The Hippopotamus

they are said to be the most violent animals in the world
their jaws can close over a man’s head and snap it off
their bodies move unusually fast as if they are smaller
but they are not smaller their mass is extravagant
when they move through the water

          the water moves aside

not for religious reasons but because there’s no place to go
but aside when a leathered tank goes slopping forward
you will go left and you will go right and you will go away
their heads swing open like jewelry boxes
but there is no jewelry inside, only teeth the size of small fists
not pointed the way a panther’s fangs are pointed
blunt, even, but when the jaw swings shut whatever’s there
is riven into pieces -- what is inside the mouth and out

what is inside swallowed whole what is outside left to rot

still, i confess that i love the hippopotamus, with its tendencies
towards unwarranted violence who has not wanted
without reason to destroy everything
that was unnecessary to his happiness? who has not wanted
a jaw so vast it could fit the head of an enemy between its grasp?
who has not wanted to force the river out of its bank?
to be feared by the clumsy? to jostle muddily around?
who has not wanted not to be afraid?

Salt Herring

I brought back a jar of salted herring from Berlin
The tin lid clamped down around the edges, pressed
Like a pie crust. On the flight back I had eaten
Handfuls of fresh fries, and woke covered
In salt, my hands smooth with the grease.
My hands on my face, mixing the oil with the sweat
Or whatever water sat there. My eyes. My hands.
What I saw: the grained blue fabric of the seat ahead
And the gray groove of the tray set back. The voices
Gutturally incomprehensible and soft around me.
No music. No melodies. The sound of the wind
Outside the plane or not the wind but the plane
Moving the air so that the plane was the air:
Plane air, plain air, just what we breathed, just what
We meant by pulling in that soft fume, slowly.

Self-Portrait in Three Parts

1.
We turn the fan outwards to funnel the smoke.
We watch it sift through the blades, above the fire
Escape. Up the stairs, the roof. Painted silver
It gleams like wet stone under the no-sun.

The girls lie there anyway with their eyes closed
On wide red towels, not sleeping.

2.
I have no identity, and you cannot disagree.
Your vision of me is only one version
Of self I’ve had the pleasure of pretending to be.

The me I am alone is still not one with itself.
The hand clapping, etc, all of that, nonsense indivisible.

When it is clear that the voices inside the head
Are only those that my mind has chosen
Then I will learn how to talk with strangers.

3.
When the sweat has already gone inside the skull
The condensation will kill the flies that sleep there.

Wet thoughts lead to bad dreams. That is what they say
when you come to them with bad dreams.
Wring out the rag where the thought was born,
Wring out the rag with both hands, and hard.

If you can find the rag, lay it out
On a piece of hot rock
And let the cloth evaporate.
Let the lizards play in the fluff that remains.

monodramas

Neither
After Beckett

It’s not the neither we fear so much as the either.
What choices we made we did not know we were making.

If nothing were the only choice wouldn’t we have accepted it?

But something and then a lesser something;
between these two things there can be no peace
only indecision (that inability to know what’s right is right
even when the wrong was certain to have cleaved
you from crown to feet) remains

staggered between the doors, open or closed,
or, more likely, open and open, your feet moved
as quickly as the fluttering oak’s seeds
with their curious uptilt
turning leaf to propeller.

You were, in other words, going in circles.

If this was a quality you admired in me,
my sense of justice, my ability to see that nothing was wrong
and nothing, equally, right--

They say that a woman, waiting for her lover,
gave up and turned into a tree

or didn’t give up, kept waiting until her feet took root
and continued on until he returned.

Living, he saw only that the she he had known was dead
and in its place stood the brown remains
of what had been devotion.

He turned away from that half open door.

He went back to town and married the butcher’s daughter
whose hands were not quite stained with blood
but smelled constantly of the metal and tannin
of the knife and old soap.

They sat in the winter and ate jerky together
pulling it into pieces until it was soft again.

moths

When you’re thinking you’re not having a thought unless you can write it down. If you have a thought but then you cannot write it down you are not having a thought. The thing that seems to be happening in your brain is like what happens when you check a potato for electricity – the potato will have electricity but the potato is not thinking, nor is it thinking about whether or not it is thinking. This line of reasoning will get us nowhere. Check your head for electricity and there will be electricity. Will there be enough electricity to kill a man? No, but perhaps enough to kill a moth that decides to alight within. The head can have moths. Maybe what you feel when you wonder if you’re thinking but you’re not thinking because you can’t write it down, is moths. The powder falling off with the flap of their wings. Their eyes on those flimsy stalks flickering left and flickering right. Write it down, and then you will be thinking, you will have a thought. The shape that remains when you lift their bodies from the dust is the character of the first letter.

the D-minor mood

"Impetuous as if conquering territory ...gravitas with moments of reverie..."

There are a few lies every singer tells at an audition. Most common is the imagined illness: a throat over-lined with phlegm, a nasal passage conquered by the prickles of oncoming sinusitis, an accidentally ingested grape leaf stuck in the esophagus (not an illness, but still, an unfortunate sort of vocal ailment). They get onto the stage and put their hand to their chest and cough, expelling dry air into the space, looking at the accompanist (tempo? key?) shuffle their feet to the left, to the right, put their hands into the folds of their long skirts, their trouser pants, their mossy sweaters, and breathe. They are not like dancers, who pull their legs up and their arms out, rippling the muscles they plan to show. Their talent does not sit as a golden mantle on their bodies. Some beautiful, some with faces like depressed Chihuahuas, some slouching, some twitching their noses as if they can smell the comments you will think before you make them. Whatever lives in their throat is invisible, even if it speaks to them. The high F is there today, sitting on its shelf, simply reach up and throw it over.

Do they dream of this? If they do, there’s no romance there. No maestro in violet cloaks rushing to his feet to wave a wand and command the performance. No chirping birdsound to score the moment. 

the sky fell

And there were two inches of mussed gray ice on the ground as you heard the sound of rocks thrown down the gutter. The roof of the house across the street flew into the air and seemed to hover before it drifted down and you realized it was actually falling when it came to rest on your own front stoop. Crash, bang.

It's not that anything ever changed around you. The same paper bag that came across your face whose crinkled brown surface you condemned for the flecks of dirt you thought you tasted as it passed and seemed only to indicate disintegration went softly to the floor and the next day you walked by it and thought of the family of ants that must be living in its corners. You slipped in the ice and when the salt pressed into your cheek you wondered if you'd seasoned the soup. The leaves finally dipped red.