Return
to the Universe
Small Hands
To Never Part
Toward a General Theory of My Wife's Purse
Prague is Used to It
Conditions
An Intelligent Woman from Moscow
The Chicken Explains Why It Crossed the Road
The
Former Tenant
My Teddy Bear
sacred object of nostalgia:
2 buttons for eyes (one dangling from a thread)
ears sewn and resewn into place
two stuffed socks for legs.
there must have been a time
when the bear was whole and new
but I don’t remember it
only
my mother’s gaze, patient but askance,
as I rushed the bear to her once again
for repairs, and worried at her side
as she deftly closed the latest rip or tear
with needle and thread
“What do you do to your bear?” she asked,
but I could not explain
why I flung it at my bedroom wall,
kicked it across the room, held it by one ear
and beat it against the bedpost
not from hatred, but ecstacy—
the only time in my whole life
I have ever been free to love
in my own way.
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Return to the Universe"If you jump into a black hole, your mass energy will be returned to our universe, but in a mangled form, which contains information about what you were like but in an unrecognizable state."
—Stephen J. Hawking.
If you can possibly jump into a black hole
you must stand close enough to jump in
you must stand on a ladder
ten billion light years high
then you can jump into a black hole
and your mass energy will be transformed
including all your informaton
all the information about what you were like
before you jumped into a black hole:
color of eyes, marks or scars,
mother’s maiden name, favorite bands,
even the reasons that prompted you to jump into a black hole
all this information will be marked "Return to Universe"
and sent back but mangled along the way
by careless handling over a long distance
This is purely theoretical
one hypothesis among many
another hypothesis presumes
that one morning
the bathroom mirror will return your face
still sleepy still groggy still yawning
and you’ll realize that over the years, little by little,
you’ve become mangled beyond recognition.
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Small Hands
The hands of the world are small and afflicted with sores
that never heal. They reach out blindly for a few coins.
The news announcer’s mechanical voice
repeats denials, evasions, accusations
in staccato syllables that drum on your head
until it feels as hollow as a politician's promise.
Every night the same reporter with the same story—
only the location changes. Over there,
he intones, at the end of this road
you can see the border between hope and despair.
Don’t lose your passport on the other side. According
to official statistics, eight out of ten nightmares
come true there. One leader
falls, another rises, puts on his boots,
and marches across the weary terrain
shooting everything that moves,
trampling everything that grows.
Tonight we ask our panel of experts,
what are the elements of the current situation?
Gasoline, mud, vodka, burning candle wax.
You don’t have to go far to taste it.
Wherever you live today,
the hands of the world are small
and weary with beseeching.
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To Never Part
The Spanish have no word for good-bye.
Parties don’t end
they drift into the street, still expansive, vociferous, reluctant
to single out one moment as the very last.
The fisherman’s tide may lap at their feet
the emerging mountains may press on their brows
the ruins and the fragments,
Gothic and Romanesque,
may raise once again their perdurable doubts
concerning the immortality of friendship.
Still the people stand together,
dangling their car keys like rosary beads,
trying to talk the night back into the sky.
From "Ruins and Fragments," a chapbook designed and illustrated by Béatrice Coron
New York, 2004.
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Prague Is Used to It
Weathered stone heroes pose and grimace
along the bridge over the Vlatava River
Inside the walls of Prague Castle rises St. Vitus Cathedral.
Inside the cathedral, a golden chamber
with the sepulcher of King Wenceslas. The first one.
After him comes a line of kings.
Later, a whole empire.
Walking in any direction, one encounters
"many impressive palaces"
the guidebook says, not kidding.
In some of these graceful baroque buildings,
the Gestapo interrogated suspects.
Rioters tossed government officials
out of upper windows
Russian tanks pushed through narrow streets
into wounded public squares.
When reminded about it, the old men only shrug.
You get used to it after a few centuries.
Become sly, cynical, nostalgic,
fond of drinking and music.
Become like Max Brod,
who promised the dying Kafka
to burn his manuscripts,
but Brod published them instead—
a betrayal in good faith,
a lie to save the truth,
a moral reasoning as beautiful
and baroque as any edifice in Prague
on either side of the river.
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Towards a General Theory of My Wife’s Purse
If my wife would allow it
(and I don’t know why she should)
I’d like to donate her handbag to science
so some physicist can tell me
why more objects go in than come out again
yet the purse hardly bulges, and never explodes.
