Subway poem

What if the subway announcer could hear herself
calling through the old speaker like one chicken

in a fiery barn full of choking chickens?
Would she say, Oh no, oh no,
what a waste?
Would she say, I am a diarist then,
of stops and service changes?
Or would she say, How like any human calls
mine are. A woman pushes a stroller,
and the sound is like crackling fire as its wheels
unstick grit from the ground.
Crackle-ta-crackle crack!

Lamentation

I curse myself, curse myself, curse myself

for not getting the omelet.

Bed-Stuy poems

Little black bird
Picking at a chicken bone
He plucked from a puddle

Hands at your sides
Eyes on the pavement
Smile at your neighbor

Up the stairs
At Myrtle-Willoughby
Are those pants chafing?

Drips from the ceiling
Rats getting brazen
Where is the G train?

America's Army

As a boy, I used to spend entire weekends at my town's brand new, state-of-the-art video arcade, lobbing bombs at terrorist command centers. Every now and then, just for shits, I'd frag an ice cream truck, a school bus, or a baseball game. Years later I read that the arcade had been a property of the American military, and the images on my screen had all corresponded to real bombs and targets in southern Iran. I felt that my will had been hijacked. Worse still, as time went by I couldn't help seeing parallels between this crisis and other aspects of my life.

I once coveted my brother's wife, for example, and the two of us used to nurture our love in secret. Because it felt like a dream, because we assumed it would never see daylight, because we thought we were stealing moments out of time and sealing ourselves off, we felt free to act with abandon. But we had been wrong. Our affair grew until it broke through its crust and terrified a crowd of onlookers, which included my young nephew. And as it turned out, to my surprise, I didn't really love the woman after all. She tried to marry me, civilians perished, etc.

Or this. When I was in high school, I developed a rabid obsession with the 1950s actor James Dean. I watched his movies regularly and I studied his whole life history. As I fantasized about my future life -- from my lowly, lowly vantage point -- it was always checked against the life of James Dean. When I reached my late twenties, I paused to assess my situation. I had indeed risen from the onanistic doldrums of my high school years. Just like my onetime hero, I was an amateur car racer and had experimented with homosexuality. I was making inroads into a local acting troupe. I realized at this juncture that I no longer even liked James Dean. This was all wrong. My fantasy was never supposed to succeed, especially not in this perverse, halfling fashion. Was I an insane person? Whoever thought I should be given mastery over the course of a life?

Scenes from memory

We were driving up to Georgia along the gulf coast and we were both pretty drunk. You were wearing the dolphin earrings that you’d stolen from the last rest stop. You kept trying to correct the wheel, but you were drunker than I was and so we sent a few oncoming cars careening off the road as they tried to avoid us. I told you to stop or I’d turn the car toward the sea and keep going. You sat there quietly. After a while the car rolled harmlessly into a watery ditch, but it was only because I’d been watching you run your fingers over your bottom lip in a sort of rapture.

By coincidence, I was behind your car on the St. John’s Highway. I saw you stop and let a prostitute inside with you. Back at home, the liquor cabinet was empty. I went to my stash, but you'd drank all that, too. I stood in your room and sang quietly. I shot your gun out the window. Why was the wreath I’d made you broken on the floor, why was it partially burned? I imagined you lighting some gin on the wicker and then just staring into the fire, drunk and suddenly transcending your own life. I slept that night in your bed, which smelled so much like you -- rotten wood, stale tobacco -- that I was glad I could enjoy it alone.

You were sleeping heavy off Xanax and vodka. I pulled up one of your eyelids and looked into your iris. It was darting around like you were frightened of me. I’d expected your eye to tell me something about you, but I had no idea what it was seeing. You'd gotten mascara all over my fingers. I poured a cold Mr. Pibb out onto your face, but you still would not wake up. This is bullshit, I thought.

We’d taken a weekend in the Carolinas. Swimming behind waterfalls, fucking in the clovers, nuzzling your dirty neck under the stars. I watched you stand tall and draw from your wine jug or smoke while looking at the sun and I thought, Magnificent. You made me feel like I was born to be a woman of the trees and to touch the Smokey Mountain sky. On the way back, we stopped at an overlook. You stood there on the edge of the cliff, looking out. The big world curved below you. I took a drink and passed the bottle to you. I’ll admit I wanted to end it right there in that last perfect moment. It would have been so easy to just lean on you unexpectedly. I took deep breaths and pictured your whole fall. In the end, I didn’t do it. Forensic technology is amazing these days, plus I could have never faced your family.

