Living Quarters Read online

  reassembles parts.

  Seeming to end,

  everything starts.

  To prostrate the body

  despite upright ideas

  exudes the sureness

  observers envy, watching

  you ascend alone as if

  to an appointment to which

  they’re never invited,

  although you go so early

  out of knowledge,

  out of mercy.

  Leisure

  There’s no man to see, no dog about which.

  Too easy to accuse the innocent, forget

  to wake up, attend to aches. I worked for this,

  imagined, saved, emptied rooms for what

  was clearly sacred; those I asked to get lost

  got lost. Now all surfaces are clean,

  lists go straight to essentials, the ghost

  existence that underlay the quotidian

  floats to the top – so what are these lines

  on the page, those calls from outside

  that grate, their edge demonic, feline?

  Something unfinished draws my eye

  to the door. If there were a knock,

  I’d be making a choice, though common,

  to burrow, interior, or stand and talk,

  the business self I used to summon

  and command. It would be a local candidate,

  salesperson, church – no Trojan horse –

  but even if I fled in outsize agitation,

  the flight would be deliberate, exerting force.

  Complaint

  Does the pain manifest in neck, hip, shoulders, head?

  Would you call it chronic, or do you suffer isolated

  spasms of distress, such as a damsel might express upon

  tiedness to tracks, till she’s stretched, slashed, or undone

  the ropes? Does trivia dog you, such as whether the word

  “ambivalent” has one stressed syllable or two, as heard

  in the solar plexus? Are you depressed or just too able

  to apprehend the daily mess: eighty-five people

  killed by guns, eighteen hundred women raped,

  five thousand dogs put down (this just in the States)?

  Confess who you are, attuned to the killer in painkiller,

  incapable of rest or pleasure while any suffer.

  Knowledge presses on your ears, teeth, stomach, chest,

  yet you keep pursuing more, as if it gave you breath.

  Insomnia

  As if peace and repair were debts

  to be repaid promptly, it treats rest

  as a privilege, night an offense

  to purpose. Even in the absence

  of regret, worry at normal levels,

  its demons dance. I know the cycle:

  best not to marshal the forces

  that worked all day, but like horses

  they read my mind. Before I decide,

  they leave the gate, which is why

  I find universities suspect.

  At work I’m their advocate

  and face, pushing construction

  of argument, decontamination

  of speech; some call me Doctor

  by mistake. Meanwhile I keep after

  house dust, hope, a good night’s sleep.

  Clouds swell; engines rev. Perhaps TV

  could burn them out, or a week

  out of town, if citizens could leave

  the metropolis of thought, cursed,

  necessary state. Night could be worse

  by so much: that this is gratuitous

  makes it extravagantly restless,

  the agenda item that always gets me,

  resisting the only tool that lets me

  pick it up, buzzing as if electric

  when its absence is requested.

  To Stay in Place

  Clean; rearrange; repaint; improve.

  It’s time, once again, not to move.

  Closets shall continue to be few,

  so have no mercy, culling shoes.

  As the office shall remain an alcove

  with imagined door and shelves,

  books must be pared to the obscure

  and essential. Question all furniture:

  when was every chair last sat in?

  The kitchen will never be eat-in,

  but storage has yet to be maximized:

  let hooks and racks assert new life.

  Bedrooms still refuse expansion,

  but who can sleep in a mansion

  whose soaring ceilings would devour

  the warm enclosure of the hours

  by which all are rejuvenated?

  Trading up is overrated:

  what you can invent while settled

  tests a different kind of mettle.

  Bronchitis

  It’s not a minor illness, but nor is it major:

  not much to do but slow down, wait,

  and let the present, day by day, turn into future.

  Looking forward, not just ahead, to feeling better,

  the back of my mind has finally shut the gate.

  It’s not a minor illness, but nor is it major.

  Not to rest is not an option, says the doctor.

  Her face adds: even after this abates.

  Let the present be today and not the future:

  extrapolate nothing; sleep; savor pleasure

  rather than killing it for being scarce or late.

  It’s not a minor illness (nor is it major),

  but your ailments double if you would sooner

  interrogate joy than free it to invade

  and turn the present, come what may, into a future.

  Will I remember this when I’m recovered

  or wipe the trace tranquility away?

  It’s not a minor illness, but nor is it major.

  Today it brought a present, turning off the future.

  Affliction

  The offense may be small:

  an excess of sugar,

  lines at the theater,

  or traffic, thus late arrival.

