(she opens the door)
(he is twelve inches
away) her fingers
still splayed across the
battened-down brass latch
of his sternum (she
closes the door) (he
is eight feet away)
her palm skids down the
banister clings to
the fluted globe of
the finial (he
is twenty-eight feet
away) (she opens
the door) the black air
is fast flowing and
cold (she closes the
door) she clutches her
thin intimacy
tight under her chin
and trips down the steps
If you stand on the corner
of Mabini Street and Legazpi Avenue,
wait for an orchid colored mini-bus
with seven oblong doors,
open the fourth door —
an oscillating electric fan
will be driving, tell her to proceed
to the Escolta diamond district —
you will pass Maneng Viray's Bar,
La Isla de los Ladrones book shop,
the Frederick Funston fish sauce factory,
and as you turn left into Calle de Recuerdos,
you will see Breton, Bataille, and Camus
seated around a card table playing
abecedarian dominoes —
Breakfast, and I’ m eating plain yogurt, figs from my garden, and honey.
I’ m sitting in a lawn chair on the backyard patio —
life is good, and the sunlight warming my lap and the pages
of a book remind me of Tucson
and the subterranean apartment I rented alone and far from home.
There was a sofa in front of my one window
where at noon the sun burned briefly on the cushions as starlings
stirred in the trees with their admonishments.
Walking back to the office after lunch,
I saw Hans. “Mister Isham, Mister Isham,”
He called out in his hurry, “Herr Wegner needs you.
A woman waiting for a border pass
Took poison, she is dead, and the police
Are there to take the body.” In the hall,
The secretaries stood outside their doors
Silently waiting with Wegner. “Sir,” he said,
“It was her answer on the questionnaire,
A clerk for the Gestapo. So it was.”
Within the outer office, by the row
Of wooden chairs, one lying on its side,
I stumble down around torn peaks
“Fit the right suit
to trick them all.”
the questions fall
around allure. Poems floated
from the hearth
sparks
Last night in bed
I mouthed a prayer
of my own composition.
It sounded offhand, it was carelessly
addressed, it twisted my meaning
entirely, it left an ache,
I didn’ t know what I was doing.
So I took down my yellowed copy
of French With Pictures
by the late literary critic I. A. Richards
and I put my petition
into soft French words.
The King saith, and his arm swept the landscape’ s foliage into bloom
where he hath inscribed the secret mysteries of his love
before at last taking himself away. His head away. His
recording hand. So his worshipful subjects must imagine
themselves in his loving fulfillment, who were no more
than instruments of his creation. Pawns.
Apparati. Away, he took himself and left us
studying the smudged sky. Soft pencil lead.
I came awake in kindergarten,
under the letter K chalked neat
on a field-green placard leaned
on the blackboard's top edge. They'd cagedme
in a metal desk — the dull word writ
to show K's sound. But K meant kick and kill
I
The bartender
Has eyes the color of ripe apricots
Easy to please as a cash register he
Enjoys art and good jokes.
Squish
Goes the painting
Squirt
Goes the poem
He
We
Laugh.
Water spurts incredibly
Clear up under simple feel
And that is how
We drank water