You were out downtown somewhere with your sister from West Virginia. I don’t remember why, I was bored I guess, but I picked a pair of your panties up off the floor and tried them on. Then I found the blue lacy bra that went with them and I hooked that on. It was pulled pretty tight. I sat there with my penis tucked underneath me and I rubbed my hairy thighs. It was scary because I felt like I’d left my body. Then I imagined me, the man, lowering himself into me, putting his hands on me. I couldn’t wait for you to come home. I changed back into my regular clothes and waited in the big chair across from the door. You had said you’d be back at one a.m. I had a bottle of Jim Beam and a glass that I was filling. One o’ clock passed without incident, and by one forty-five I wasn’t even a little bit horny any more. At three thirty you finally came home and that’s when I threw that bottle of Jim Beam against the wall.

There will be no divorce

CHARACTERS, in order of speaking lines:

Peter
Mincent
George
Autumn


SET

The interior of an embalming room. A brawny, hirsute man in a work shirt and slacks stands over the the work table, facing the audience. Beside him is a boy, slight in stature, who fidgets constantly. A dead woman lies on the work table, covered up to the neck with a thin cloth that leaves little to be imagined vis-a-vis the curves of her shapely body. A lateral red gash splits her forehead. At stage left, there is a door. The man, Peter, begins to speak in a thick Eastern European accent.


PETER: What kind of a mother, Minnie, names her boy child Minnie?

MINCENT: It's short for Mincent, Uncle Peter. And I like to go by Mince. I told you.

PETER: In Kirkusk, the men have name which end with a heavy sound: "Er." "Um." "Og."

Mincent regards him with puzzlement, disquiet.

PETER: Now. Let us begin with the lip. [Swabs an applicator in a color palette, in a section of vivid red.] It is important for the lip that you pick a strong color. This is where the most change occurs after death. In life, there is much blood here. [His voice grows gradually softer, and he begins applying the color.] Is very sensitive in life. Important, also, to be gentle. So gentle. Yes.

The door opens, and Peter is startled out of his reverie. A clean-cut young man stands in the doorway with his hand on the knob.

PETER: Hello, Georgie. Please to meet my nephew Minnie.

GEORGE: Good to meet you, Minnie. [To Peter] He helping you out today?

PETER: Yes. He is my intern. Fifteen years old. Wants to be someday a makeup artist. [His tone grows lively.] A very fancy makeup man!

GEORGE: Well, Peter, I just wanted to say that if you have any second thoughts at all about preparing Autumn -- about preparing this one for viewing, I can get someone else. Or I can do it myself, you know.

PETER: Thank you, Georgie. But is better this way, I think.

GEORGE: As you wish. Nice to meet you, Minnie.

MINCENT: Mince.

PETER: Mince. Goodbye.

George leaves. Peter works in silence for a minute or two. The boy looks around, fidgets, now and again recaptures his own attention and watches what Peter is doing. He speaks up.

MINCENT: Are you sure you're okay with this, Uncle Peter?

PETER: [sets down his instruments] Yes. [Mincent seems uncomfortable in the silence that follows as Peter looks into an invisible distance.] She was my wife, and I want only to serve her for as long as I can. This, Minnie, is my last chance. [Yet he does not continue working and instead maintains his ruminative pose. Minnie leans forward over the table in an attempt to see his eyes.]

PETER: You know, she did not really love me. [He grips the corpse's leg firmly above the knee] One day, she tell me this. Probably she fell in love with yoga teacher or something. But it's not important, so much. You know she have the herpes, Minnie? Yes, it's true. Big ones.

MINCENT: Uncle Peter, I don't want to hear about that.

PETER: Oh, she have so many health problems. Had to wear diaper all the time. Penguin skin. And feet like old clay, with the cracks that ooze yellow. I did not allow her shoes off when I am in the room, even when we make love, which we did always all the time.

AUTUMN: Ha!

PETER: And did you know, Minnie-boy, that she was legally retarded? When she was born --

MINCENT: Uncle Peter, what was that?

PETER: Was what?

AUTUMN: Don't listen to him, Mince. He's a murderer.

PETER: YOU SHUT YOUR MOUTH!

