on dirty bus fronts

on dirty bus fronts

     --poems from back in the day (1980-90), remastered April 2020


*The Connecticut Poetry Review, vol. 8, no. 1, 1989

** The Little Magazine, vol. 14, no. 4.  1985





lord’s prayer



Now you’re where you

are and that’s alright I’m

working on the sides and the

back when we’re

both here it’ll

be like before I ask my

self is there enough

time I know most of them

don’t but we’ll have a

thing to say any

way I don’t ever

worry I’m waiting in some bus

station for mine or high

on a u-haul wondering if

she’ll hold if

she’ll make it when

we left I took them

with me it’s just

touches I’ll show you

pictures just touches to

turn them out to

weather it soon.





At Home With Marcel


i. Proust at Noon

    A storm in the day.  A row

    of candles balanced, not lit

    on a sill in first light.

    Thick glass

    turns the sun.

     A certain way

     of walking--whose?--a song

     heard twice in one day twenty-three

     years four months five days ago.

     Time for bed.



ii.  After Midnight

That part of the world

questions him.  Warm milk in the bowl,

the quilt like a man

sleeping in a train station.

Lying against the swell of feathers,

mouth closed, stitched with ink,

Proust signs to himself,

cautions

his fingers to silence,

At two

the distant shock of morning

wakes him.  Ten more minutes

dreaming

loops of script so tiny--fine girl’s strokes--

two generations will untie them.

He rises, pulls shoes on,

shuffles to the table.

Writes till dawn--eyes

darkly open, nose whimpering

mournfully, like a dog

in a nightmare.

His hand moves quickly, 

chasing 

that other century.


iii.  Coffee

A gauze of sunlight

across his eyes.  The rug folded

against the seep of ten o’clock

beneath his sill.

He walks to the window.  The street

is littered with impressions.

Extinguished streetlamps float, blind,

over soft cobbles.  Wet leaves wrap the curb

in brown paper.  No--not brown paper.

At last the knock, the man,

the steaming bowl full

of coffee, empty of

detail.





          afterbirth



I’ve studied this

site some.  Process

ing processing.  Truths

show their dowdy

heads with a little

poking.

Work-a-day, finally.  No

sticky mystery.  Fancy

knots, lean-to.  Camp

craft, Womanlore.

Rub sticks

better than most.  Still

sticks.  Still fast trains

out.





                               Srilanka



I’ll build all my life, he said

around this girl he said

I’ll put her in the middle

of my life

---  for there were to be circles

around steps, beyond a dining room

in a kitchen, hours

for all of them, smiles

and a time for them ---

then she turned into things,

first disappearing, then a book

on a shelf and a dream cycle

like a computation of how, of where.

The others thought it good, he alone--told

him so and gave reasons, examples,

visiting him on their way

--- but there were to have been tables

he thought, a chair, a window and spoons

on tables.  There were to have been times

for their visits

and other times

for clutching and laughing,

the two of them

alone ---

so he thanked them

and hated and

waited pursing his lips holding

the book from the shelf,

computing how where

when she was

---  and then she came back

astonishing

and a set of steps was found

encircled by the fall weeks

passing.  The others visited

sobered

to find clutching and laughing

and left hating and

waiting as if it hadn’t happened ---

but it had

crépuscule

In the twilight

my dreams passed

beside the bed

where there was no wall,

no table, the empty room

open, filled

with the cold

waiting.

Passed 

through a street

like the hall by your room

in the house, the high

ceiling of the dusk

or dawn, the walls

smooth, pale as the damp

plaster, the floor

black with rain, deep

as the stained mirror

on the mantelpiece.

Until

the end of the street,

your side steps, stained by

the mist, powder

settling; your front door

traced with rain, webbed

with faint marks like

tears, like

the paths of snails.





Tito’s Widow


I.

Arrival was not simple.

We waited days for our heads

to clear and still the morning

sunlight hung between us for hours;

until noon that first week

we had only each other.


II.

 Nights merged with the Adriatic’s chill.

At last the numbness woke us for dawn, for

breakfast.  The languages bewildered us,

everyone knowing two we didn’t,

our three useless

except to pun with each other at

dinner, loneliness and surprisingly high prices

converging to teach us how to

gaze past each other, wounded,

while the waiters rushed angrily by.


