Read an Excerpt
WISE CRACKS
Vanishing Ink
A phone text is not a letter.
An email does not possess
the density of paper.
Hitting “delete”
is not to crumple or tear.
To hold in the hand
an indictment or a love letter
is heavier than peering
through glass. Electricity
is fast but some things
need to linger, to get lost
in the soul’s attic
and be rediscovered.
Scribe
It’s a crime
to sit by a pool
while the sun is shining
and your friends
are talking
and you’re off in the corner,
pen in hand,
groping for words.
It’s slightly inhuman
to record rather than
live,
to act the sieve
collecting each day’s
sediment
and passing time
retrospectively —
saying not what you mean
but what you meant.
The Beach, Today, Is Closed
This Portuguese man-of-war
did not wish
to be washed ashore,
but lacking means
to control its direction
found itself wedged
between sea and sand.
Its only hope
is the one Great Wave
whose arrival’s
uncertain.
So it waits
and seethes in the sun,
a blue translucent sphere
gathering venom.
Toodle-oo
A cruise ship
sailing into the blue.
Toodle-oo. We don’t
say that anymore.
It’s an expression
from another age
when people rhymed themselves
to sleep and dreamed
in metaphor.
When blue meant more.
De la Cruz Gallery, Miami
Next to the objects
found in this
installation — the segmented
plumber’s pipes and dented
paint cans, the twisted
tortured bicycle wheels
suggesting life is random
fragmented,
nothing
more than material —
there’s a large Peter Doig
painting titled “Rainbow
Ferris Wheel.” The many-hued
wheel is intact and rendered
with precision
offering a seat for the human
and an alternate view.
Bartender
It’s good to watch him work
in white shirt, black
pants, mixing the
spirits, slicing lemons,
limes, shaking a tumbler
close to the ear as though
listening to a whisper.
What hasn’t he heard
from the lips of the frustrated,
the forlorn, the obsessed? His
is not to pass judgement
but to pour colours —
burgundy, emerald, amber —
and to stop only
if one stumbles
or slurs.
Obuse, Japan
This is the town
where Hokusai lived
in old age. Everyone recognizes
his “Great Wave”
which, in my book,
is no longer a cliché
but the Nothing
you can drown in.
Legend has it
he would kneel before
this Shinto altar
with the little mirror,
pebbles,
and charred sticks.
Not much to pray to.
Perfect.
KINGDOM
1
So the boat sets out
the contractors flee
the storm comes on
and thirty-three men, women
and children risking freedom
go under. I can hear their death chatter.
Voices, what do you say
of the low metallic clouds, the whiplash
wind, the unforgiving turbulence
that refused to cough you up?
Can you describe your new kingdom?
2
I unlace my shoes.
I strap on sandals
and walk along a beach
that appears endless
under a sun that does not quit.
It is so easy in the tropics:
palm trees indifferent
surf hypnotic
shore breeze a soft eraser.
Only geckoes
darting between stones and flora
seem to sense danger.
Little creatures, what do you hear
aside from hip hop at the hotel
aside from poolside splashes
and laughter?
Can you hear the lost ones
whispering over sonar?
3
After thirty seconds
the brain signs off
the heart slams shut
the blood congregates in pools.
The drowned float on the surface
like limp marionettes.
Their skin turns to grave wax
pecked at by small fish.
Their rags bulge with sea slugs —
slimed, curious.
They welter in the parching wind.
Beneath the whirring propellers
of heaven they are anonymous specks,
a radioed position
then a bloating weight
for the winch ropes and pulleys
that haul them up —
a mechanized ascension —
nameless
unclaimed on land.
4
In this place
birds bear no malice
not even when they’re scooping fish
or pecking shells for flesh.
Waiters named after angels —
Michael, Gabriel —
dress in white
and black.
Sun drifts off to late sunset
and sky reddens like a stage set
over distant, opalescent islands.
Here there are no
charred prayers
or stained petitions
as darkness descends
and voices soften.
Glasses
rise to lips.
Gin’s drowsy kiss.
5
In their country
sand glints like steel
or diamonds
stretching the long length
of the horizon.
In their country
a woman once told an elephant
to stand still,
which is why their trees
stay motionless.
Fed by myth,
nourished by earth’s
turbulent decay,
they remain rooted.
But the people flee
wounded
burning.
6
The proprietors have clouded my mirror.
They have dimmed the light
in the elevator.
They have made my martini dirty.
To be drunk is to be intimate with a man
practised in the art of forgetting.
Soon it will be a question
of only remembering
how to put my one foot
in front of
the other
of finding
the right
door.
7
Their journey is harder.
Dead but still vulnerable,
they sail by islands
that remain untouchable.
They must weather our breaking currents
careful not to sink
through piles of yellowing newspapers
careful not to pass too quickly
from our pulsing
screens.
They must find a way
to rise above the daily clamour
and have their voices heard
then they must learn to forgive us
our coldness,
our fleeting
regard.