MINCENT: Uh, what's going on here?

PETER: I married a cold, a cold woman.

AUTUMN: I'll tell you what's going on. [for the next several lines, addresses Mincent and the audience alternately] I fell in love with a man who was sweet, wealthy, and built like a gladiator, who talked all crazy but would melt my heart when he demanded "the cereal with marshmallow."

PETER: [quizzically] What? I prefer only that cereal.

AUTUMN: He would sing to me very softly. And the slightest reproach on my part would put him in tears. We were overcome with each other.

PETER: My vovooska.

MINCENT: What. The. Fuck.

AUTUMN: But then things started getting weird. One day, I found a bear pelt in the bedroom. He wanted me to wear it when we, you know...

PETER: [slowly, forcefully] When I was a boy, my mother would kill --

AUTUMN: Save it. Basically, he couldn't perform otherwise. Then it was a business suit with galoshes.

PETER: In Kirkusk, you must understand, the woman --

AUTUMN: And later, it was a balloon tied to my wrist so he could spot me in a crowd. Then he threw out all my shoes that didn't have heels. He installed closed-circuit TV around the house so he could see me pull up in the car.

PETER: Only for I prepare with soap and cologne!

AUTUMN: I felt positively imprisoned. We started fighting -- 12-round bouts that lasted till dawn. I whaled on his love until I thought I had it beaten. Then I told him I was leaving.

PETER: In Kirkusi: Dan lovosko mo hei-heijo. The wolves had me surrounded.

MINCENT: Wait, I thought you were still together when Aunt Autumn died ...

AUTUMN: So let me finish. I packed my things to leave, but I stayed the night because it was so late. When I got in my car the next day, there was a note on the passenger seat. It read: "Desolation in the jail, and yours also. With the lonely seal on the ice, it is possible only to drown. Maybe if you share your heart to me, I don't drunk, don't behave my passion. Too late goodbye." I couldn't understand it, so I just started the car and pulled out. Now I know it meant that I had to die for leaving him. I was the lonely seal.

MINCENT: Wait, if you didn't understand the note, how did you memorize it?

AUTUMN: Well, Mince, as a subjectivity, I could only know what I had perceived firsthand. But now, the "I" of Autumn Banks has dissipated and become part of "suchness." We -- void, nothingness -- are inherent in everything that comes from the void. So we are also everything, allowing a sort of total recall. As a non-existent, I am all-existent.

MINCENT: [tentatively] Okay.

PETER: Pah! I have something for your nothing, lady. You -- my everythingness. And now that you are awake again, you will not avoid me. Void that you say the thing [mumbles and trails off]

AUTUMN: As I was saying, I pulled out of the driveway and started down the road. Everything was normal until I couldn't stop at the red light, no matter how hard I slammed on the brake. That's when that pickup smashed into me.

MINCENT: He cut your brakes.

PETER: I make a small change, so the brake work at the first and at the last it stop.

AUTUMN: You destroyed my life.

PETER: I was a good husband.

AUTUMN: You drove me away and then murdered me.

PETER: I was a good husband. You were too stupid to know this.

MINCENT: I think I'm going to go now [makes to leave].

AUTUMN and PETER: No!

PETER: You should hear how I have suffer for this woman.

AUTUMN: No, you should learn who your father's brother really is.

MINCENT: I don't even get this. Are you a ghost or are you a zombie? Is your brain working again?

AUTUMN: There is a special relationship between the vibrational field of "consciousness" that you're interacting with now and this material body. But still it took an enormous effort to make this happen. Imagine a nuclear explosion in reverse -- energy condensing back into matter.

PETER: So what then? What you come back for? Perhaps to make love [softens his voice] for one last time?

AUTUMN: [considers him curiously for a moment] No.

PETER: What for, then? Why must I hear again your voice, which shakes my heart like so much nuclear exploding?

AUTUMN: I've come back for justice, to tell people that I was murdered, and to tell them who did it.

PETER: Who you will tell? Maybe I cut off your head right now, [crescendoing] say it was accidental while I shave your hairy neck!

AUTUMN: The boy will know. He'll tell them.

MINCENT: Do you think anyone would believe me? They already think I have emotional problems. Besides, even if Peter did go to jail, what would that do for you?

AUTUMN: Well I would know that he, uh --

MINCENT: For how long would you know? You just "collapsed into this earthly body" for the day or whatever. And even if you did know, then what? You'd still be dead. What's done is done.

