Gabriel

Cover

Other Books by This Author

Title Page

Copyright

Epigraph

Acknowledgments

A Note About the Author

I would do anything and that’s
What scares me so bad
Don’t want to live my life alone
Don’t want to go back to what I had

Don’t want to spend my life without
All those special things
Don’t want to walk around being tied to
Anyone else’s

Strings, strings, strings, strings

BLINK-
182, “Strings”

The funeral director opened the coffin

And there he was alone

From the waist up

I peered down into his face

And for a moment I was taken aback

Because it was not Gabriel

It was just some poor kid

Whose face looked like a room

That had been vacated

But then I looked more intently

At his heavy eyelids

And fine features

He had always been a restive sleeper

Now he was weirdly still

My reckless boy

Dressed up for a special occasion

He liked that navy-blue suit

And preened over himself in the mirror

Hey college boy
the guy called out

On the street in Northampton

You look sharp in those new duds

He loved the way he looked

After he stopped taking the meds

That fogged his mind

He admired himself

In store windows and revolving doors

Where his reflection turned

Now he looked rigid and buttoned up

Like he was going to a funeral

On a Friday in early September

Laurie loosened his necktie

And opened his top button

So I could breathe easier

His face was waxen

And slightly shiny

His skin gray and papery

Why were there black marks

Around his eyes

Already a little sunken

His nose slightly deformed

A scab where his lip had bled

During the seizure

He was still handsome

In his fresh haircut but something

Was off he wasn’t moving

He could never stand still but now

Something that had once been my son

Lay there restless spirit

Who left the house one rainy night

And never returned

Lost boy

Who will never be found again

Anywhere but eternity

Uncontrollable fiery youth

Who whirled into any room

And ranted against whatever

Came into his mind

The world was unjust to him

And so he hurled his tirades

And then disappeared

He has the Japanese word for music

Tattooed on one arm and a Jewish star

Tattooed on the other

It looks colored in with blue crayon

You shall not make gashes in your flesh

For the dead or incise any marks on yourselves

I am the Lord
it says in Leviticus

But something tribal had taken root

And he labeled himself a Jew

He downed all four glasses of wine

And sold me the afikomen on Passover

But he did not like the High Holidays

He disliked Sunday school

He was allergic to synagogues

I never saw him crack a prayer book

When he was too young to object

Janet dressed him up for Purim

In a black and white shirt

With a sign on his back that said

Queen Esther’s Little Brother

He roared a noisemaker against Haman

I wonder what he would think

About the short-sleeved shroud

He is wearing under his white shirt

In the casket I hope it’s comfortable

He would have scorned the old Jew

We hired to sit with him overnight

Janet didn’t want him to be by himself

I’m sure he was annoyed by the prayers

I wonder if he believed in God I never asked

He once cut the grass around Emily Dickinson’s grave

In West Cemetery in downtown Amherst

And read me the inscription
Called Back

It reminded him of going to the cemetery

In Houston to visit his friend

Who was now in heaven Lettie said

He experienced the rapture

But Gabriel talked to the gravestone

And clutched a reindeer with a yellow bandana

I wonder if he knelt down and prayed

With the family when his friend died of leukemia

Cousins rolled in the aisle speaking in tongues

Jews stand up to the Almighty

I told him but mostly we just skipped

Out of services and headed to the playground

He was named after Janet’s mother Gertrude

And the angel Gabriel

Strong man of God

He had three epileptic seizures

Suddenly his brain caught fire

He spasmed to the ground and blanked out

Dostoevsky believed the convulsive fits

Bring you down bring you closer

The idiot the holy fool are nearer to God

He was a pallbearer at two funerals

One of my fathers died in Chicago

One in Phoenix I gave both eulogies

The music of death is solemn

He kept hugging me afterward and talked

Like a madman in the car to the graveyard

Like a spear hurtling through darkness

He was always in such a hurry

To find a target to stop him

Like a young lion trying out its roar

At the far edge of the den

The roar inside him was even louder

Like a bolt of lightning in the fog

Like a bolt of lightning over the sea

Like a bolt of lightning in our backyard

Like the time I opened the furnace

In the factory at night

And the flames came blasting out

I was unprepared for the intensity

Of the heat escaping

As if I’d unsheathed the sun

Like a crazed fly the daredevil monarch

Like a bee exploding from its hive

Like a bird ricocheting off the window

Like a small car zooming too fast

On a two-lane highway at night

His friends thought they would die

Like the war cry of an injured crane

Falling into the sea

I did not see it hit the waves

Like the stray fury of a bullet

Splintering against a skull

The soldier looked surprised

He did not move when they touched him

Like a bolt of lightning flooded with darkness

After it strikes the sea

Ben Jonson was off in the country

Visiting a friend’s estate

When he had a vision

Of his eldest son Benjamin

Who appeared to him with the mark

Of a bloody cross on his forehead

As if it had been cut with a sword

Jonson was so amazed

By the apparition that he prayed

Unto God it was but a fantasy

His friends assured him

It was a fevered dream

It was no dream

The letter came from his wife

Announcing their seven-year-old son

Had died of the Pest

Ravaging London in 1603

Why had the father escaped

That night Jonson’s son appeared