III.

Will you come back?  I wonder.

Not to Yugoslavia,

not till the tall cliffs are sand

(how you hated wearing shoes to the water,

even naked it made you feel put upon!)--

no, to New York where at least we can still be

understood by strangers.

In San Francisco you again have

the rocky shore, the solitude.

When did you gain

that aloneness, time cascading past

your childless life?  Wasn’t it by

Pag on that slowest of ships, the French boys

offering flat bellies to the sun, you?

Why didn’t we conceive then--

a plan at least--

you to Greece, me to Cornell?

Timetables, you say.  I nod now

as I nodded then,

and go to make arrangements

in German.


IV.

In Baltimore, I invade

your mother’s house, marvelling

at the depth of shadow here.

The light falls even more thickly in the closets

(high-ceilinged closets--my god,

how we noticed things back then!)

light falls even heavier

in your mother’s contented confusion,

handed whole from her

to us.

I contemplate your father at thirty,

not even considering

an early heart attack yet,

without the faintest idea of what made

your mother hold herself so far from him.

No second degrees available for

“girls” then.  Only two

in her law school class,

your mother tells me again this visit.

Why is her loyalty to you so perfect?

In her mind you are your father

and yourself.  I am

the widow

of the partisan, the hero,

a Tito framed in every

bakery window, above every

barber’s chair.





on

dirty

bus fronts

girls’ names in

hearts till it rains

not yours Maryvonne

I scratch yours in

good in deep

with my best

blade





American Express


Last I saw of myself was Holland.  I

woke in a stone-shouldered room,

a white tunnel, no phone.

Next I’m walking,

an hour to kill, thinking about

my brother Steven.  The streets

aren’t straight but Steven would have

no problem.  I walk, hand on my

wallet, not seeing much

past the shops, the Dutch.

What I want to know is:  I look

for a good meal, right?  Just go in?

I’m not much on talking, rubbing

elbows.  But it’s six o’clock, I’m

hungry, it’s Holland.  I go in.

All I do is sit, order,

and two guys are looking at

my Trinity class ring.

You call that friendly?

catch

fast dancing I

saw her watching we

caught by the door went

out the night open white

stone the sky her

footsteps broken her

place up stairs the

wood the walls spilled

glass washed her dress her

legs bent we lay down took

turns slept in the

morning sheets turned

back showing things me

the white scar lip

line she her bangs

longer in a picture we

found eggs at

the corner made the day

long waiting I took

off not shaving she

knew don’t stand looking

out with no blinds no

bangs don’t even

smile





Traviata


The one who strayed

it means or nearly so,

she who turned left instead of right

for good of family, for piety,

for good anyway so not to blame.

From this the absence of plot,

rendered undistracting

as in a poem.

Amore misterioso, their

two voices posed wanting, having

lost already while the first

feast candles burn, giving

the ghost already when the first

toast approaches consummation-

spittled lips and he longs,

bellowing, to be infected.

They suffer in purity,

in a vacuum of circumstance--

she his father’s daughter’s

savior, and his hatred love,

and his pain.

That the unity, their

cries of passion

merging into lamentation;

his unheard plea unheard

again when his father’s father’s 

made a corpse of she who wandered.

Her sharp want, her

fevered hymeneal hymn become

a deathbed moan of eternal

faith without a pause, a seam

of happiness to separate

the separations.





Take it



you had

suspenders your jump

suit my shirt was knotted did

that mean virgin?

take it

easy on me now we’re

not talking I know you

can hurt me more than I

hurt you your

thoughts I 

believe in lightning.

When I think how

warm I get tired wanting

you leave me just enough

to get by How

                       are you?

I ask why you

threw my all away I come

up with sure your

life you'd choose small

arms I just wanted every

thing I could give

you could've turned out

the same if we'd tried

again why not worth it you

say I just

talk against your

belly hair turn

away from me I'm

long for them for

you flat captions you're

listening though aren't

you? wake up the

night smell the pillow?





done express



He took two delicious sugared

aspirin (big tablets, like fizzies, stamped

with commandments) and watched

the Orient Express, him inside, stalled

at Strasbourg (two languages holding the

train captive at 4 a.m.)  Counted 

the way he felt--one, two, 

three, to be in the rain, on

train, alone again.

