,

Grows piquantly savory.
Sensing a long existence
Depends on haunting distance,

The fade of that mellow groan
Receding from the canyon
Like the snore of God’s napping.

Skiff at the Lip

The day settles in. Quiet,
Like. Nothing unexpected
From the wars and politics.

No local storms or crime scenes.
The long-term destructive trends
Motoring on, as always.

Gossip about the strong men
Aging in place, monuments,
Like they’ll never die away.

The birds that are still alive
Singing busily outside.
Weather waiting on the sports.

You’re always in the current.
You don’t have to row to float.

Pathetic Amnesty

Everywhere there is a face.
The roommates of perception,
Face-recognition circuits

Cheek-by-jowl with abstract thoughts
That find themselves embarrassed
By the pareidolia

That keeps cropping up like weeds
In mental conversation,
Having quarreled all night long,

Try to reach a compromise—
Recognition tricks accept
The world’s not really human,

And thoughts will put up with poems
Blinking the eyelids of dawn.

Late Lumpyism

The body accrues supplies.
Kin can accrue more supplies.
If supplies can be measured,

There’s a measure of success.
If that success is envied,
Emulated, assaulted,

And worshipped when assaults fail,
There’s an ideology
Of success by the measure

Of supplies, and the excess
Of supplies becomes beside
The point. The point is supplies.

To the extent this measure
Of success keeps successful,
Distribution gets lumpy

And lumpier. You could say,
With a measure of success,
The system is lumpyist.

In its regions of failure,
There’s nothing much but whispers.
Whispers make for poor measures,

But we’re here, spread thin and rare
As dew on welwitschia,
Immeasurable failures—

Difficult at least—whispers,
If not immeasurable,
Implausible to measure.