AUTUMN: Justice is important, Mince. Someday, there... People... Pfah. You're a kid. You wouldn't understand.

MINCENT: I wouldn't understand what?

AUTUMN: I would -- He would go to jail, and then die there, and then I'd be... [to self] How would I...? It's justice! Okay? Mince? Ugh! Meaning is so fucking absurd! I don't know why I ever cherished life in the first place. Forget it. You know what? I'm out of here. [Body deanimates, falls to the table.]

For Peter and Mincent, suddenly struck with confusion, Autumn's collapse was a sort of reality check. Peter paces the room, possibly making his way out the door, but returns to his workstation. Mincent fidgets with some of Peter's instruments.

MINCENT: What should we do?

PETER: We continue the work.

Peter starts applying a putty to the gash on Autumn's forehead. Mincent appears frustrated that, despite a total aberration of reality, things seem to have gone back to normal without acknowledgment.

MINCENT: So, I mean, what was that about?

PETER: [looks at Mincent] Pretty wacky, huh?

MINCENT: [sighs in disgust, then, after a pause, resigns himself to the situation and begins to ruminate] Well do you think it's true then, Uncle Peter, what she said about the living world, about meaning and everything?

PETER: [takes a moment to form his thoughts] My ignorance, Minnie, is most precious to me. You understand this? If you are smart, you will follow this thinking.

Peter covers up the gash, sets his aside his instruments, and starts to leave the room. Mincent follows.

MINCENT: I can't believe you killed Aunt Autumn.

PETER: I am still in love with her.

MINCENT: Do you regret it? Killing her?

PETER: No. If she is alive, I think I am more heartbroken, because I know she is not with me.

MINCENT: Isn't that incredibly selfish?

PETER: Yes. [opens the door]

MINCENT: But is she really gone, anyway? I mean, we just --

PETER: [pauses with the door open] Minnie, stop your questions, huh?

MINCENT: Okay, but --

PETER: Stop? Stop. Come on.

They exit. The end.

Confessions

My dear, sit down. Sit. It's all right. Sit down, I said. My darling Diana, please. Sit down here or I'll shoot you in the face.

With what? With this little charmer. Nice, huh?

Where did I get it? Where did I get it? The store. Listen. First of all, I want to tell you that you're right to suspect me of cheating. I have been. With four women. Five if you count finger-banging. One of them wants me to move with her to Norway. Or Peru or something, I forget. Hey, don't move. I don't want to see you move. My point is that I haven't taken any of their calls for a week. For at least three days. I'm through. See, I've done a lot of --

Oh, please. Please buck up. Hear me out, it's going to get better. C'mon. Oh do what you want. I've done a lot of thinking over the last few days. I haven't slept a wink. Here's the thing. They could all seven live with me in this house, semi-nude, servile. They're fascinating women, too. One is a Marshall-winning poet --

Good God! You sound like an ambulance! Hush, baby. Please. It's all right. Hush now. I'm talking. As I was saying, they could all seven live here with me. They could love me or hate me, fuck my brains out or line-edit my manuscripts. I'd still kill myself if you weren't around. I would. That was this little guy's first mission. See, you're going to get a phone call in a few days from a strange woman. She'll tell you some things, some of them true. But I know, I know if I can get you to sit here long enough and hear me out, that won't matter. Once all my heart's revealed, and this is the only way I can do it, you'll forgive me. Pay no attention, darling, to my little tear. He's just escaping through the window from a burning vessel. Oh Diana, don't you know? You're the only thing I can possibly conjure feeling for. I've written you a sonnet, love. I wrote you three, actually, plus two lyric poems and a more free-form piece which I'll sing for you at the piano later tonight. But this first sonnet introduces the series. Ahem.

"Your hair reminds me of a warm safe place
Where as a child I'd hide and pray
For the thunder and the rain to --"

No. Uh uh. Sit down. Darling I'll shoot you. In the leg. Just listen to the whole thing, it gets better. Turn around. Fine, don't turn around, the easier to shoot you. I'm sorry about the first few lines, if you don't like them. In fact I didn't even write them. Diana. Don't you dare touch that knob. I'll shoot you through the door. I'm going to do it. I'll. Oh. Oh, no. ... Careful on the stairwell, Diana! I'll call you!