Let the uncorked chardonnay
take what it needs of oxygen & light.
Let nothing discompose
this most exotic
of guests: the saxophone
resting in the corner
like a golden carp.
See how at home it looks?
Ready for the oddly missing shoe
to begin tapping.

The one-time bag man, skinny
bag-of-bones man, barterer
of stones & stone-aged man
leans back against a packing crate
& laughs. BECOME an artist?
Hell, I AM one! What they mean
is, I should make money at it –
be like them. Mustache twitches.
A figure of fun, a harmless homebody
nobody minds. Pointed fingernails
sweep sideways in a wave.
And I’ve decided to go along with it,
just to prove a point.
Yellow teeth glisten in a coyote grin.

The clay pipe passes back & forth
& the whole attic hunkers down
to gnaw its gristle: cans of quart
crystals sorted by size & color,
boxes ammed with squares of gold
& silver foil from cigarette packs,
a shelf of empty one-shot
whiskey flasks, broken lamps
& chipped porcelain trash-picked
from suburban curbsides — literal
yuppie scum — plus
the inevitable flotsam from ten years’
service in the Merchant Marine.

Some lore more occult than the Kabbalah
imposes it madness on the method
of this assemblage — makes my host
seem less a prestidigitator than
an honest-to-god magician.
Palms up, he invokes the Angel
of Unreproducible Results, bids me
take another look: Nothing here
is accidental. This is my art.

The tobacco shop below the street has its own weather. I keep having to remind myself that street level, like sea level, is a useful fiction — though this seems as counter-intuitive as the claim that the Romans didn’t begin their grammars with fumo fumas fumat. It would take a Delphic pythoness, wreathed in the smoke from her tripod, to clear this up.

The greyhound stretched out on his usual pillow in the middle of the floor is looking a little under the weather today, as the proprietor puts it. We might be talking about the Dead Sea Scrolls one minute & the bombs raining down on the Balkans the next. Too long an interval between customers & it gets a little deep.

There’s definitely something odd about people who smoke. Only a certain lighter will do, for example. Perhaps for this reason, the proprietor addresses all patrons as Sir or Ma’am. I watch him drop a big jar of rolling tobacco while trying to fill an order, his hands suddenly jerking away as if from a hot stove. We stare at the pile of glass & tobacco with a mix of wonder & dismay — the way one would feel, I imagine, after witnessing a rain of frogs.

The dog meanwhile has gotten to his feet & is slowly moving his long muzzle from side to side. The wind’s about to change, he says with every tense muscle. And he should know.

only time to note: blond,
handsome, a few lines

& a quick glance at the man
whose hand she grips:

pale, eyes focused on something deeper
than the ground in front of his feet

her hand taut flesh around
an unseen wound she pictures
as a nest of squirming horrors
hidden somehow inside her computer keypad

hands so numb it’s a wonder they can even find each other
let along crave the contact
stretching toward flame instead of the ice
that might preserve for longer than an instant
such masterworks as fingers still can build

The other diners brighten for half a moment
before returning to their own murky enigmas
& the three old women at his table
whose ageless brows know when to furrow
follow his long & delicate fingers
with almost proprietary satisfaction
as he struggles to open a package of saltines.

Pirate galleons in purple ink
pitch and sway on a high sea,
unballasted by any stolen cargo.
Half-circle hulls innocent of embrasures
sport untorn trapezoidal sails.
A crocodile levitates
to starboard, clear portent:
Here There Be Monsters.

Each of these three ships
sails under the aegis of
its own celestial object:
the sun (an open circle),
the moon (a crescent)
& this colored-in circle stands
for the sun at night.

So what time is it? I ask,
& the artist, too young to tell time,
runs to find me a watch.

Psalm 137

The land no longer ours
grows ever more vertiginous in the telling:
the holy hill steepens with each new song.
Its shadow creeps across fields
& olive groves, penumbra muffling
the quotidian din of school & clinic,
silencing even the marketplaces
where once we embraced like lovers at the end
of each slow dance of commerce.

Layer by layer the volcanic ash of memory
like a veil drawn between us & the present
erases all distinguishing features:
the raised letters on name plates, street signs,
the features carved on tombs & public statues.
Soon it’s impossible to tell
whose heroes, whose dead
these stones are for.

And such lava flows of jealousy!
There’s no loss like ours,
no stillness as holy as the absence
of love & laughter.
No song quite like the melismatic wail
of an infant swung around by its ankles,
the frantic ululations of an ambulance,
the screech of an incoming mortar.

The waters of Babylon are profligate;
our tears there made little difference.
The only mountain was a simulacrum of paradise,
spilling with fountains & the seeds
of unknown flowers. But in the land
the Lord showed Abraham
no spring can overflow without authorization
& barred from the sea the Jordan hoards its salt.

Surely it was meant for us—
to bathe our wounds . . .