I Had Never
Seen His Bedroom Before
On the nightstand,
like fists of scorched velvet,
two dozen roses.
Two. Dozen.
He smiled. “So you’ll know
which side of the bed is yours.”
It was our first night.
After that,
I always knew
which side I was on.
Last Summer in Berkeley
I was the only poet in town
with a handgun.
You were the only poet in town
with me
to hold between your thumb and finger;
salty, tricky, safety catch:
more explosive than a Rossi,
much more random than an Uzzi...
and we learned not to shoot
when the beer bottles smashed on our
ceiling
(courtesy of the crackhouse in the backyard).
Learned not to wake or even get tangled
in Nazi nightmares
when the Vice Squad came;
those crashes and screams gone familiar,
ignored like the rattle and hush
of a washing machine,
all night long.
It was August.
The sidewalks crinkled and sizzled.
We inched our way on them like snails,
hopeful and damp and timid,
toward some kind of Love and Order.
But the sidewalks kept on wiping us
off,
like barcodes.
It was August.
We needed the exercise
So we laid out our love, like a delicate
rug,
in the driveway
and then
walked holes in all four corners.
It was August.
All summer long it was August.
Even the TV got tired.
Only the trees had shadows.
The Earthquake
had not yet come.
Debralee Pagan
Cleaning the Attic
I am a only
a dead letter office today.
My arms are just pigeonholes,
stacked with dusty proof
of the love that I never received
in the ragged years -
now mildewed and crumbled
and no longer living at this address
-
if it ever existed at all
except in my brain,
which is getting soft
and perishable
like cheese
I dare not count on
such luxuries - outdated affections,
imported from France, or Paradise
or somebody else’s ship-come-in.
I know the trade rules better now.
Taxes are levied on
everything:
Only upper class babies
are loved like money.
People prefer to be mistreated.
Morals are something you do
in your leisure time,
like
masturbation.
All the best love letters I ever got
are from a man
who hates me.
If I’m wrong,
if these dead words of love
are more true
than the moonscape
of my life,
how much of my work has been
gratuitous?
Which part of my pain
is an exercise in pride?
I am only a dead-letter office today.
I know nothing of destinations.
No,
I must insist on being
more
than my successes -
an abandoned well,
whose depth cannot be told
by counting the creatures
which climbed up the side and fell
down into the circular dark - I refuse
to be responsible for gravity
or its opinion
of me.
These faces that lie
at the bottom of the pit,
remembering the sky,
are secrets,
too precious to keep.
I put them away.
I have only my word
that any of this
ever happened.
Failure to Adapt
She wore high heels
to the desert
everybody laughed.
they didn’t get the point
that she is 45
and not wearing
orthopedic shoes;
no potato-shaped lady
who cooks tuna casserole
and wears her hair
in a brittle, round-shaped helmet.
she wears high heels
because she still can, goddamnit!
In the desert
everything is adapted
to brown invisibility.
she is not a chameleon lizard
she is not hiding under a rock
oneness with nature
is only good for women
to a certain point.
some things should never be adapted
to.
she wore high heels
and I know exactly why she did.
Never mind what others think
Don’t let them take you alive.
Injury Accident Ahead
First comes the squeeze,
the irritated push
to crowded right-hand lane:
glance at the watch
and underhanded curse.
Then the stopped car,
a polished, teenage thing
of white and neon fingernails
point out
a crouched, cosmetic blonde
packed
like a picnic basket -
white shorts,
slim composure
plucked and bruised like fruit.
Arms breakable as crackers.
She strokes and pats
head of the man
lying as if in a tray of sand
relaxed, his back
a tender curve in which
one line was drawn
by fingertip.
Naive as any dolphin's.
He is asleep, in shorts and sandals.
Nothing more than that.
The pillow,
red on just one side,
the celery curve
of curls
that do not move.
The woman
crouches, pats and smoothes
so nothing shall escape.
And only after that,
the frantic, standing men
that wave us on:
their arms would roll us back,
4-3-2-1
and might as well
bring tables out
for us to knock upon.
Two old black men come last on foot
their foreheads puckered
anxiously
obedient, straggling
under knitted caps
and not because white men fall down
but to collaborate
with Fate: there is
an injury accident
up ahead
and nothing shall escape.
Their crinkled faces, careful walks,
they could be small old ladies,
even children
almost anyone
can still invoke
the evil eye
the Christian cross
the good excuse
of running late
and driving faster,
faster
