CHARLOTTE

There’s an old ballad called

"A Corpse Going to a Ball."

It's about Beautiful Charlotte

A farmer's daughter in Maine

Who, ignoring her mother's advice

To wrap herselfin a blanket, boards a sleigh

And arrives at the ball a frozen corpse.

Afterwards, the poem says,

She never spoke another word

This seems unremarkable,

Even tame. Better, perhaps,

Had she delivered a speech

About dressing appropriately

During a New England winter

Or danced a bit stiffly

(I expect a waltz would be difficult

But perhaps she could've managed

A clumsy jig).

With no help from me,

The ballad became popular.

You can still find in antique stores

Small naked porcelain dolls

Called Frozen Charlottes.

AN INCIDENT

A ship carrying twenty thousand sheep 

Bound for Istanbul's slaughterhouse

Sank in the Bosphorus. Some of the sheep 

Swam to shore; men dropped their coffees  

And ran into the water, desperate to save them.

AN OLD FRIEND ON THE TRAIN

When the train stops at Bayside

My friend David boards though

He died three years ago. In the precise

Hierarchy of high school

He ranked slightly below us;

Our fathers were professionals

His was a printer whom money

Had forbidden to go to college.

We had houses; his family lived

In an apartment. He was pleasant-looking
And athletic and not tall. His family

Were all musical. He played everything;

His father taught recorder on weekends.

He had an exaggerated hatred of falseness

And made me feel guilty when I sang

Molly Malone; not being Irish

I'd no right to a brogue. More than any of us

He was wary, mocking belief, scorning love

He was sturdy, ran doggedly; he was at home

Playing football or the piano or

Standing under the glaring lights

Of the empty parking lot where those
With nowhere to go spent nights

Teasing and testing each other.

Grown-ups said that he, unlike his friends,

Had a head on his shoulders, a head

That had been screwed on right.

He later turned himself inside out;

He later took the word of a malign ghost

Who broke him in pieces.

This never seemed right to me.

Once, a girl told me that I was special

And David was just David but still

She'd rather go out with him.

OCCUPATION

Sometime in early 1917

The Emperor Franz Josef

Began playing himself

In Esther's dreams.

He was a bit sheepish

But explained that as a ghost

He found himself at loose ends

And lonely. None of his courtiers

Turned out to have liked him

"Heaven," said one, "means knowing

I need never listen to you again"

Other emperors were no help

Charlemagne goggled at him

And spoke, anyway,

A weird proto-German

The Emperor Rudolph

Was always in his lab

Attempting to transform

This into that and back again.

Charles the Fifth brooded endlessly

That the Hapsburgs no longer

Ruled Mexico or the Netherlands.

My grandmother assumed

She gone a trifle mad

Sooner than she'd expected

Despite repeated assurances

That he wasn't an illusion

But merely a ghost. Once

She woke up with

A yellow and blue medal

Held in her left hand,

The Order of the Iron Crown,

First Class, making her

A privy councillor

Properly addressed as

"Your Excellency."

AMUL

There are Yiddish tales that begin

Amul, amul iz geven a yid

Once, once, is given a Jew.

Given: the Jew is postulated;

What follows from this given Jew?

Will there be Jewish jokes?

Or prayers or the heavy smell

Of new-baked challah? Or was

The Jew given as a gift is given?

Given a Jew, they said thank you

Though they already had two better ones

Given a Jew, the universe looked

For a manual but couldn't find one.

Perhaps, given a Jew, one should wait:

To see if a story turns up..

WHY I'M LIMPING

My right ankle buckles because 

It sees no reason not to. It may be

From long brooding over

That dare when I was nine 

To jump from a garage roof

Or perhaps it's enjoying

Cheap and obvious symbolism.

GIRL I KNEW

Alys, who’d once  for seven weeks

Been Queen of the Night, got up

At midnight, at two, at four-thirty

To see how her realm did without her.

Occasionally she'd very slightly

Dim the moon or shift a few stars

Canceling dooms, unfixing destinies