1/30/19

COLLECTING FUTURE LIVES - Stephen Dunn

Now that everybody was dead
only he and his brother knew
the blood secrets, the unequal
history each nervous system
keeps and rehearses
into a story, a life.
Over the years they’d agreed
to invent and remember
a long hum of good times,
love breaking through
during card games,
their father teaching them
to skip stones
under the Whitestone Bridge.
The smart liar in them
knew these stories
were for their children
who, that very moment
over dinner, were collecting
their future lives.
But sometimes
in their twice-a-year visits
late at night
when their wives had tired
of the old repetitions,
they’d bring up the silences
in the living room
after a voice had been raised,
father’s drinking, mother’s
long martyrdom before the gods
of propriety and common sense.
In their mannerisms
each could see the same ghosts.
And if they allowed themselves
to keep talking,
if they’d had enough to drink,
love would be all
that mattered, the love
they were cheated of
and the love they got,
the parental love
that if remembered at all
had been given, they decided,
and therefore could be given again.

1/29/19

AT HIS HOUSE - Stephen Dunn

In my friend's face it's not easy to separate
what's serenity, what's despair.
What the mouth suggests the eyes correct,

and what looks like acceptance
is a kind of détente, the world allowed
to encroach only so far.

At his house, we put aside
the large questions: Is there? And if so?
replace them with simple chores.

We bring vegetables in from the garden.
We shuck corn. Is it possible
to be a good citizen without saying a word?

Both his wives thought not, wanted love
to have a language he never learned.
He'd make wine for them from dandelions.

Sundays he'd serve them breakfast in bed.
In his toolbox he was sure he had a tool
for whatever needed to be fixed.

The deed reveals the man, he says.
I don't tell him that it's behind deeds
he and I often hide.

I've got a face for noon, a face for dusk,
a fact he lets slide. Both of us think friendship
is about what needn't be said. 

It seems we're a couple of halves, men
almost here, hardly there. At his house less
feels good. I always come back for more.

1/28/19

Entry in an Unknown Hand - Franz Wright

And still nothing happens. I am not arrested.  
By some inexplicable oversight

nobody jeers when I walk down the street.

I have been allowed to go on living in this  
room. I am not asked to explain my presence  
anywhere.

What posthypnotic suggestions were made; and  
are any left unexecuted?

Why am I so distressed at the thought of taking  
certain jobs?

They are absolutely shameless at the bank—
You’d think my name meant nothing to them. Non-
chalantly they hand me the sum I’ve requested,

but I know them. It’s like this everywhere—

they think they are going to surprise me: I,  
who do nothing but wait.

Once I answered the phone, and the caller hung up—
very clever.

They think that they can scare me.  

I am always scared.

And how much courage it requires to get up in the  
morning and dress yourself. Nobody congratulates  
you!

At no point in the day may I fall to my knees and  
refuse to go on, it’s not done.

I go on

dodging cars that jump the curb to crush my hip,

accompanied by abrupt bursts of black-and-white
laughter and applause,

past a million unlighted windows, peered out at  
by the retired and their aged attack-dogs—

toward my place,

the one at the end of the counter,  

the scalpel on the napkin.