Savonarola II

"Your city is now the city of God."
-Girolamo Savonarola

What do you expect a man to say
when he wants nothing
but your salvation? It wasn't
the threat of damnation
that got to us––we could tell
the time of day by his shadow
in the cathedral––it was the boys,
fanciulli, who went door to door,
asking us but what if he's on
to something? People have always
had a problem with the scrutiny
afforded by mirrors. It seemed
natural, that our reflections be
made enemies of ourselves.
You can't imagine how the palaces
shone in that dingy light,
the teeth of crenellations gnawing
at the city they overshadowed.
The proud, he said, fall
prey to themselves, and that was all
we needed to know about justice.

Eavesdroppings

We had lunch in the train station, herring, pickles, potato salad, vodka. Everything Russian. I told him today is such a poem and that my friend says that everything is a poem.––What did he say?––He said, well, he laughed.

Lounge Car: Charlie

I bought a Volkswagen after my tour in Germany,
top speed of maybe 75. Just enough to keep up

with the autobahn. The trains don't even chug
anymore, just sway. I say the most polished surface

in the world might be the top of the rails, which reminds
me of the bumper of that old Beetle which reminds me

of the absence of cow-catchers on trains today,
which didn't catch cows so much as split them in half.

It must have been the chill of the water that did it, holding
out his left hand that looks like a fractured cup, that one

long fissure in the brown earthen mug that refuses
to part, fingers at permanent grasp around the palmed scar.

They don't give you a purple heart for washing dishes
but they do send you home with your gun and hope

you finish the job––the war, some vendetta of the mind
against the flesh––yourself. He chuckles like the train wheels.

Lounge Car: Becky

The second time she ran away she ended up
in North Dakota, and works a quilt beside me
as we hurtle through the badlands.

The only time I ever followed my grandfather
down to the river, I first met a bear that was eating
out of his palm. T-T-T-T-T go the telephone poles,

T-T-T-T-T go the shadows at a slant. He told me
sometimes friends shouldn't meet one-another.
The bowed grass and the flatlands convince me

that the bales of hay have rolled themselves.
The machines are all show. On the third night
the tree is tied with skulls at compass points.

The men, they cut, here––she pokes my chest, left
and here, right, and dance until the horns break
through the skin. Think about the forces

between passing trains, whether a bird flown
in between would feel the pull of east and west
and split, wing from wing, or if a balance

is struck between the points, and this bird (a starling,
probably, swooping over fresh cut grass beside the tracks)
could nest in the stillness of a storm that's all eyes.

Steganography III

III.

It's the repulsion
of atoms that makes us

unable to touch.
The distance between rain

and pattering glass is the same
between hissing fist

and patient temple, bullet and
brainstem, infinitely divisible.

I am in danger of flying
apart at any moment, reaching

for a paring knife to halve
the nectarine with empty,

razor-sharp space, knowing
I will never grasp the knife,

cannot even reach.

Learning

The easiest way to skin a hedgehog

is to use a bicycle pump to inflate it
(gutted and cleaned, of course)

over the fire, and scrape away the remains
of its charred quills. A man can eat

three, four in a sitting, the grease
he flicks into the fire burning brighter

for a moment or two, and we will
drink ourselves welcome

to sampling the spineless
creature, for the sake of invitation,

politeness, perhaps a bite of skinny rib,
a tiny foreleg. Like trying tripe in Florence,

because the wine was at hand to wash
my palette clean and the vendor

looked on expectantly. His grin says
he's seen it before, the moment

of knowing and pushing away,
the act of swallowing truth

after truth, the grease of it
covering my foreign hands, my smile.


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Postictal

It's just that: the danger
                                    of allowing an angel to drive.
Your palms cupped over and found
                                    the holy bowl empty, the rings
of left behind dust that settled
                                    on the edge of its tense surface,
concentric. Concentrate, this
                                    is the prayer for when the choir's
crescendo won't break: let my scabs
                                    peel off in one brittle sheet
and throb with what I know but
                                    can't taste to say. And
this:
                                    Let my feet dangle over
the knit rope edge of the hammock;
                                    the doves will have their day,
and I, the same from the ground
                                    up, when the saints have long since
stopped speaking.


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Like the Clay V

I-III
IV
V.
VI
VII.

I learn from reading
the encyclopedias

that great
mechanical constructions––
boats, planes, machines

deemed fit for sacrificial
champagne christenings––
are female,

and I think this
is rightly so: helmed
and mastered by men

who rely on us
to not abandon them
to the deep,

and also that you
are sheltered within,
shuttled, nurtured, deposited,

though it is strange
to consider disembarking
as birth.

Like the Clay VII

I-III
IV
V
VI
VII.

The cat's hiss
is that of a short fuse.

We are all ill-
tempered these days.

You arrived
at my doorstep
all messed up,

hands badly bandaged,
a grenade

lodged

in your broken teeth.

After I replaced the pin
with a bent paper clip,
you told me between gasps

(the nerve
of a tooth
exposed)

that it was the only
forbidden fruit
you could find.

Steganography II

II.

I was told to wash my hands
before coming in. They looked
clean to me, but I learned

why they call it gray water,
and that sterility has a scent

––no, an odor–– like
formaldehyde, but nothing
like formaldehyde; of

preservation, of keeping
the natural course of things

at bay. We have never been
particularly good at talking
about death, but if I am

a new self, given seven
years to shed (even now,

my sunburned shoulder peeling
in ragged bits, broken skin
on my damp palms raised

and white from scrubbing),
are you?


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