On a Theme by William Stafford If I could be like Wallace Stevens, I’d fold my clothes into the bureau drawer instead of living from a suitcase. I’d hang up my long coat in the closet and really move in. I’d cook food in my room on a hot plate, then open up the window for the neighbors. With my tongue pursed like a stick, I’d push my ice cream all the way down to the end, so that even the last bite contained both cone and cream. This is What People Do They move to Mukilteo and throw pots or play on the senior soccer league. They set up a weight room and deliver cellular phones. They get proverbially married and have hope for children, saying this generation will be different. They watch Little House on the Prairie and cry when Mary goes blind. They get laid off from the oil company and go back to art school. They have five or six kids and wait while their wife has schizophrenic episodes where she thinks the oldest child is God. They retire to places called Happy Acres and Leisure World. They get hired by the Honolulu Fire Department and moonlight as a Congressman. They buy a house with a pool on Mount Washington, then get a divorce. They have a brother with pancreatic cancer. They recycle the garbage for the entire building. They visit ground zero in New York. They buy a $10,000 Italian bed and furnish the flat in Sinatra’s orange. They let their wife work in a bank and stay home playing Scrabble and pretending to write grants for Planned Parenthood. They drive through snow storms in Palmdale and install plants at the MGM in Las Vegas. They live down the hall and do not answer their phone. They are married for 18 years, then take up with an old high school sweetheart they found on the internet who stalks them. They get restraining orders. They bail their Japanese friends out of jail for DUIs and hear about how they were tossed around in the cell. They go to Little Tokyo and sleep in their car. They rent a love nest in downtown Los Angeles and walk to work. They go to the Queen Mary once a month and run the ham radio room. They turn 80 and have a surprise party thrown for them at the Airport Marriott. They adopt three cats and name them TS Eliot, Sylvia Plath and Bartleby the Scrivener. They go to London for New Year’s. They do not answer the phone unless it rings twice, times eight. Their mailbox is not emptied. They wait until the last minute and show up at the Hollywood Bowl, getting box seats for Tony Bennett, then go back stage and meet Pete Samprass. They like salami sandwiches, dry. They drink Korbel and smoke Nat Sherman’s. They wish they lived in New York City and did not have to drive. They get belligerent in a pub called Dead Poets. They wait in line for jazz at Smoke. They like Miles Davis and not just because an ex-husband did. They travel or they don’t. Everyone is always so happy when they are finally alone. They do the Friday dance in the kitchen while Sublime plays on the Bose stereo. They call the police on the white cube truck parked over night, every night in the parking lot in front of their apartment. Regret You start with a thousand Pennies. Each night you count Together as a couple. You taking notes and making Lists and her caring about what you think. Nearly imperceptibly one time There are 999. You don’t want To seem ungrateful or narrow-minded, So you let it go, you let it go, Waiting long hours of weeks For it to happen again, 998. Years go by and the number holds Diminished only slightly by small Increments. Three lifetimes limp Along on a muddy street and There are 900. You deliver it out Steadfast, convinced there’s a problem But without enough evidence you’d Lose in any draw down. You sit out Centuries without a dance, milleniums Of tangos and waltzes glance by Until one day there aren’t any Pennies at all. A ha, you say to yourself, Already having been trained to make do with less. Aha, you decide to point it out. There used to be a thousand pennies In this here jar, our nest egg, our heart beat. And she turns to you, dead pan, And says, “What jar?” as if all men are crazy I look away. This is too credible. None of me is drowning in this. As if love were impossible to love. None of me is drowning in this. Running out of Matches That night we cupped secrets, glowing like cigarettes in our palms. My hand and the red light that found its way there held the night in check as if I owned it with the skull of my hands. And the least a person can do is admit to late rent, to admit that you have more than air. I think this instant of a father calling, asking questions, written off, as making you stronger. What was I thinking? Was it something I wanted if only to mask the fear, of getting caught in a diversion? What did I want when you looked at me that first night and reached over our hands and, Lord, might we have? Now you are hiding in the corner, dolling out change and why didn’t you want to touch me after? Me being the one with problems, the one forced into saying it first. No matter how bad it gets. Without warning we have too much rushing off and I just got home — the roads drawn-out by drafting your face, all the drive home thinking. about bits of straw in my hands. We light cigarette from cigarette, you holding my wrists steady. In the smoky air, we are candles, holocausts coming to life from the ends of half-smoked beginnings. Sometimes it was just like New Jerusalem, you running bath water, setting up a table with beer. We read entire books aloud after we pawned the TV, fixed your car. Our miseries, open for all to see, like