(22) Conclusion

by Howard Moss

I didn't expect
Dumb sorrow
To reenter,
Taking my breath away
With tears I thought
I would never shed again,
And I realized then
Maybe it could
Come back for good,
The way you see
Those who have abandoned hope
Sitting on park benches,
Squalid small birds
Playing at their feet,
The small emotional
Dishes set out,
After it becomes clear
There will never be enough
For everyone.

(Originally appeared in The New Yorker)

(21) At the Point

by Tim Dlugos

It is after midnight. Your fat friend
decides to go swimming. He takes off
all his clothes. The headlights of a car
flash, illuminate his body as he moves
down the road toward the beach.

The boy you are in love with lights
a joint. You are both at the end
of the boardwalk. Smoke rises into
the intense blue sky from his mouth.
His papers are covered with stars.

You actually ache with the desire to
touch the man in bed beside you. He is
on the college faculty, you are one of
his brightest students. It takes you
a long time to get back to sleep.

There are two houses. The big one is filled
with your friends who are going away.
There is a piano in the tiny house. You
walk into the empty parlor, sit down, and
play the only song you know by heart.

(from Powerless: Selected Poems 1973-1990 by Tim Dlugos)

(20) Unreconstructed

by Ed Ochester

When people talk about Form
distrust them.
These are the ones
who believe the starving
have themselves to blame
but that the sonnet
has a life of its own.
They believe in eagles,
two-headed kinds and
the ones they've hunted
near to extinction.
They're headed for
a retirement villa
in the sky and don't
really want your kind
there, just as they didn't
want your kind here.
They believe human nature
never changes (and don't
like ancient history either
since it's about different
human natures). Remember when
you were happiest? Remember
when you were first truly
sexually happy
(if you ever were)?
They say that's
just a pale reflection
of what's Real, they say
prepare yourself for death.


(Originally appeared in Unreconstructed: Poems Selected and New)

(19) Cooking in Key West

by Ed Ochester

Start with Key West golden shrimp
("the color of the gold they found
in the sunken treasure ships" the woman
behind the counter says, and smiles,
lifting her eyes to heaven) and then
some finocchio from the Waterfront Market
and some lime juice, a salad of radicchio
and watercress, and a bottle of Pescevino--
"fish wine"--in the fish-shaped bottle;
"I wonder what the poor people are doing"
my father would have said, and I don't know,
not too many of them at Fort Zach Taylor beach
this morning, a Cuban family lugging deck chairs
rented at $6/per, and a lot of college kids,
a middle-aged dyke couple going in and
out of the water every few minutes, and some
gay guys walking up and down the strand,
remarkably tanned and fit, even though
the gay culture in Key West has been
pretty well decimated by AIDS and I'm
stirring wine into the shrimp and think of
Donnie, the kid buried in the family plot
in Grafton, MA, in an unmarked grave because
he died of AIDS and hadn't, of course,
turned out the way his family wanted,
so they put him in the poverty
of an unmarked grave, sans shrimp,
sans radicchio, sans everything and
of course I'm crying like a fool by now,
honking into my read pocket bandana
and pouring more wine, thinking of the family
that hated their son so much that they lowered
his poor body into such a grave.

I don't know anything.
I'm just learning how to see and to hear.
I want to find a way to say and believe: live,
don't be afraid until you have to be.
When you're dead you'll forget everything.
Not far from here Hemingway
had a characater say: "To me
the visible world is visible."

(Originally appeared in Land of Cockaigne and in Unreconstructed: Poems Selected and New)

(18) Superbly Situated

by Robert Hershon

you politely ask me not to die and i promise not to
right from the beginning—a relationship based on
good sense and thoughtfulness in little things

i would like to be loved for such simple attainments
as breathing regularly and not falling down too often
or because my eyes are brown or my father left-handed

and to be on the safe side i wouldn’t mind if somehow
i became entangled in your perception of admirable objects
so you might say to yourself: i have recently noticed

how superbly situated the empire state building is
how it looms up suddenly behind cemeteries and rivers
so far away you could touch it—therefore i love you

part of me fears that some moron is already plotting
to tear down the empire state building and replace it
with a block of staten island mother/daughter houses

just as part of me fears that if you love me for my cleanliness
i will grow filthy if you admire my elegant clothes
i’ll start wearing shirts with sailboats on them

but i have decided to become a public beach an opera house
a regularly scheduled flight—something that can’t help being
in the right place at the right time—come take your seat

we’ll raise the curtain fill the house start the engines
fly off into the sunrise, the spire of the empire state
the last sight on the horizon as the earth begins to curve


