ATTRACTIONS

 

In 1927 you could spend a quarter

To see my mother, bald and toothless,

In a glass box at Coney Island or,

For the same price, you could skip

The tiny babies learning to breathe

And ride the new roller-coaster.

AUBADE

 

As usual, her shadow wakes up

Early and lies there thinking

Of getting up, feeding the cat,

Putting on the coffee and

Throwing last night's dishes

Through the closed window.

SAINT

 

Of the deeply obscure Walgisga nothing can be said

All pictures of her hang in dark corners and are mislabeled; 

Her altars look like piles of rubbish or tires or drifts of dead leaves;

Prayers to her are returned marked "address unknowable;"

Those who most need her intervention don't know it.

A POEM WITH TWO CAMELS, TO GO

 

Two camels are, as everyone knows,

The attributes of St. Minas

Obliging anyone so attended

To patronize peddlers; the falsely accused,

Shady sides of streets and the city

Of Heraklion. Never mind why two camels

And I went walking in Seward Park

But I can tell you: falsely accused folk

Can get pretty rowdy late in the day;

Camels and peddlers don't get along

And Heraklion is still sore about falling

To the Ottomans in 1669. I remind them

This was at the end of a siege lasting

Twenty-one years but they don't care

And sneer that a three-cameled saint

Would have made them invincible.

POEM

 

The poem said "Do not write me here

Towards the end of your notebook;

Start a new one. Who knows

How long I'll be or how many versions

It will take before we're done? Perhaps

Characters you've been ignoring for years

Will demand to be included. Will you make

The Duke's nephew and the Statue of Liberty

Set up camp in Godzilla's shadow? Suppose

Your brother shows up with an iceberg 

Or the Hindenburg or both of them

And Rube Goldberg too, who decides

To use your other poems for spare parts?

Trust me; I intend to be long and

Extremely magnificent. Find the silver pen

They gave you when you retired; buy a book

Of cream-colored pages from Tomoe River

I'll wait here. Perhaps. Don't be too long."

LEARNING

 

Pseudo-Jerome has started taking lessons

From Wyndred who still knows her trade

Though she's outlived the memory of who she was

Or why she wanted to be a saint in the first place.

Early on, she teaches him the secret

Of bilocality since a saint must generally be 

In at least two places. Next, she shows him 

How to be no place at all; like many beginners

He tries too hard and scatters into atomies

Having velocity but no location. She rescues 

And reconstructs him, ignoring the leftover bits.

PLACE

 

Al Araf where souls nor good nor bad dwell

Opens its borders with Heaven and Hell at set hours

It is filled with coffeeshops and tree-lined streets

Madmen and infants run everything and quartets

Of three people or five make music or war.

After midnight, patrols of guards from Heaven 

Round up blessed souls who don't want to leave

ROLE

 

My Grandfather Joe was a watchmaker

And, by all accounts, quite skilled at it but

Since he died has taken all sorts of jobs

Just to keep his hand in. His latest role

Was an unspeaking part in a poem

Set in a restaurant kitchen. He auditioned

For the parts of the cat and the grease-fire

But was given a bent spoon and cast

As a mustached cook with a bandana.

AN OLD SAINT AND FULL OF SLEEP

 

Wyndred coils herself into flickery existence

From the smoke of an extinguished grease-fire.

The cooks in the restaurant kitchen, used to this,

Give her black coffee and a place to sit down.

After a while she nods off, wrapped in aprons. 

Between them the cooks know eleven languages

But not Frisian, which, aside from bits of Latin and Norse,

Is all Wyndred speaks. They are anyway too polite

To ask for miracles from a saint so old she's forgotten

What and who she is supposed to be the patron of.

An alley cat settles in her lap; she strokes it

Without waking up.

AT THE PREFECT'S

 

The tiger bursts into the prefecture and, ignoring the startled petitioners

Who've been waiting in some cases for days, demands to see the prefect

He states his case: having been wandering for some time

In the Interminable Mountains he has lost track of where he is

If this is the East Country of his birth he stands for reckless courage and heedless cruelty

But in the Southwestern Land he is noted for filial loyalty and as a sign of prosperity

Unfortunately, the prefect says, you are in the Debatable Lands where tigers

Are well known to be imaginary. Worse, we have issued all our licenses

For mythical creatures for the next five years. All we have left

Are licenses for dogs and turtles. What sort of dogs do you have? asks the tiger.

There are three types here: Insanely brave and loyal but comical,

Cowardly and thieving, or yellow and brown striped and much given

To amorous adventures by moonlight. I can do all of that says the tiger;

Give me three dog licenses. I'll take one of the ones for turtles too

In case this dog thing doesn't work out.

SUBSTITUTIONS

If not now: then
If not here: in another world
If not with a bear: with a tiger
If not you: you all the same

ILLUMINED

 

In a sixteenth century illumination there is

An angel, badly faded, peering out from

The top right corner and a demon,

Also fading, at the lower left. Sometimes 

They despair of your arriving

Before they've disappeared completely.

(There are also many flowers and

What may be a hedgehog but they

Don't often think about you.)