unsolved crimes, holes punched in the apartment wall. Enterprise Out in the dunks of Idaho While I was waiting To pick up my 75 Datsun at the garage, I see a man who claimed he’d met Karl Marx. In Russia, he said, Siberia. He came to speak at a mechanics conference, He said. There were purple ribbons and balloons Decorating a stage of gray feathers. In the middle of his talk he got out a sword He said, and cut down the ribbons In a brutal act of violence. Eggplants, Marx voiced, Do not plant them, They fool you, the sweet sweaty Treasures. One day they are green And shy, leafy even, then they pop! He stabbed at a balloon. The next day they are blown up And taking over the garden. The man in the garage was reading A pornographic book while he told me about Marx, With photos of large breasts, and I was young With a short skirt I was protecting, Trying to manage the hills where my car had Just been stranded, then towed to without Revealing my lack of underwear. On the back of the book Was a black and white photo of Karl Marx, Smiling, bearded, as if to say, Yes, I have cut men in two, and I have no dispute with the world. Sexing it Slow with Tom Jones and Margo I was eight, going on seventy. We ripped our way through Mickey Spillane With helpless women tied to chairs Blindfolded on the covers of paperbacks. Then the T-Birds, roller-ball, those chicks knew How to elbow and rough it up. We ate coffee ice cream out of cantalopes, then lazed about On the love seat. Tom Jones was up next, he Even sounds like he is sweaty when he sings. My grandmother gasped when he tossed Over the handkerchief to a girl In the audience. Last, we went for Lawrence Welk, A quiet ending to our torrid girls blight out. All summer, we played it that way. Margo sipping High balls and fingering the mini Pall Malls She got downtown for free. Sexing it slow Is easy in the shadows Of the LBC in the 1970’s. It was where I learned Everything. In a Perfect World Sellers would discount our dream House by $30,000. We’d move in And our cats would dance like twin Sisters. The celebrity at the corner table Would buy me a café au lait and help Get my manuscript published By Copper Canyon. I’d waltz in a circle and find Adirondack Chairs for under $100, and they’d already Be painted as orange as fruit I’d win another writing grant and get To stave off the real world For another adult year. British Petroleum Alaska would Call about a job for 1,000 hours Where I could commute From my home office in Topanga. Charles would pin me next To the front door like prey And he’d do the dishes after We made wild zebra rug sex To tango music. I’d read two books a week, more Than Thoreau. We’d stroll to Italy And Portugal before the year is out. I’d land front row box seats for Playboy Jazz and cook a turkey For Thanksgiving, we wouldn’t go Out of town for the holidays. One cool morning, I’d cruise out for A ten-mile run, and it would be easy Like a bosa nova. The phone would ring and it would Be my father, who after years of Estrangement, would profess his love As smooth as Fred Astaire. Wait. No, this is my daydream. It would be three way calling And Margo and my mother Audrey, would be eager To hear all about what’s been Going on in the marvelous Scrap book of Millicent’s Life since they went away. We’d share a cantaloupe With coffee ice cream. All of us soft-shoeing it Half the way there, With a Pullman Porter, All the way to Buffalo. There Was a Part Of something that made it OK For you to smoke Marlboros first In front of our parents, have a child Barely into wedlock and cuss "Fuck," At mom on the front lawn in Kentucky While we watched mealy-mouthed, All impressed, clutching Peachie notebooks. There was a part of something, Big Sis, that paved the way for me To talk to boys on the phone, to sit Quietly like a student while you drank Beer with grandpa Joe and smacked Your lips. There was a part of something, We admired, your lack of guilt--all the promises And the special pet things we got, you found Allusive, struggling in your own black sheep Kind of way out of the forest of mental Illness our family brought you into. There was a part of something, that made you A trail blazer, the hero who landed on his feet In the middle of Iowa while we took our SATs And married rich, blonde gay men. There was a part Of something that you were the one to aspire to, Talk gossip about and, ultimately, not be brave Enough to be. There was a part of something, Even when we accepted the sheepskin And the badge of honor from The President Of the United States of America, we were blindly, Imagining what you would do in that same Situation: the official helicopter, the mad man, The serial killer in the corner, the stamp of LSD On an end table at Motel 6. We knew you controlled The secret world of courage in your fist. Coupling The woman thought she would be good, making sure he washed, rescuing black stockings, wood pile scraps. Finding theatre tickets and collecting parking stubs. She thought she would be good at using his soap. Remembering not to wear perfume and waking up to call home. In the hotel, hiding while the hot water ran, her heart compact as plywood. She thought she would be good at belonging. The bulk of her time a two-by -four dove-tailed into a corner, getting the best he had to offer. She thought she had a talent for being aloof. On him, she made few demands. When he was away, she imagined his heart open, fearless hands holding a piece of wood steady while a diamond-point blade cut through. © 2011 millicent borges |