Dispatch from the Future (7 page)

we were half-asleep and so when I say birds

I am inventing them. I am a revisionist.

I am giving my life back to myself, only

better, brighter, faster. Everything happens

at dawn for a reason. At night I find myself

reaching for a light switch that isn’t there.

Or reaching for a song. Reaching for a shovel

so I can go back and plant magnolias

along I-44, give the girl in the passenger seat

a silk scarf for her hair, and unleash doves

above the road like wedding rice,

like a flag of surrender. This version

of events is just as true as any other.

Ask me when I’m older. Ask what I remember.

We have this lush AstroTurf here.

We have these incredible windows.

Forget what’s left to do at home.

We have sky.

We have what you miss about the past and

we have masks so you can dress up

like the person you wish you were. Name two

things you’d rather do than be here

with me, now, in the hinterland.

When the river floods, we’ll swim

to safety.

When the river floods, we’ll start

an ancient civilization.

Let’s call it Egypt.

Everything anyone has ever loved

about you has come from the future

in the form of a vision, a wish, or a sympathy;

that’s why they say I knew you would

do that, I knew we would end up

like this.

I am wearing my librarian costume.

Yes, I saved it from the fires.

In the future, when we say antiquity, we mean

state fairs and musicals. We mean affairs

of state, amusement. You left me a message

to say you were sad but you understood

which state I was coming from and I’m wondering

now which state you meant. West of us?

Or did you mean a state of mind?

I don’t have states of mind, I only have sweater sets.

I get dressed up and then I undress. I’d show you,

but this is a dispatch. I’m the dispatcher.

The calls come into my call center and

it’s my job to say, What’s the future

of your emergency?

Our new state flag is an aurochs—

not to celebrate extinction, but

to celebrate the wild part of us that died

in 1627. They moved her skull to Stockholm.

I wear my state flag like a dress.

In the future, you live in Switzerland

and you come to see us sometimes

but I wish you could see us now.

We’re certainly missable.

We’re certainly sexy

in a way that only gets better

with age. As a child,

I was not even a little bit sexy.

I lived at a boarding school

and I owned only one sweater,

two cassette tapes, three pieces

of string, and all my organs.

Were they keeping us alive

for our poetry?

Of course not.

They were keeping us alive

for our lungs.

They were keeping our mothers

from us.

The closer I get to completion,

the closer I want to hold you

in the make believe moonlight.

When I see my one particular enemy I am filled with laughter

and the good times, as if I do not know he sees through me

as, how do you say, the fog? Do you know this reconciliation,

as moderated by the United Nations? I thought we could

send our representatives in the form of poets.

My poet would have this letter to say, All the leaves

have trees. His poet would have this letter to say,

My client no longer wishes to see your client except

as the fog. I am that child behind you on this airplane.

I am screaming to hear the sound of my voice.

Someone put me on regular sleep schedule please.

Someone else tell my enemy I know he sees me.

Then forget representatives. Let us send ghosts

to act out our, how do you say, erotic dance?

I know I am a child because I have been

to more bar mitzvahs than funerals.

I know I am a child because in the fields

of ocean out the airplane window, I see

fear. Do you want to be knowing

if this is based on true story?

When I see my one particular enemy

I want to lie down and, how do you say,

give it up. I am his enemy but he is not

mine. I am a child. Please to handle me.

Listening to you in your sleep, pretending

this is just as good as if I were asleep myself,

the tender evening behind us like a jet trail

that wants to be read as a cloud and it looks

like a tiger tonight. I’m pretending your arms

are your arms, which is to say I’m not

pretending they belong to someone else,

good for me, but I’m still not above keeping track

of the anniversaries of everything I’m brokenhearted

over and this goes for men, departures

and arrivals, weddings I was not invited to

for good reason, achievements of my enemies.

I’m thinking of rewriting history so instead of jealousy

my major themes are revenge and justice, and

I’m going to the airport so we can miss each other more,

because I want a future to look forward to,

another new year already, noisemakers

and dry champagne and songs I know

the words to and the way you looked at me

at the costume party: I want another chance

for second chances. I never make the same mistake

more than four or twelve times, but enough

about you, tell me more about you.

Someone told me that my life would be easy

because my face looks like this.

Did I win any prizes this week? No.

And guess what else? I don’t belong to you.

I hate to be the one

to tell you, but phones are no longer in use.

Please be patient while we try and fix this.

We thank you for your patience.

We’re putting your patience on our daily

gratitude list. We’re getting our harmonicas

and we’re standing in a row

in our farmer’s wife dresses.

Dispatch from the future:

I have all the time in the world

and I don’t want to spend any of it.

Dispatch from the future:

when I say I want to take off all my clothes

I don’t mean what if we had sex. I mean listen

to the sublime: sun on my shoulders, God in my ear.

Dispatch from the future:

life is only too short if you are having a good time.

