A POSTMORTEM GUIDE - Stephen Dunn

                                        For my eulogist, in advance

Do not praise me for my exceptional serenity.

Can't you see I've turned away

from the large excitements,

and have accepted all the troubles?

Go down to the old cemetery; you'll see

there's nothing definitive to be said.

The dead once were all kinds—

boundary breakers and scalawags,

martyrs of the flesh, and so many

dumb bunnies of duty, unbearably nice.

I've been a little of each.

And, please, resist the temptation

of speaking about virtue.

The seldom-tempted are too fond

of that word, the small-

spirited, the unburdened.

Know that I've admired in others

only the fraught straining

to be good.

Adam's my man and Eve's not to blame.

He bit in; it made no sense to stop.

Still, for accuracy's sake you might say

I often stopped,

that I rarely went as far as I dreamed.

And since you know my hardships,

understand they're mere bump and setback

against history's horror.

Remind those seated, perhaps weeping,

how obscene it is

for some of us to complain.

Tell them I had second chances.

I knew joy.

I was burned by books early

and kept sidling up to the flame.

Tell them that at the end I had no need

for God, who'd become just a story

I once loved, one of many

with concealments and late-night rescues,

high sentence and pomp. The truth is

I learned to live without hope

as well as I could, almost happily,

in the despoiled and radiant now.

You who are one of them, say that I loved

my companions most of all.

In all sincerity, say that they provided

a better way to be alone.

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.

FLIGHT - J.E. Foerster

As a child I tossed

all my imaginary friends

out the window of a fast moving train

because I wanted to feel my fist

break open as I freed them,

as each of their bodies

whipped against the siding,

their insides: snow

dispersing into wind,

their little heads rolling

across the yellow plains.

Because I believed they would return.

But none have since.

Not even the ones I didn’t love.

1988 - Andrea Gibson

It was the year your mother

put her cigarette out on your arm.

The year you forgave her so hard

you stopped crying for good.

I was on the other side of the world

watching my father shine his knives.

I was trying to get the nerve to tell him

who to kill.

But he never figured out

there was someone to kill.

Collected knives like art

and hung them on our walls.

That autumn I made a person

by stuffing a pile of dead leaves

into an old pair of clothes.

Maybe you did too. Maybe

you found a pumpkin for a head

and dug it hollow with your hands.

Friend, if memories had been seeds

we could have chosen not to plant

do you think we would have ever found each other?

Do you believe in the magnet of scars? I believe

people who have been through hell

will build their love from the still burning coals.

Our friendship is a well-heated home

where we always agree on what is art

and what is something to sharpen

and hold in our ready hands.

HEAVENLY CREATURE - Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz

For Missy

I remember the day you showed up at the bus stop:

quiet, pale, a thick veil of dark hair, we stared

at each other through overgrown bangs. We were just

beginning our dry sentences at Baldi Middle School.

In those days, our jeans would be tattooed weekly

with the coded names of every boy who flicked

his eyes our way. The backs of our hands became

necks and lips for practicing on. I once even

doused my backpack with my brother’s cologne,

a sad effort to at least smell like I’d had a boyfriend.

Walking around your housing complex, we’d stare

through the windshields of every man who drove by.

We thought of our bodies as dangerous chemicals,

our breasts as match tips waiting for love’s flinty gaze

We were sure all the boys around had firecracker hearts

just waiting to explode. And look, I know I know I know

I am not telling the whole truth. Things in your house

were different, were not right, were accepted because

maybe no one knew any better, or maybe they did

and didn’t care. And whenever the whole dark truth

would spill out, I remember I’d gather my features

into the center of my face, unable to figure out

the right combination for my concern, for fresh alarm.

I’d forget how to sit, how to blink, breathe. It’s true,

sometimes you look back and all the things

you should have done rise up like volcanic islands,

whole civilizations, whole existences, whole lifetimes.

