Fuel (10 page)

Maybe a wasp will sting my throat again

so the high bouillon surge of joy

sweetens the day.

Shall I blink or wave?

Simply stand below the vine?

Since the stinger first pierced my throat

and a long-held note of gloom suddenly lifted,

I've considered poisons with surprise applications.

Happy venom.

Staring differently at bees, spiders,

centipedes, snakes.

*

We're more elastic than we thought.

Morning's pouf of goodwill

shrinks to afternoon's tight nod.

We deliver cake to aged ladies

who live alone,

just to keep some hope afloat.

Those who are known,

rightly or wrongly,

as optimists, have a heavier boat

than most. If we pause,

or simply look away,

they say,
What's wrong?

They don't let us throw

anything overboard

even for a minute.

But that's the only way

we get it back.

Somewhere a mistaken word distorts the sum:

divide
becomes
multiply
so he'd wrestle his parents

who defy what he insists.
I did the problem

and my teacher said I was right!

Light strokes the dashboard.

We are years away from its source.

Remember that jug of milk?

No way you're carrying one hundred of those!

But he knows. He always knows. We're idiots

without worksheets to back us up. His mother never remembers

what a megabyte means and his dad fainted on an airplane once

and smashed his head on the drinks cart. We're nice but we're

not always smart. It's the fact you live with, having parents.

Later in a calmer moment his dad recalculates

the sum and it comes out true.

Instead of carrying giant waterfalls inside,

we're streams, sweet pools, something to dip into

with an old metal cup, like the one we took camping,

that nobody could break.

The faces of the teachers

know we have failed and failed

yet they focus beyond, on the windowsill

the names of distant galaxies

and trees.

We have come in dragging.

If someone would give us

a needle and thread, or send us

on a mission to collect something

at a store, we could walk for twenty years

sorting it out. How do we open,

when we are so full?

The teachers have more faith than we do.

They have organized into units.

We would appreciate units

if we gave them a chance.

Nothing will ever again be so clear.

The teachers look at our papers

when they would rather be looking at

a fine scallop of bark

or their fathers and mothers thin as lace,

their own teachers remaining in front

of a class at the back of their minds.

So many seasons of rain, sun, wind

have crystallized their teachers.

They shine like something on a beach.

But we don't see that yet.

We're fat with binders and forgetting.

We're shaping the name of a new love

on the underside of our thumb.

We're diagnosing rumor and trouble

and fear. We hear the teachers

as if they were far off, speaking

down a tube. Sometimes

a whole sentence gets through.

But the teachers don't give up.

They rise, dress, appear before us

crisp and hopeful. They have a plan.

If cranes can fly 1,000 miles

or that hummingbird return from Mexico

to find, curled on its crooked fence, a new vine,

surely. We may dip into the sweet

together, if we hover long enough.

Every few minutes, he wants

to march the trail of flattened rye grass

back to the house of muttering

hens. He too could make

a bed in hay. Yesterday the egg so fresh

it felt hot in his hand and he pressed it

to his ear while the other children

laughed and ran with a ball, leaving him,

so little yet, too forgetful in games,

ready to cry if the ball brushed him,

riveted to the secret of birds

caught up inside his fist,

not ready to give it over

to the refrigerator

or the rest of the day.

Summer is the time to write. I tell myself this

in winter especially. Summer comes,

I want to tumble with the river

over rocks and mossy dams.

A fish drifting upside down.

Slow accordions sweeten the breeze.

The Sanitary Mattress Factory says,

“Sleep Is Life.”

Why do I think of forty ways to spend an afternoon?

Yesterday someone said, “It gets late so early.”

I wrote it down. I was going to do something with it.

Maybe it is a title and this life is the poem.

1.

Today some buildings were blown up,

rounded shoulders, the shoulders

of women no one has touched for a long time.

Men and women watched from their offices

then went back to filing papers.

A drinking fountain hummed.

I translate this from the deep love

I feel for old buildings.

I translate this from my scream.

2.

The rosebushes held on so tightly

we could not get them out.

Under the sign that promised

to stitch things together,

the thorny weathered
MEND-IT

fading fast now

fading hard,

Jim heaved his shovel.

We were loosening dirt

around the heavy central roots,

trespassing, trying to save

at least the roses

before bulldozers came,

before the land was shaved

and the Mexican men and women

who tend with such a gracious bending

disappeared. They were already gone

and their roses would not let go.

We bit hard on the sweetness,

snipping, in all our names,

the last lavish orange heads,

our teeth pressed tightly together.

3.

This looks like a good place

to build something ugly
.

Let's do it. A snack

shop. Let's erase

the board. Who can build

faster? You could fit

a hundred cars here
.

It's only a house

some guy lived in

ninety years. And it's so

convenient to downtown
.

That old theater nobody goes to

anymore, who cares if it's

the last theater like that

in the United States?

Knock it out so we can build

a bank that goes bankrupt

in two years. Don't hang

on
.

4.

Some days I can't lift

the glint of worry.

We go around together.

Soon we will wear

each other's names.

Already we bathe

in the river of lost shoes.

I fall into photographs.

Someone lives inside

those windows.

Before they demolish

the Honolulu bakery,

women in hair nets

and white dresses

lock arms on the counter.

Someone buys

their last world-famous

golden lemon cake.

Take a card, any card.

The magic dissolving recipe

for buildings with frills?

We will not know what

it tasted like.