  No explanation, no appeal.

  Someone will pay in regret:

  friend, true love, service rep.

  Failure burns. It’s personal.

  We see the same in nations:

  enraged by filth of peasants,

  foreign accent, animal stench,

  tyrants brood in mansions,

  finding new forms for power.

  But most men lack influence,

  subjecting only assistants,

  children, intimates, to minor

  attacks, with words or silence.

  Smart ones never strike.

  Cast out, they’d have to fight

  affliction alone, its violence

  turned inward. When remorse

  at last replaces animus,

  who will be there, hands

  on hips, awaiting the newest

  round of talks? The self

  being cruelest, the ritual

  will hit the stony wall

  of breakdown, and what else?

  Its rage needs a target

  that crumples but always

  gets back up, practically

  hired for it. Now where was it?

  Carlisle, Pennsylvania

  Even Gettysburg, which still matters,

  isn’t that close, so when Hurricane Sandy

  set its sights squarely on Cumberland County,

  it was notable, briefly, to live in the county.

  After the stocking-up and bathtub-filling,

  we slept away from windows, which held.

  Animals hid from pressure, rain, and wind,

  but trees and poles withstood the wind,

  which gave the usual inconsequential

  beating: clogged gutters, canceled meetings,

  a boon for grocers, Home Depot, Target,

  the chance to claim we’d been a target –
>
  the modest things we’d bargained for

  when we came from coasts and cities

  or down the street, and bought our houses,

  many a century old, the kind of houses

  bathrooms and closets were carved from

  later, for our plenitude. A traveler

  buying lunch or switching highways

  might remark, “There, off the highway,

  in that quaint little house, somebody’s

  whole life is passing,” then as quickly

  lose the moment’s vision of the town

  in a swath of country, town, country, town.

  Practice

  J’ai seize ans, we said all year.

  We had longer, more interesting phrases, but that’s the one that takes me there.

  J’ai seize ans, we said all year.

  We mulled over college brochures, dismissed the local boys, and trained our ears

  for distant speech, but there we remained, in geographical despair.

  We planned to seize the future when it came. We’d know it anywhere.

  J’ai seize ans, we said all year.

  Bathtime

  First answer, always: no to getting in.

  Then no to getting out. Once we’re in,

  our mother has to stay, even if she

  hurries everything, tries to read,

  or sits on the rug with that look

  of being gone. But she won’t pick

  up the phone and has no computer.

  Our favorite time. So why fight her?

  Baths always seem to come when

  something is starting, the moment

  we’re revving up to stay dry. We’re busy.

  Bathing isn’t life but what constantly

  gets in the way, like trying on clothes.

  We’d battle harder if we didn’t know

  the ending: the grownup always wins.

  And no matter how much she complains

  of exhaustion, she’s always happier later

  despite still being dirty herself. The water

  rises fast, then takes a long time to drain.

  It’ll be up to us one day, she says again,

  when she’s old or ruined or dead,

  so for now could we please respect

  her living wish and wash,

  because the world is mostly flesh

  (whatever that means: don’t try

  to picture it) and gone by the time

  you’re clothed and playing again?

  It’s mystery enough, we give in.

  The Frost Place

  Franconia, New Hampshire

  The poets drank and declaimed outside

  while I stayed in, tied to my body,

  recalling, with minimal bitterness,

  high school, its odd kisses, missing the party.

  At least I had Frost, or the idea of Frost,

  to talk to in the dark. And I’d bought

  good maternity clothes, culled from racks

  so flower-drenched, so vague, I thought

  the anxiety, almost rage, of not being me

  could harm the baby. But now it was late,

  I couldn’t be seen, and my mind

  clattered and swarmed. What would I make

  to eat that week, in Frost’s kitchen?

  Why hadn’t I gone to Europe sooner,

  worn hats, kept a place in New York?

  Frost’s children had eaten one-dish dinners

  of boiled potatoes, and not from poverty.

  Simplify, I said aloud, or you’ll never be

  consequential. Laughter from the yard.

  I’d heard the joke before, semi-literary.

  Out the window, stars caught in screens.

  A single road lay ahead, open wide.

  All I had to do was shoulder supplies.

  All I had to do was provide.

  To a Limited Extent

  it’s not about how far you fall

  but how: you could break a leg

  by missing what you’d barely call

  a height, like the bottom step,

  your mind on another planet,

  your body dully at home, moving

  laundry or a chair. The damage

  may be minor, but it quietly ruins

  your plans. Never again, you say,

  shall I carry laundry or a chair.

