Ordinary Beast Page 2

  come back to bed? Love—

  How free we are; how bound. Put here in love’s name:

  called John. A name so common as

  a name sung quietly from somewhere.

  Like a cry abandoned someplace

  in a city about which I know.

  Like black birds pushing against glass,

  I didn’t hold myself back. I gave in completely and went

  all the way to the vague influence of the distant stars.

  I saw something like an angel

  spread across the horizon like some dreadful prophecy

  refusing to be contained, to accept limits.

  She said, “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

  I love you, I say, desperate

  to admit that

  the flesh extends its vanity

  to an unknown land

  where all the wild swarm.

  This is not death. It is something safer,

  almost made of air—

  I think they call it god.

  Some say we’re lucky to be alive, to have

  a sky that stays there. Above.

  And I suppose I would have to agree . . .

  but the hell with that.

  It isn’t ordinary. The way the world unravels,

  from a distance, can look like pain

  eager as penned-in horses.

  And it came to pass that meaning faltered, came detached.

  I learned my name was not my name.

  I was not myself. Myself

  resembles something else

  that had nothing to do with me, except

  I am again the child with too many questions

  as old as light. I am always learning the same thing:

  one day all this will only be memory.

  One day soon. For no good reason.

  Dying is simple—

  the body relaxes inside

  hysterical light

  as someone drafts an elegy

  in a body too much alive.

  Love is like this;

  not a heartbeat, but a moan.

  Can you see me

  sinking out of sight

  in the middle of our life?

  Should I be ashamed of myself

  for something I didn’t know I—

  (He walks by. He walks by

  laughing at me.)

  “What else did you expect

  from this day forward?” For better. (Or worse.)

  One life is not enough

  to remember all the things

  marriage is. This town at dawn

  can will away my lust

  to suck honey from the sunlight,

  so why am I out here trying

  to make men tremble who never weep?

  After all’s said and after all’s done

  and all arrogance dismissed,

  the distance rumbles in

  sparing only stars.

  The moon, like a flower,

  survives as opinion

  making it almost transparent.

  The pieces of heavy sky

  heavy as sleep.

  I close my eyes

  and this is my life now.

  ***

  virginia is for lovers

  At LaToya’s Pride picnic,

  Leonard tells me he and his longtime

  love, Pete, broke up.

  He says Pete gave him the house

  in Virginia. “Great,” I say,

  “that’s the least his ass could do.”

  I daydream my friend and me

  into his new house, sit us in the kitchen

  of his three-bedroom, two-bath

  brick colonial outside Hungry Mother Park,

  where, legend has it, the Shawnee raided

  settlements with the wherewithal

  of wild children catching pigeons.

  A woman and her androgynous child

  escaped, wandering the wilderness,

  stuffing their mouths with the bark

  of chokecherry root.

  Such was the circumstance

  under which the woman collapsed.

  The child, who could say nothing

  except hungry mother, led help

  to the mountain where the woman lay,

  swelling as wood swells in humid air.

  Leonard’s mouth is moving.

  Two boys hit a shuttlecock back and forth

  across an invisible net.

  A toddler struggles to pull her wagon

  from a sandbox. “No,” Leonard says,

  “it’s not a place where you live.

  I got the H In V. H I—”

  Before my friend could finish,

  and as if he’d been newly ordained,

  I took his hands and kissed them.

  clue

  i.

  “Hands down, mustard

  is the tastiest condiment,” coughed Professor Plum—

  his full mouth feigning hunger for the greens-

  only sandwiches Mrs. White

  laid out for Mr. Boddy’s guests. Miss Scarlet

  hadn’t time to peel off her peacoat

  before the no-frills food, which she declined, and a pre-cocktail

  cocktail, which she accepted. Colonel Mustard

  refused all fare, citing the risk of sullying his scarlet

  and gold Marine Corps suit, then ate the sugarplums

  that happenchanced his pockets like lint. Mrs. White

  funneled the motley crew into the green-

  house, where Mr. Green

  was rumoring—his hand bridging his mouth to Mrs. Peacock’s

  ear in an effort to convince the white-

  haired heiress that the sandwich-making maidservant must’ve

  poisoned their plum

  wine. Mr. Boddy’s award-winning scarlet

  runners initially amused Miss Scarlet,

  the way one is amused by another with the same name. Mr. Green

  thought it odd Mr. Boddy didn’t show, told Professor Plum

  as much. “Here we are, pretty as peacocks,

  and our host is nowhere to be found,” twirling his mustache

  like the villain in a silent black and white.

