The Avenues
My mother says we acted out the funeral of Robert Kennedy,
And walked serenely around the corpse.
On Sundays while I am still in bed
And my phone rings with my mother at church
You clean your house
And the cat hides under the covers.
Cleaning my house, I came upon an old manila folder
With pressed flowers, your photo, and two pieces of paper.
One read: “Games in the trash” and “Sandwich woman”
Notes for a poem I’ve forgotten to imagine.
Outside the sprinklers make evening puddles
And a tree of birds is a choir for the early summer.
The black and white photograph shows you looking
Out to a parking lot with a Chevy Caprice;
Your head turned away from the camera
Waiting for the taxi, which we missed.
We missed the flight as well and your mother distrusts us now,
But does that mean we are untrustworthy?
My Alice
A dozen merchants stand at the base of a mountain
Swinging empty scales over their heads like ancient weapons
I admire their work
Though I do not know it
Just as admiring you
Alice,
The cat is under the glass table
And a large rat is quietly writing an essay on contemporary poetry
Like him I am an admirer
Our ears ring
We are growing fat in our dens
You are on the edge of the bed
Trying to wake up
You are on the edge of the bed
Going to sleep
You are waiting at the edge of the bed
Like a princess waiting at the edge of the bed
It is the day after Thanksgiving
The clinking jars slander the leftovers
The clinking jars allay as they slander
The fire and whiskey and pies from last night
Still linger somewhere inside us
And in this stupor of overeating and too much drink
I admire you
I put a tiny torch under your hair
Poof and you disappear
At the table where I am asked to say grace
Everyone seems satisfied
The professor speaks to me at length about the president
His wife finds me charming
They invite me to their house
I am suddenly very lonely
I sit at the edge of Nina’s bed
Thinking of you
While everyone plays a board game
The answer always seems to be from a movie I’ve never seen
My Alice walks in through the window
A pale apparition in the darkness
I offer a slice of wedding cake
—I know, she says
Let’s pretend we are not in the middle of the woods.
Translations
The giant jellyfish washed back and forth along the coast
Sleeping inside it
Hell made a pass at me
So that I strove to push myself over
One contradiction at a time
Until a house appeared
Where people walked up and down the soft stairs
Looking for something interesting
“Life,” the boy said, “Is the act of evading boredom at the expense of sanity.”
My children talk about sleep
And their grandmother who came from Moscow
Going east
Past the monolithic waters of Baikal and the Pacific
The San Francisco house full of leather bound books on botany
Today
I wait at the café
With my books, music, and clothes
Waiting
Of course there should also be a lake—blue and crystalline
The surface not reflecting the sun but absorbing it
Pulling it into the cold water
The heat stored in a rare mineral at the bottom
Of course not everyone can afford a house on its shores
And those who do own the giant houses rarely use them
Preferring rather to spend their time in the city flats
Where they throw long roof parties with Brazilian music
When you stand there
Changing your mind or not changing it
Making it up for the first time with a glass in your hand
Staring into the eyes of a tall writer
You are there at the bottom not waiting exactly
Although those who saw it would have no other word to describe it
She is waiting for her love
Perhaps she is waiting for her love
Standing in the room with your sister
Who you haven’t seen in a long time
She is holding a glass of wine
Your friends kiss on the couch
In the parking lot
You help an old man place bundles of fire wood into his Pontiac
Planes streak the cold blue sky
A white seine that catches nothing