  For a time you don’t, until the day

  you have to strive again, to scale

  the hill or wall that is the ground,

  though still you’d prefer not to lead

  this march. (Others have renounced

  much more. Everyone needs

  to be inert sometimes; could you sit out

  further rounds?) Being too strong

  enables hope to entwine with doubt

  so that both can prove you wrong:

  where others would have given in

  to joy’s unreasonable limits,

  you who were always too disciplined

  at managing life, managed to miss it.

  Into a Rock

  After the injury, the teacher instructs:

  Come to yoga anyway.

  If anything hurts, go into a rock.

  Become the ultimate burrower.

  Let all be refusal,

  not just the center.

  The origin of strength

  is the will to submit

  to requirements of pain,

  to curl into limits, imitate

  a fossilized animal

  immortalized by decay,

  dismiss hope of completion,

  embrace the body’s

  response to ambition,

  and overthrow the intellect,

  which paralyzed

  the columns that, cat by cat,

  swan by swan, rock by rock,

  you seek to reclaim.

  Don’t even tell it you’ve stopped.

  On Writing

  A love poem risks becoming a ruin,

  public, irretrievable, a form of tattooing,

  while loss, being permanent,

  can sustain a thousand documents.

  Loss predominates in history,

  smorgasbord of death, betrayal, heresy,

  crime, contagion, deployment, divorce.

  A writer could remain aboard

  the ship of grief and thrive, never

  approaching the shores of rapture.

  What can be said about elation

  that the elated, seeking consolation

  from their joy, will go to books for?

  It’s wiser and quicker to look for

  a poem in the dentist’s chair

  than in the luxury suite where

  eternal love, declared, turns out

  to be eternal. Who cares about

  a stranger’s bliss? Thus the juncture

  where I’m stalled, unaccustomed

  to integrity, despite your presence,

  our tranquility, and every confidence.

  III

  his heart is an educated swamp,

  and he is mindful of his garden,

  which prepares to die.

  – Stanley Kunitz

  Weeding

  Uproot them from our nation!

  The decisive twist and give

  augur transformation:

  ragged to tended, anarchic

  to formed, almost ruined

  to almost beautiful. Wilted piles

  molder in bags, destined

  for rebirth as matter less reviled,

  mulch or dirt to send up fruit.

  Less than human, less than plant,

  they mustn’t reproduce.

  Hacked, choked, smothered by hand,

  they die for what they represent:

  speed, persistence, fecundity.

  Anything so successful and abundant

  can weather the adversity.

  Backyard

  I wish I would garden,

  wish
I had the ambition

  to visit my quarter acre

  daily, planning nature,

  to expand this home

  by creating that room,

  to cherish not resent

  the plot that represents

  potential. On the rare

  greenhouse visit, I make sure

  to inquire: what flowers

  can a working single mother

  with allergies, back trouble,

  and a dog plant in a jungle?

  (Sunlight’s scarce, too.)

  Absurd to ask for blooms,

  but my daughters cherish

  cut flowers, at which

  my immigrant nature rebels:

  with land at your disposal,

  you undermine the strivings

  of generations by buying

  what is doomed and can’t be eaten.

  Is there anything with petals, even

  ugly or small, strong enough

  to compete in unmulched

  beds, those evil plantains

  spreading while the humans

  read novels or roast a chicken?

  I don’t expect a true solution.

  The answer is not in a nursery.

  The answer inhabits the psyche

  of the customer who yearns

  for nature to have discipline

  on someone else’s terms,

  the consumer who dreams

  of unbreakable plates that put

  themselves away, pets

  that brush their own coats,

  children who needn’t be told.

  That’s the would-be gardener

  who pays two hundred dollars

  for a carful of plants she will kill

  all season, day by hot day, until

  the lot becomes wild again

  and winter returns to even

  the fields, shielding every corner

  with the same white comforter.

  On Being Criticized for Coming from Suburbia

  You did not ride your yellow bicycle

  a thousand times past the hot-pink azaleas

  your father was mulching with pine straw

  while your mother set the rice cooker out

  in the carport, where it spat hot cooking water,

  the lid bobbing in white foam,

  initiating evening.

  You never walked out the modest French doors

  into the brick-walled patio with wrought-iron gates

  where you swept leaves in fall, hung clothes in summer.

  You didn’t dawdle on the backyard swingset

  and stare into a sky as infinite as the one above Manhattan