I just remembered every single thing I’ve ever done

and now I’m embarrassed. I want my afterlife

guaranteed, so I have ordered a tomb built at Giza

for my remains. They are as follows: all my clothes,

my harmonica, my body, letters to my enemies.

The dictionary says you can refer to everyone

who will be alive in the future as prosperity so

Dear Prosperity, I used to live in the future,

too, but I fear the past is a brushfire

and I am a prairie. Now that I have what I asked for

I see I should have been more specific.

True: time travel is tricky, but backwards

is easier than forwards because at least you know

the way. In my memory it is always autumnal

and my weight approximately seven stones. Birds

fly in droves, dervishes to their bird god

on their way to Florida, and in their memories

it seems always a season for leaving. I watch them

hover above the temple where the police

officer stands guard each Sabbath. I watch them

while I listen to someone tell me about weddings

where he comes from, how the groom must choose

his bride blindfolded, from among her friends and

sisters, feeling their bodies one by one down the line,

checking for familiars. When I say choose I mean

remember. When I say remember I can’t forget

Konstantin, how he asked to carry my purse

through the arboretum in July and let me know

his mother is widowed in Kiev, though his father

is still alive. As far as he knows. As far as he can throw

a stone. When I time travel, I go to Oregon and skip

stones with the boyfriend I left for a map, the sister

who may one day stand in line at my wedding

to be caressed by the blind. True: when the seasons

change, I get like this. It is a little like gymnastics

and a little like a pelvic examination:

uncomfortable, routine, and sometimes

my life is at stake. I used to have a friend

who got like this too, someone to go to yoga

with at the end of the world, but then

she found god and alternative methods

of contraception and now we speak

in halting cadence, like women

from different tribes, separated

by a river, a river filled with stones,

a river you could only get to if you

were from Kansas and thought you could fly

around the waistline of the world,

until you crashed somewhere

in the Pacific, never to be found.

I feel autumnal tonight. Let’s go

to the future, where our bird god

lives, and ask for stronger wings.

I just realized I am out of currency, food, and time.

I am, how do you say, bereft of necessity.

Not only you were at that party, but your wife

was dressed like a board game and she spoke

to me of every thing that matters not at all.

Want ad from the future: we are seeking

anonymity. Birds came. They told me

I would be more happier without a face.

I said but what about these enemies.

The birds said even with no face

your enemies will know you

by your body. I said let us

get rid of it then. I am,

how do you say, not having

a body anymore. Hello

from the future, where

we are seeking reasons

to keep our clothes on.

Except me. I have no shoulders.

I fed them to this dingo.

Welcome to sparkly tomorrowland.

We have prepared this room for your arrival.

We hope you like the view.

We hope you like the Nile.

Birds came; they told us a mournful

cadence and a flustered two-step

is your kind of Friday night and

we said we’d never seen

this kind of trembling before.

Blame the colonizers, the birds

said, before flying off to Oaxaca,

never to be seen again. Yes,

there are people here, but only if you

want there to be people

here. We can cater. Our people

are puppets and our puppets

are incredibly lifelike, like people.

Most of our staff will not bother you,

but anyone who does we guarantee

will be hot, and covered in spring grasses.

No regrets. And no hope either.

We pride ourselves on this:

somewhere, it is already tomorrow.

In the future, we pay our debts with blood.

Always more where that came from.

And the white noise sounds like sun.

Lily, I’m gonna run

and run

until I’m back where I started.

I’m gonna invert my body, bathe

my brain in blood.

This is a devotional.

Lily, don’t cry.

This is a devotional.

Listen to the sun.

Isn’t there some Eden we can meet in?

Bring your prayer

to your third eye.

In the future, we temper our irreverence

with beauty. What a stunner, we tell

our ancestors, retroactively.

I used to have to try so hard to look

like I wasn’t trying and now look:

I’m bending to the altar wall.

This is a devotional for the living.

Lily, don’t fear the future.

I’m in it. We’re here.

In the future, we are tender.

We temper our irreverence

with intimacy.

It’s, like, slightly wonderful.

We pronounce magic

like we’re from Michigan,

and all our mothers continue

mothering, like harbors,

indefinitely.

There’s a sense of indeterminacy

with mothering and we take

turns standing like breakwaters.

Life is dangerous, wild, and yet

we welcome it.

We’re in therapy.

It’s called water.

Yes, I am writing to you from there.

Yes, in the future, we have excitement.

Also: a forgiveness economy.

All IOUs are tied to balloon

strings and released into the atmosphere

in an environmentally responsible way.

Lunch is free for everybody. Lunch

is peanut butter sandwiches, sliced

on the diagonal, by mothers. We are sparkly.

Everything is pleasure, but we are

also acutely empathetic, like children.

When one starts crying, another answers.

A fugue state.

We are sparkly but we also remember