  Minutes into the conservatory tour, Mrs. White

  introduced Mr. Boddy, who lay facedown in a scarlet-

  berried elder. “This man,” Colonel Mustard

  said, “is dead. I know death, even when it’s camouflaged by greenery.”

  The discovery proved too much for Mrs. Peacock’s

  usual aplomb—

  she fainted into the arms of Professor Plum.

  When she came to, he appeared to her the way a white

  knight would look to a distressed damsel. Semiconscious, Mrs. Peacock

  pointed to the deceased’s pet Scarlet

  Tanager perched on a lead pipe between the body and a briefcase gushing green-

  backs. Right away, Colonel Mustard

  mustered up an alibi about admiring Mr. Boddy’s plumerias.

  Mr. Green followed suit with his own white-

  washed version involving one Miss Scarlet and a misdemeanor plea copped . . .

  ii.

  “Dinner is served,” said Mrs. White,

  inviting Mr. Boddy’s guests by their noms de plume

  into the dining room for a precooked

  reheated repast. Miss Scarlet

  passed the pickings, which didn’t pass muster,

  to a rather ravenous Mr. Green.

  Nobody faked affability better than Mr. Green,

  waving his napkin like a white

  flag, acting out the conquered in Colonel Mustard’s

  combat stories. Here was Professor Plum’s

  chance to charm a certain lady, catching what he called scarlet

  fever. “I’ve seen more convincing peacocking

  from a tadpole,” quipped Mrs. Peacock,

  retiring to the library, green<
br />
  tea in hand and a tickled Miss Scarlet

  in tow. Mr. Boddy’s absence was so brazen it bred white

  noise not even tales of exemplum

  heroism, narrated by and starring Colonel Mustard,

  could quiet—his presence, by all accounts, as keen as mustard

  and showy as a pride of peacocks.

  Like a boy exiled to his room, Professor Plum

  excused himself, giving the others the green

  light to do the same. Mrs. White

  was in the kitchen scouring skillets

  when she heard who she thought was Miss Scarlet

  scream. Mr. Boddy’s musty

  old library was a crime scene, his final fall on this white-

  knuckle ride towards death. “For the dead,” Mrs. Peacock

  said, “the grass is greener

  on the side of the living.” While plumbing

  Mr. Boddy’s body for clues, Professor Plum

  found no visible wound—the would-be host appeared scarless,

  despite blood haloing his head on the shagreen

  rug and a bloodstained candlestick Colonel Mustard

  recognized from dinner. Mrs. Peacock

  avoided the sight, turning white

  as the sheet with which Mrs. White covered the corpse. Plum

  sick of the “poppycock” accusations, she sped into the starlit

  night in a ragtop Mustang belonging to Mr. Green.

  c ue

  as

  the

  only

  guest

  accept

  th is

  poison

  same

  as

  m e

  in duced

  by

  a

  faint

  distress

  back away

  admiring

  for

  the

  ravenous

  a

  fever

  starring

  a boy

  who

  scream s

  his final

  sick

  night

  unfurnished

  Something was said and she felt

  a certain way about said something.

  Certain only

  that there was no mistaking the feeling

  she felt—the sounds empty makes inside

  a vacant house.

  ♦

  imagine sisyphus happy

  Give me tonight to be inconsolable,

  so the death drive does not declare

  itself, so the moonlight does not convince

  sunrise. I was born before sunrise—

  when morning masquerades as night,

  the temperature of blood, quivering

  like a mouth in mourning. How do we

  author our gentle birth, the height

  we were—were we gods rolling stars across

  a sundog sky, the same as scarabs?

  We fit somewhere between god

  and mineral, angel and animal,

  believing a thing as sacred as the sun rises

  and falls like an ordinary beast.

  Deer sniff lifeless fawns before leaving,

  elephants encircle the skulls and tusks

  of their dead—none wanting to leave

  the bones behind, none knowing

  their leave will lessen the loss. But birds

  pluck their own feathers, dogs

  lick themselves to wound. Allow me this

  luxury. Give me tonight to cut

  and salt the open. Give me a shovel

  to uproot the mandrake and listen

  for its scream. Give me a face that toils

  so closely with stone, it is itself

  stone. I promise to enter the flesh again.

