LITMIR.BIZ

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his foot over the transmission hump

      to forestall some calamity he thought would compromise

      the hedges.

      All the way back to Evanston you piloted the Mercury

      like General Montgomery in his tank,

      your friends huddled in the backseat, spines coiled,

      arms cradled to their ribs —

      as though each held a baby being rocked too furiously

      for any payoff less than panic.

      It’s the same motion your wife blames on some blown-out

      muscle in her chest

      when at the end of making love she pitches violently,

      except instead of saying

      something normal like god or jesus she screams ow! ow!

      and afterward,

      when you try sorting out her pleasure from her pain,

      she refuses you the difference.

      Maybe you wish you took the needle at Sczabo’s place —

      what’s one more stick

      among the many you’ll endure, your two friends not such

      a far cry from being women,

      machines shaking and arching in the wide backseat

      as Sczabo’s doves appeared —

      or so you thought then, though now you understand

      all the gestures the body will employ

      just to keep from puking. Snow was damping the concrete

      and icing the trees,

      a silence stoppered in the back of your friends’ throats

      as you let the Mercury’s wheel pass

      hand over hand, steering into the fishtails, remembering

      your dad’s admonition:

      when everything goes to hell the worst you can do

      is hit the brakes.

Monorail

      Seattle, at the old World’s Fair

      He stands by the helm, his face full of blue

      from the buildings at twilight, his hand

      knuckled around a metal pole that keeps him

      from falling, as he flies past the vaults

      of startled mannequins, the red ohs of their lips.

      Christmas lights are also falling

      through the windshield, onto his chest:

      right side green, left side red —

      dark then back again.

      Wait… my father is not moving yet:

      no one has claimed the worn leather throne.

      But his thoughts are moving, wondering

      whether movement is the same as growing old

      in the province of space, not time. Inside his shoes,

      his toes are as blue as the city streets,

      and the drum in his chest, his red-lit chest,

      is growing dim. He knows the train he’s about to ride

      has one rail: no steering, no turns.

      And the only skill is in the brake.

      The brake. His lips roll over the words:

      the dead man’s brake. And a small boy

      — come to ride up front — hears him,

      tugs my father’s coat and asks:

       Hey mister, are you the driver of this train?

Cairn for Future Travel

      I was young for a minute, but then I got old.

      Already the black cane stands by

      the threshold, already my feet are flowerpots

      in thick black shoes. So not long now

      before I will have what follows:

      a spidery hairnet to circle my scalp, a hand

      callused enough to whack your ear. And with them,

      the deep wisdom of Sicilian great-aunts:

      how to plumb for the melon’s ripeness, how

      to stand the loaves upright in my twine sack.

      And you, are you ready? Have you brushed

      your brown suitcoat and hat? Have you counted

      your mahogany chessmen and oiled the zipper

      on their leather case? Have you filled

      your sack of crumbs for the pigeons?

      In the park, men are waiting, raking

      the bocce-court sand. And as for this second-floor

      window where I shake my fist: soon you will learn

      to feign deafness, fishing the silver ball

      up from your loose, deep pocket.

from

       The Oldest Map with the Name America

      (1999)

      The printing press could disseminate, but it could not retrieve.

      To his annoyance, Waldseemüller himself learned the fantastic,

      irreversible reach of this new technology. When Waldseemüller

      changed his mind and decided that after all Amerigo Vespucci

      should not be credited as the true discoverer of the New World,

      it was too late.… The printed messages advertising America

      were already diffused into a thousand places and could not

      be recalled.

      DANIEL J. BOORSTIN, THE DISCOVERERS

Beige Trash

      Who is to blame for there being no tractors

      churning the soil into veils

      to drape over the telling

      where and how I grew, in a suburb

      with no men that I could in good conscience adorn

      with prosthetic limbs or even crushed straw hats?

      Kudzu was something we shouted

      jujitsuing air like the Green Hornet’s sidekick

      whose name still needed some time to ferment

      in those years separating the yellow peril

      from kung-fu mania, before BRUCE LEE

      floated up to the marquee lights.

      Like the stripers you could not eat

      floating on top of the poisonous river,

      to whose bank we never carried our burdens

      and let them weep down into Jersey.

      Because surely these words would have profited

      from at least one silo lording over,

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