The Postcard

Someone probably paid a little money for it.
I didn’t pay much. Three for a dollar out of a shoebox
in a maritime chopshop. The sign said
“Relatives For Sale.”
Then a stack of old postcards
in see-through envelopes. Photographs of people
all of which I figured were long dead. The ghost-like
faces of children. Women in black dresses
at the beach. A family on the bumper of an automobile.
One man standing proudly with only a
foggy lake behind him.
This one had been tinted blue and given a decorative border.
And in the middle, two people from the stomachs up
kissing. The man almost shorter than the lady,
as she seemed to bend to him.
Her face merely a profile, his more
of the whole thing. Taken by surprise, I think,
a tight and flat pucker to his mouth.
Whereas she had full control of her grace and love.
Or the appearance of it. Softer. Her sweater buttoned
to her sternum. Daring in what
corner of her eye could be seen. On the back, a space
for a message. And a space for an address.
Neither one filled in. Rather, sideways along the top in
blue pen written: Josie and Luther Goreman
Taken in Wilder, Tenn
about 1920

We had a few short
happy years together.

I have since wondered about Josie and Luther Goreman.
Who was it that arranged this photograph? Said, alright
now kiss you two. Said, we’d like it blue please. Or maybe that
was just the blueness of time. Who wrote
the message I’ve read so often? Summed things up
with such courage and simplicity. Was it Josie,
or was it Luther?
Whose fence is it
behind them? And why were their happy years
together so short?

I’ve also come to think, since I purchased this piece
of paper so long ago in that damp, quiet store in winter--
among maps and hooks and buoys, harpoons and
wheels as tall as me, a full scuba suit in one corner
a hundred years old with a skull behind the cross
hatched mask--that it is my most beloved and prized
thing. That I will keep track of it, of
The Goremans,
for the rest of my life.

The Lying Web Of Shadows

A cat with no face appears in the window--and I’m on the third floor in here.
The houseplants are whimpering little blades
that chatter like prisoners.

She’s pregnant--belly full ‘a eyeless numbers.
She grooms her fur with her little jackknife of a tongue, and I tremble.

Can’t help but think this is a
threat of some sort, some implication
at my demise.

“I’ll call the fucking cops!” I shout.

Then

without much noise, a woman enters the room
and lets her clothes
slide off

like ice sheets melting into the Arctic.

“What on earth is it?” She asks.
“You look concerned.”

The Something

The thought has a thing, and sun is a blinking eye
Coerced into the long stare at her children. Wind pauses
For reverence at our eulogy, as if anyone cares,
Which if brief, formal and boring.
Pigeons throw their voices like ventriloquists, a
Boy bounces one green grape infinitely.
This memory as thought as thing; the idea as
being a thing once
And only once;

A blind man rolls a cigarette and invents language.
What’s the difference? He’s been sold, but a useless slave.
He does not remember a motel outside Pittsburgh.

The dark cozies up to the dark there. Only our night continues.
In the night, there are not only pictures, but figures.
Not many nights but one after the other. A sequence of nights.
And imagined forms, and nostalgia.
Memory clips the wings of the ocean. A certain
Immaculateness brightens them, hurries us along to the water.

Brownish white, Egypt crawls out of the cave
With its body wrapped in sack-cloth.

The stars are merely pygmies.

Mercurial Darkness Society

What
I heard then
when the rain struck

the leaf

blinked. When the
giraffe
child slid out,

opened her eye for the first time,

fanned
those lovely coveted

lashes. When my movement
loved its
movement’s clone

in the moonlight;

in you, asleep.

The stars
trembled
on the ceiling. They do
not

talk amongst themselves. They

do not tell

secrets—they have no secrets
left to tell.

Gamey Altitude

This dining room is mouse bin dusty.
The staff’s a bunch of old egg-eyed buffoons
with yellow heads and chalk hands.
What would it take to get a glass of water in this dump?

I signal one of the geezers
and persuade him to pour me some.

When it comes out, instead of ice
there’s a couple teeth clinking
around in there.
Not human teeth—more like the molars of a tiger,
an ocelot, or some other of the large cat
family.

Of course, I’m none too happy. I curse the waiter
and his elderly mind. In response, he points at a nearby table.

At it, there is a sitting man. A traveling salesman, I’m told,
with rotted rubber shoes and sewn shut eyes. He’s deaf
the geezer tells me, and hands me a card.

“See you in the afterlife,” it says.

Night Of Abandoned Planets

Big-headed, crying babies
of previous
nights haunting
worlds
of ice--once romantic
vistas.

I sit in a plain white chair and wait
in my father’s pajamas.

Wait for the object of my future
to arrive, roly poly,

in its ill-fitting summer suit. Wait

for the snarling animal to sniff my limbs and lick them clean.

I am

A

small, murdered eye in a box. Clothes
pins worked around
my various openings.

Someone, of course, invented me. But their
tracks have been thus covered well. And

the identity of this scientist is so distant, it

isn’t even there.

Pinochle Time

It’s when you realize how basic you are.
How much you really need.
Bravery, yes, but also
sadness in all these little choices,
the trivialities.

When our minds are unnecessary, or simply unused.

In the pinochle time, the milk
drinking time.

In the waiting to fall asleep time.

In the breakfast, lunch and dinner time. Fruit
salad time. Time with no noise. Time with
ice and a straw.

Time waiting for test results.
Time that
reminds you it is there. The time in between

visits to cemeteries.

The time we spend catching our breath
at the tops of the stairs. Or removing nail polish,
or celebrating holidays
like Thanksgiving, and New Years.

The time we think we lost but never had.

Spent studying geology, dissecting a piglet, looking
through a telescope.

Mourning.
The time on a mountain. The time
of war, envy or jealousy. Of our treacherous

stabs at love. Whereas, most of us,
our love is so imperfect
it does more harm than good.