To him again in a dream

This time the child of his right hand

Had grown into the shape of a man

The one he would become

On the Day of Resurrection

Jonson wrote a poem and called his son

His best piece of poetrie

A lovely line a little loathsome

I loved that poem once

He said we are lent our sons never take

Too much pleasure in what you love

Why go over seven years of fertility

Doctors medicine men in clinics

Peddling surgeries and drugs

Why go over seven years of treatments

That never engendered a child

Janet and I adopted him

It took another twelve months

Of social workers and lawyers

Home studies and courtrooms

Passports and interlocutory orders

Injunctions jurisdictions handshakes

Everyone standing around in suits

Saying
yes we think so yes

What was for others nature

Was for us culture

We traveled from Rome to New Orleans

It took twenty-three hours

Of anguish and airplanes

Instructions in two languages

Music from cream-colored headsets

Jet lag instead of labor

On the other end a rainbow

Of streamers in the French Quarter

A celebration in Jackson Square

We stayed in an empty bungalow

And waited all night

By the bay-shaped window

For the moment when our lawyer

Collected him from the hospital

And brought him to us

It was inscribed

In the Book of Life

And the court of law

It was signed in a neighboring parish

And written in black ink

It was sealed in blood

After five days and nights

On this earth our lawyer

Took him from the arms of a nurse

Strapped him into an infant seat

And delivered him

Into our keeping

A wrinkled traveler

From faraway who had journeyed

A great distance to find us

A sweet aboriginal angel

With his own life a throbbing bundle

Of instincts and nerves

Perfect fingers perfect toes

Shiny skin blue soulful eyes

Deeply set in a perfectly shaped head

He was a trumpet of laughter

And tears who did not sleep

Through the night even once

O little swimmer in the deeps

Raise up your arms

Ring out your lungs

O wailing messenger

O baleful full-bodied crier

Of the abandoned and the chosen

He dropped out of the sky

Into the infirmary in the Garden District

At nine pounds two ounces

When he was eight days old

We carried him into family court

In a plastic molded seat with a handle

After he settled our case with a special order

The judge an amateur photographer

Snapped pictures of us in the witness stand

We propped him up in the middle

Of the table in a Chinese restaurant

And rotated him this way and that

The mohel arrived at my parents’ apartment

With a little black suitcase of instruments

It was barbaric but it was our barbarism

At the American Academy in Rome

Our friends threw a black-and-white party

Like Truman Capote he wore black and white booties

There were
Welcome Gabriel
signs in the rafters

The classicists drank gallons of red wine

And hoisted him up like a trophy

Gelsa the Italian nanny overdressed him

And took him all over Trastevere he was known

At the butcher shops the dry cleaners the coffee bars

He had become the unofficial mayor

Of the neighborhood waving from his stroller

At shopkeepers who waved and shouted
Ciao Gabriele

When he learned to crawl he pulled himself

Forward on his arms a little at a time

As if he were climbing Arizona Beach on D-day

We strapped him into the car seat

And drove around for hours

Trying to get him to sleep

There were other parents nodding

To each other on the road I remember steering

Clear of the trucks veering down Highway 59

Give him a wing and a propeller

And he’ll launch
I joked

When he hurled himself out of his crib

It was no joke when he twitched

And twisted in his sleep we marveled

That he never stopped moving

I can make out a man pushing a stroller

Through Rice Village on Sunday morning

Dew on the grass mist on the windows

The moon a crescent in a children’s book

The streets vacant the parking lots empty

Everyone in the city slept but us

Why all the tears

Oh blow Gabriel blow

Go on and blow Gabriel blow

At the diner we set him up in a high chair

Where the little pasha shrieked

And littered the floor below

While Little Richard mimicked a drum intro

From the speakers above

A-wop-bop-a-loo-bop-a-lop-bop-bop

In the end it becomes a blur

Oh blow Gabriel blow

Go on and blow Gabriel blow

Issa recalled how a young priest

Slipped crossing a bridge

And fell into the torrents of a river

People searched with lighted torches

Until they found him wedged between rocks

And carried him home on a litter

His parents wept they wept bitterly

In front of everyone and even the old priests

Cried until their sleeves were soaked in tears

When the boy was cremated two days later

Issa tossed flowers into the flames

And watched them seeping into the sky

He lost three baby boys in infancy

He named his daughter Sato

Hoping she would grow in wisdom

She was pure moonlight beaming

From head to foot a butterfly

Resting her wings on a sprig of grass

He believed his two-year-old flitted

In a special state of grace

With divine protection from Buddha

But he was wrong he could not bear

To see her body swollen with blisters

In the clutches of the vile god of smallpox

His wife cried at her death he did not

He tried to escape he could not

Cut the binding cord of human love

The world of dew

Is the world of dew

And yet and yet

I pulled to the side of the road

When he announced that we bought him

From a special baby store

He came home from preschool

And opened the refrigerator

Where’s my fucking milk

It was not his birthday

But he kept blowing out the candles

On his cousin’s cake

He wheeled his tricycle up and down

In front of the house in a rage

You’re not my parents

Sometimes Gabriel and our dog raced

Back and forth across the museum lawn

Until Rocky got tired out