I have friends; I have friends who adore autumn
but I find the caterpillars a bit woolly
for my taste. Give me a straw mat and a ceiling
appliquéd with glow-in-the-dark stickers— Cygnus,
Vega, Alfa Romeo. I like my sake
served in Bakelite cups. I like
my apple blossoms in a cider bottle
on a wire mesh nightstand—
that way I can bring to mind
each white draft, each
insurgent come home from the Mojave
for café libre. The anti-hero’s camouflage
is formula-prone but, there it is—
we are cuffed to the voice-over
bubbling foreshadows— we met cute…
we met cute, skating laps
across a frozen lake in a burg unfamed for lulu.
Sea wasp dividers compel sedate lanes.
Above her left eye was a microchip tattoo, just
motto foo, I thought—I thought that explained
why she kept her eyes ajar
and why her lids persistently blinked,
sounding like cowry shells
rolling across an ivory pachisi board; or
abacus beads? Yes, abacus beads rounding
off our numbers. I have friends.
As we slid, they played “Pyjamarama”
from the natatorium speakers.
I released a beatbox-to-brainstem nota bene
hoping to arrest her attention, hoping
that we could bill and coo. Fat chance.
Below the ice so many galaxies,
so much whodunit.
But one thing is for sure—birthmarks
are not instigated by spells
or vitamin famine, no, Lassie,
they are caused by a frightening experience
the mother had before the birth of the child.
In the back of our family gospel
it says that my mom was abducted by folks
who were believed to be lycanthropes
simply because they bayed
at Moon Pies and warm milk and transformed
into wolves once a month. Villagers can be
so cruel. I blame faulty eyewear. Yet
in the front of the Bible people fermented
for a thousand years, building their boats,
filling their whales, emerging
from the black sands with talking trout
for tongues. It’s enough to put you down.
Three months after her nabbing mother
was rescued by a corps of crunchy zombies
wandering the woods looking for virgins.
Amended to the Bible’s frontlet
was a clipping from The Gazette.
My mother’s pressed statement:
They taught me about art and music,
they love Modigliani and Albert Ayler,
Holy Ghost—my ears are in a cave-in—
full of radios, between stations
and the fluctuating shapes of celebrities
fascinate them, intentional or not.
I was born with a red paw-print on my face.
Let’s hope he has the grace to blush and leave
my mother is said to have said when she
first ratiocinated me—a mere ratoon
in a rattan bassinet. She asked
if could be sanded down or erased
with turpentine. I forgave her. She recovered.
It’s just that some people hope
for the best quality casting.
I should mention that my mother
often took me to the airport
in Niagara Falls. I remember father figures
pulling hippo-shaped luggage on wheels
wearing suburban-style turbans
and balancing cups of cola
on their great heads, receding
toward the overwhelming horizon line
where the airport runway met
a fin-de-siècle bash
celebrating the impending exaggerations.
I fed scraps to a tuxedoed sonata needler.
If I complained of hunger she gave me
plain white envelopes to lick.
If I mentioned thirst
we dipped into Misty’s for libations.
An airport teaches you to trust hands—
full of grippe, wearing rings, gloved, holding
hands, waving, halting, turning wheels,
trimming white petals with small scissors,
clapping, slapping, tapping keyboards, reaching
for a rock to pull a limbless body
from the sea
and knuckling off to the nearest kiosk
to buy a lotto.
Answer? —Plottage, plottage, plottage.
Where was I? Am I at that story on the point?
I grew up where the river meets the lake—
“Band nerd!” snorted a botoxed chiropodist
cutting the path of least résistance,
putting me on my bottom. My skates
were double-bladed. My cheeks
were pink. I looked up to see
her white mitten, dangling
above my face. Like the rimed apple?
One bite and I’d fall fast awake?
She helped me up. I mistook my breath
for a dialogue bubble, written in Coptic—
what did it say, what should I say
(what should I have said?)—
I complimented her on her ink
but she insisted that she didn’t speak
first person. A ministerial troop
in HAZMAT suits were practicing
relay fin-offs. As last defense even a spider
will let itself be blown away, carried
on a pounding wind to terra firma
by way of incognita, just above nullius.
Below my town’s sleepy gables was an empire
of pronouns. My rival,
the hippest pirouetter on either side
of the border went all source-of-the Nile,
he tut-tutted, “You can never
outswim yourself!” I maintained
my pique torque with the hissy volition
of an action verb portraying a stump speech.
That sounds like hearsay evidence, I replied.
It reverberated better in the movie
I lifted it from. Today she is a brainy city cop
who arrives like a carp out of water
to crack the case. She took my name
and promised to keep me in mind
for a date—but no promises. Today
she is a librarian
in the chic Yorkshire Dales.
I pushed up her goggles, pulled out
her nose plugs and sighed, “I’d fib
my way onto your jury, to set you free.”
But my incantatory plea was drowned
by shrieks from The Polar Bear Club
whose nude belly flops were radiating
the toothless hark of comrades conjuring coups—gulp.
The rueful bark of seals conjugating with loupes—glub?
While I watched the ambulance crew
scoop wrinkled bodies off the ice
she withdrew into the mob.
Today, she toils for a quantitative trading firm
in old Kalamazoo. Today
I am Ontario de Janeiro.
Out my window I smell the obstinate pansies
massing their forces, but I won’t look for fear
their faces will stone me.
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