(From How to Ride on the Woodlawn Express, Hanging Loose Press, 1985)

(17) Stereo

by Anne Waldman

Marriage marriage is like you say everything everything in stereo stereo fall fall on the bed bed at dawn dawn because you work work all night. Night is an apartment. Meant to be marriage. Marriage is an apartment &. meant people people come in in because when when you marry marry chances are there will be edibles edibles to eat at tables tables in the house. House will be the apartment which is night night. There there will be a bed bed & an extra bed bed a clean sheet sheet sheet or two two for guests guests one extra towel. Extra towel. How will you be welcomed? There will be drinks drinks galore galore brought by armies of guests guests casks casks of liquors liquors & brandies brandies elixirs sweet & bitter bitter bottle of Merlot Merlot Bustelo coffee. Will you have some when I offer. When you are married married there will be handsome gifts for the kitchen kitchen sometimes two of every thing. Everything is brand brand new new. Espresso coffee cups, a Finnish plate, a clock, a doormat, pieces of Art. And books of astonishing Medical Science with pictures. Even richer lexicons. When you are married married there will be more sheets sheets &, towels towels arriving arriving & often often a pet pet or two two. You definitely need a telephone & a cellphone when you are married married. Two two two two lines lines lines lines. You need need separate separate electronic mail electronic mail accounts accounts. When you are married married you will have setssets of things things, of more sheets & towels matching, you will have duplicates of things, you will have justone tablecloth. When you are married married you will be responsible when neighbors neighbors greet you. You will smile smile in unison unison or you might say he is fine, she is fine, o she is just down with a cold, o he is consoling a weary traveler just now, arrived from across the Plains. She my husband is due home soon, he my wife is busy at the moment, my husband he is very very busy busy at the moment moment this very moment. Meant good-bye, good-bye. When you are married married sex sex will happen happen without delay delay. You will have a mailbox mailbox & a doorbell doorbell. Bell bell ring ring it rings ringsagain a double time. You do not have to answer. That's sure for when you are married people people understand understand you do not not have to answer answer a doorbell doorbell because sex sex may happen happen without delay delay. You will hear everything twice, through your ears & the ears of the other. Her or him as a case case may be be. He & he & she & she as a case case may be may be. When you are married married you can play play with names names & rename yourself if you like. You can add a name, have a double name with a hyphen if you like. You can open joint accounts when you are married. Marriage is no guarantee against depression. A shun is no guarantee against anything. Marriage is no guarantee against resolution. Revolution is a tricky word word. Here, you hear here? Marriage is sweeter sweeter than you think. Think.

(16) Viridian Days

by Irene McKinney

I was an ordinary woman, and so
I appeared eccentric, collecting gee-gaws
of porcelain and cobalt blue, mincing
deer-meat for the cat. I was unhooked

from matrimony, and so I rose up
like a hot-air balloon, and drifted
down eventually into the countryside,
not shevelled New England nor the

grandeur of the West, but disheveled
West Virginia, where the hills are flung
around like old green handkerchiefs
and the Chessie rumbles along, shaking

the smooth clean skin of the river.
If I wanted to glue magazine pictures
to an entire wall, or walk around nude,
I did so, having no standard to maintain

and no small children to be humiliated
by my defection. I spent years puttering
around in a green bathrobe, smelling of
coffee, perfume, sweat, incense, and

female effluvia. Why not. That was
my motto. I collected books like some
women collect green stamps, but I read
them all, down to the finest print,

the solid cubes of footnotes. Since no one
was there, nobody stopped me. Raspberry vines
slash at the Toyota's sides as I come in.
Flocks of starlings, grosbeaks, mourning doves

lift the air around the house. Fragments
of turkey bones the dog chewed on, a swarm
of ladybugs made into a red enameled necklace,
hulls of black sunflower seeds piled

on the porchboards. Locust, hickory, sweet gum
trees. Absolute silence stricken by crow calls.
Copper pans, eight strands of seed beads,
dolphin earrings. I climb over the fence

at the edge of the woods, back and forth
over it several times a day, gathering ferns,
then digging in the parsley,--shaggy, pungent, green.