But what did we know then? Fourteen, I took

the hammer of my dumb tongue and tried to tap

comfort into your impossibly small ears,

your impossibly small fists. We were kids,

and the future was our dependable escape plan.

We’d be gone soon, so you had just better suffer through

it all now. We’d be gone, so until then, I tried

to make you laugh. I’m sorry I never realized

I could’ve unlocked your exit earlier, that I

could’ve released your story from the shogun

of my own throat. The letters you send me now

are like postcards from that hopeful future:

you are okay, you are alright, with no return address.

So this poem is a telegram to let you know that

I still think about you, that I’m still proud of you,

that when I remember you, I always remember you

as beautiful.

LETTER TO A LOST FRIEND - RICHARD SHELTON

War, trade, religious debts to discharge, these are mostly the reasons

for men’s distant journeyings: but you take pleasure in distant journeys

without reason.                                                               – St.-John Perse

we do not realize what we want

until we learn

what we are willing to give up for it

and you did God knows you did

when swimming was no longer possible

you learned to sink you learned

to live at the bottom of the sea

now tell me of the chambers where you sleep

tell me it does not matter

lie if you must

is your bed luminous is it festooned

with seaweed do all your narrow windows

open onto water

is the tide kind to you

forgive me if I do not understand

last night a stranger asked me what

gives you most pleasure and before I thought

I answered her revenge

REPLICAS - Lawrence Raab

We were tooling along in Fred’s old jalopy,

thrown off our game

because the directions to the lunatic asylum were confusing.

I decided not to mention how appropriate

getting lost might be, maybe later

having to battle the elements to stay alive.

I’d been reading the old myths

and liked to imagine sailing through the clashing rocks

with only an oar for a weapon,

which wasn’t the most useful idea since we were heading

south of Tampa, trying to find our old friend

Adam, who might be waiting for a visit.

On the other hand, I thought, and then recalled

Adam having said far too often: On the other hand––

a knife is up close and personal.

People didn’t like to hear that kind of thing,

but we were sure he meant no harm,

even if in fact he did. We figured by now

he’d have forgotten the dangerous inclinations

of his youth, those days when he insisted

we’d all been misled by the voices

in our heads, then turned into replicas

of the people we thought we were. “Of course,”

Adam explained, “certain men choose

to be tempted by sirens. Others just let it happen.”

I told Fred that last part made sense, or sounded

like it should. “Damn,” Fred replied,

having taken another wrong turn.

“Not every kind of craziness makes sense.

Believe me, you’ve got to draw the line somewhere.”

At first Adam was upset about being sent away,

but since then we’d heard

he’d grown accustomed to the quiet gardens

they let him putter about in. We imagined

him kneeling down in the soil

like his name-sake and weeding

something small and green,

wondering why he’d ever believed

what he had, or else why no one

had ever understood what he believed.

Or perhaps both thoughts vanished

while he concentrated on his task, half-listening

to the murmuring of the more distracted guests

as they explained to each other how easily

they had been deceived by their lives.

when you wait for the dawn to crawl through the screen like a burglar to take your life away-- - Charles Bukowski

the snake had crawled the hole,

and she said,

tell me about

yourself.

and

I said,

I was beaten down

long ago

in some alley

in another

world.

and she said,

we're all

like pigs

slapped down some lane,

our

grassbrains

singing

toward the

blade.

by

god,

you're an

odd one,

I said.

we

sat there

smoking

cigarettes

at

5

in the morning.

Certain Choices - Richard Shelton

My friend, who was a heroin addict,

is dead and buried beneath trash

and broken bottles in a prison field.

He died, of course, because of the way

he lived. It wasn’t a very good way,

but it kept him alive. When it couldn’t

keep him alive any longer, it killed him.

Thoroughly and with great suffering.

After he had made certain choices,

there were no others available. That’s

the way it is with certain choices,

and we are faced with them so young.

I have few friends, and none of them

are replaceable. That’s the way it is

with friends. We make certain choices.