  I promise to circle to ascend.

  I promise to be happy tomorrow.

  underperforming sonnet overperforming

  [FOR MARILYN]

  This time, this poem, is the best idea

  I’ve ever had—the best in history

  even, the best any has had, I swear . . .

  and I should know, I’ve kept inventory

  of them all; this poem is the alpha,

  omega, middle, and the laterals—

  literally the conceit of a far

  off blank stare or a volta with virile

  tendencies to talk about it and be

  about it, it being the best sonnet

  to ever sonnet—formal guarantees

  of a good time, ready rhymes, and, I bet,

  this poem is, with enormous success,

  the only poem entirely imageless.

  legendary

  I don’t want to end up an old drag queen.

  OCTAVIA SAINT LAURENT

  This is no primrose path, a life lived out

  of boredom, a role played on occasion.

  Category is fem-realness—devout

  in the practice of pulling a fast one

  on the eye. Octavia, eighth wonder . . .

  I wonder, am I as legendary

  as legend lets on? Only amateurs

  are moved by monikers on a marquee.

  Only amateurs imagine Harlem

  leads to Hollywood. I can’t afford such

  idle delusions. So close I see them

  flickering, but not close enough to touch.

  So beautiful I almost forget, were

  it not for history, to know better.

  an apology for trashing magazines

  in which you appear

  I was out of line, Brad Pitt.

  You’re no Eliot Spitzer.

  I’m no preacher. This apology no bully pulpit

  where I sermonize our epitasis—

  a Woody Allen tragicomedy in which I play “Serendipity,”

  and am blinded by you, a star, Jupiter

  (third brightest in the night, spitting

  image of the sky god). Patience might be for pipits

  and “forever” a spit

  of land neighboring Atlantis, but I’ll wait my turn. Pity

  your first marriage ended. I didn’t mind her as much as that Jolie-Pitt

  situation, complete with pitter-

  patter of 12 Benetton-inspired feet. But, I’m not bitter. My pit

  bull bears your name, and I call my man—with whom I’m going to Pittsburgh

  for a wedding—out his name. Into yours: Brad Pitt.

  Daydreams of you and me rivaled only by Brandon and me on Peach Pit

  counters, from the original 90210. Even so, I’d wish he were you. Adonis epitome.

  Abandon Hollywood for Bed-Stuy, skip down spit-

  paved sidewalks to my brownstone. My poetry pittance,

  your movie money . . . I suspect we’d do fine with our combined capital.

  We’d be the mixed-race Pitts

  on Tompkins Park. I’d be hospitable,

  hosting meet and greets so as not to appear uppity.

  Casually introducing you, I’d say, “Oh, this is Brad. This is just Brad Pitt.”

  You’d find macabre humor in my obsession with Poe’s Pit

  and the Pendulum and the palpitating

  Tell-Tale Heart. The heart is an odd organ, a maudlin muscle, a cesspit

  of undeserved affection. I admit I’ve had trouble pitting

  good sense against non, but who hasn’t? (Did you know the per capita

  divorce rate is 50%? Pitiful.)

  Like with Juliette and Jennifer, I pray Angelina was a pit

  stop on your way to Brooklyn. When I first saw you, Brad Pitt,

  I was 15 and became so ill I was rushed to the hospital.

  My hands, feet and armpits

  began to sweat as if I were riding horseback up a hill toward a love who made the pit

  of my stomach ache; literally, Legends of the Fall was my pitfall.

  Brad Pitt, I imagine a much older you—spitfire

  and only sl
ightly decrepit—staring my epitaph

  down as if your gaze were the capital and my headstone a ghetto to be pitied.

  even the gods

  Even the gods misuse the unfolding blue. Even the gods misread the windflower’s nod toward sunlight as consent to consume. Still, you envy the horse that draws their chariot. Bone of their bone. The wilting mash of air alone keeps you from scaling Olympus with gifts of dead or dying things dangling from your mouth—your breath, like the sea, inching away. It is rumored gods grow where the blood of a hanged man drips. You insist on being this man. The gods abuse your grace. Still, you’d rather live among the clear, cloudless white, enjoying what is left of their ambrosia. Who should be happy this time? Who brings cake to whom?

  Pray the gods do not misquote your covetous pulse for chaos, the black from which they were conceived. Even the eyes of gods must adjust to light. Even gods have gods.