How many times have I heedlessly plunged in
with innocent intention, to retrieve some keys
and found instead an entire flea market
with everything but parking.
How many times have I felt my way along the lightless bottom
past ancient earrings turned to coral,
over dunes formed from the sands of different beaches
visited in summers past.
Yes, I have toured that museum of personal history
and gaped at its unsurpassed collection
of movie stubs and parking tickets,
its examples of primitive amulets,
nail-care fetishes, war paint, and sharpened tools.
But seriously, I do not know how she carries it,
how she manages the traffic of its contents,
all the small moving parts of her day and night.
She rarely leaves home without her purse,
but if she does, she grips tight my hand
so a word won’t unbalance her,
so a leaf won’t tumble her,
so the wind won’t whirl her away.
From "A Gypsy Sold Me These Poems," a chapbook designed and illustrated by Béatrice Coron
New York, 2000
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Lamenting her misfortunes, she cried out
that she never asked to be born.
I didn't know what to say to that, because I did.
I asked to be born.
I was bored, I think, or curious, or maybe just naive.
Who is more naïve than someone
who hasn't even been born yet?
Next time, if there is one,
I want a pampered childhood,
inherited wealth,
a perfect physique.
Next time, a few things
must be absolutely clear
from the outset.
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An Intelligent Woman from MoscowFor Anya
She sits with folded legs on the scarlet kilim
expressing opinions
like an intelligent woman from Moscow
Not from Odessa, not from Sevastopol,
not from smoky villages
fractured by the noise of crows
She’s a denizen of the capital,
at home on white boulevards
where tavern doors swing open
spilling loud voices on icy pavement.
The ghost of a horse’s head winks and vanishes
She leans over the bridge’s railing
and throws her diary into the black turmoil
of the passing year
On long evenings
when steam rises from a porcelain spout,
she will tell you in confidence
that the hearth fire is dying,
that wild geese cannot find the sky,
that police have arrested dozens of names
wandering in the forest, disheveled and abandoned,
like her father after a heavy rain
Then she falters, her bright eyes wet.
Embers crackle. Men with strong arms
tremble like newborn kittens, saying,
You go first—No, you—
Offer the bouquet of consolation
without looking like a fool
to the skeptical woman from Moscow
whose smile is already returning.
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The Chicken Explains Why It Crossed the Road
Never did I dream, believe me,
that my motives would be the subject
of so much scrutiny and metaphysical speculation,
ultimately trivialized
by a popular media eager to settle
for the most simplistic explanation,
no matter how absurd.
I know the width of the road, the danger of traffic,
and the uncertainty of the crossing
provoked widespread incredulity.
But since the hour that my natal shell cracked
to let in air through a jagged line of brightness,
I always yearned beyond the immediate.
Beyond my father, isolated and weary
in his great responsibility of rousing the sun
every morning. Beyond my poor sad mother,
whose offspring disappeared by the dozen.
I think the constant clucking and squawking,
the bored afternoons, the predictable frenzy at feeding time,
eventually disgusted me and drove me closer to the road
until I finally plucked up the courage to cross.
Once in the middle of the road,
with cars whizzing by and the sun bearing down,
I thought only of the next step,
not what I had left behind on my side,
nor what might lay on the other.
Not where I was going, but that I was going,
instead of scratching the same old dirt.
Go tell all the skeptics and the scoffers:
my action was its own reason.
From "Ruins and Fragments," a chapbook designed and illustrated by Béatrice Coron
New York, 2004.
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I’m riding the elevator
I’ve been away a long time
A Hispanic man, short, moustached,
accompanied by his dark-eyed young son,
asks me if I want to buy liquor cheap.
I tell him I don’t drink that stuff but he smirks, reminds me
that he lives across the hall
We get off at the same floor
dingy carpeting, dim bulbs, everything
more run down than I remember it
The apartment is wrecked
empty bottles, plates used as ashtrays,
spoons, eyedroppers, piles of newspapers,
burn marks on the furniture
threats from collection agencies
notice of academic probation
Who’s been living here?
I think hard—then it comes to me.
He disappeared many years ago
slipped away at night
leaving me to clean up after him,
leaving me to pay his bills.
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