He drank the cola, ate

Linzertorte (chewy raspberry in a 

nutty crust) actually from Vienna but 

he headed for Linz after thirty-five years of his

father’s life, only twenty-three of his own, never 

having seen the place where his father was born.

He bought the tart in Paris

along with a piece of cheesecake and 

the beignet, and the crudités sandwich like egg-salad

on a bulky with lettuce and tomatoes--and a slice of cold pizza--

bought it before he’d gone and 

not taken his train because he’d

forgotten (left quickly on the dresser

with the too-heavy dictionary in the borrowed

apartment above Gare St. Lazare) two things:  almost

all his money, and his passport, which seemed a silly

thing without which to travel.

Then he’d gone and found her and they’d spent

two delicious sugared hours (the last one, she

not found until dark, until the second, the last

train too was pointing east) two hours

together and then had made it mistake of touching

words, talking words, like

commandments, her to him, so that

he’d almost left that last train behind

too, going fast nowhere, his passport

on him then, his money, but the crudités, the

pizza, the beignet inside them along with the timetable

he’d been following all day, still oriented in

Paris (after eight months the metro lines like friendly

cousins), first on the Ile St. Louis looking for

her (he’d known she’d be walking through to 

Beaubourg) then waiting at her place past the Star

while the German countryside rolled 

past that first train (Karlsruhe

by then) while he waited for her 

to be found

      all day, counting one, two, three,

to be in the rain, on the train, to be again

alone, but suddenly not yet, because he’d

missed it.





after



The pupil met his teacher

in another place.

Teacher, he said,

I have done much

of what we first did together.

His teacher looked, smiled

to think of it,

of all the new artifacts somewhere.

Looked, smiled,

to see that although

he and the pupil looked

not at all alike

(the teacher taller, stooped)

they had become,

crossing time,

similarly alone

like old lovers.

He was filled

with a thick, dry joy,

like old comb honey,

pollen dusted.





Proust



I kiss Marcel

the moment I recognize him.  He is a thin

dark boy, studying his

map, his letter, his letter and his map,

on that metro ride through Paris.  I cross

the narrow aisle.  “Pardon.”

I lean over him.  He

looks up, his dark eyes see me.

I take him.





Jacob*



On the edge of laughter,

his hands on the man’s

breast, his face hidden

before the strength wresting

beneath him testing him,

taking.  Seeing no one,

no face, not the other’s, his own

spin throwing him,

the shadows twisted round

his brows and the angel’s

cheek damp in the hollow

of his shank.

Seek, the angel said, you shall

uncover.  But Jacob woke, caught

at himself with trembling

fingers to find himself

alone, sandy, the dawn

dim, discolored, the quiet

across the water, the people

watching, standing,

waiting.


*Jacob Wrestles With God

22 That night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two female servants and his eleven sons and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. 23 After he had sent them across the stream, he sent over all his possessions.

 24 So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. 25 When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. 26 Then the man said, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.”

But Jacob replied, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”

27 The man asked him, “What is your name?”

“Jacob,” he answered.

28 Then the man said, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel,[a] because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.”

29 Jacob said, “Please tell me your name.”

But he replied, “Why do you ask my name?” Then he blessed him there.

30 So Jacob called the place Peniel,[b] saying, “It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared.”

31 The sun rose above him as he passed Peniel,[c] and he was limping because of his hip.





home



Taking this

world spatula and

hotpot in two

rooms windowless, waterless;

having made good two

month fixtures fee small dog

hall mirror, neighbors’ trust I

trace the building’s echos.  Learn

campcraft, woman

lore.  Realize I knew it

all before.  Every stick rubbing, each

spelunker’s careful pleated

rope.  Still, it fascinates.  How

they wiggle free, light their

fires in the rain.





Pay Dirt



Hunkering down costs

considerable.  In advance

the back forty, the flowered apron,

stained hands plumbing depths,

eyes averted

while the vitals collect themselves.

Buses, pregnant; dolphins,

whatever solid is and

laden, casts its warmth

inward.  Dark roils form

into grapeshot, pit-black,

animal perfect.

Leggings, fiber vests,

down-filled, deep mohair.

Mercy!  It’s all part

payday, part showtime!

--Trousers over work shoes

brush linoleum.