Meditation on shapes.

Vice-President of elbows. I have a preference for things that are old and battered, flawed, and tattered. I am case sensitive.

[rainsalesman]

Comfort Animal

From the sequence “Shekhinah Speaks” Comfort, comfort my people ... —Isaiah 40:1 A voice says, “Your punishment has ended.” You never listen to that voice. You really suck at being comforted. Another voice says, “Cry.” That voice always gets your attention, keeps you thinking about withered flowers and withering grass and all the ways you’re like them. Hard to argue with that. Death tramples you, an un-housebroken pet trailing prints and broken stems, pooping anxiety, PTSD, depression. It’s better to be animal than vegetable but best of all is to be spirit flying first or maybe business class with your emotional support animal, your body, curled in your lap, soaring with you above the sense of loss you’ve mistaken for the closest to God you can get. You want to cry? Cry about that. Who do you think created the animals to whom you turn for comfort, dogs, miniature horses, monkeys, ferrets, hungers you know how to feed, fears you know how to quiet? I form them, fur them, it’s my warmth radiating from their bodies, my love that answers the love you lavish upon them. Your deserts and desolations are highways I travel, smoothing your broken places, arranging stars and constellations to light your wilderness. Sometimes I play the shepherd; sometimes I play the lamb; sometimes I appear as death, which makes it hard to remember that I am the one who assembled your atoms, who crowned your dust with consciousness. I take you everywhere, which is why, wherever you go, I’m there, keeping you hydrated, stroking your hair, laughing when you chase your tail, gathering you to my invisible breasts more tenderly than any mother. You’re right—you never asked for this. I’m the reason your valleys are being lifted up, the source of your life laid bare. Mine is the voice that decrees— that begs—your anguish to end. When you suffer, I suffer. Comfort me by being comforted. -Joy Ladin

[rainsalesman]

The Way It Is

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among things that change. But it doesn’t change. People wonder about what you are pursuing. You have to explain about the thread. But it is hard for others to see. While you hold it you can’t get lost. Tragedies happen; people get hurt or die; and you suffer and get old. Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding. You don’t ever let go of the thread. -William Stafford

[rainsalesman]

The Bungalows by John Ashbery

Impatient as we were for all of them to join us,

[rainsalesman]

Dear John, Dear Coltrane

a love supreme, a love supreme a love supreme, a love supreme

Sex fingers toes

in the marketplace

near your father's church

in Hamlet, North Carolina—

witness to this love

in this calm fallow

of these minds,

there is no substitute for pain:

genitals gone or going,

seed burned out,

you tuck the roots in the earth,

turn back, and move

by river through the swamps,

singing: a love supreme, a love supreme;

what does it all mean?

Loss, so great each black

woman expects your failure

in mute change, the seed gone.

You plod up into the electric city—

your song now crystal and

the blues. You pick up the horn

with some will and blow

into the freezing night:

a love supreme, a love supreme—

Dawn comes and you cook

up the thick sin 'tween

impotence and death, fuel

the tenor sax cannibal

heart, genitals, and sweat

that makes you clean—

a love supreme, a love supreme—

Why you so black?

cause I am

why you so funky?

cause I am

why you so black?

cause I am

why you so sweet?

cause I am

why you so black?

cause I am

a love supreme, a love supreme:

So sick

you couldn't play Naima,

so flat we ached

for song you'd concealed

with your own blood,

your diseased liver gave

out its purity,

the inflated heart

pumps out, the tenor kiss,

tenor love:

a love supreme, a love supreme—

a love supreme, a love supreme—

[rainsalesman]

Lighthouse Keeping

Seas pleat

winds keen

fogs deepen

ships lean no

doubt, and

the lighthouse

keeper keeps

a light for

those left out.

It is intimate 

and remote both

for the keeper

and those afloat.

-Kay Ryan

[rainsalesman]

Secondary Boycott Ode

I had never seen anything like it. I was       walking out of the office of the braces doctor, in the same building as the acne doctor, I was on my way to the lunch counter that had sandwiches on soft bread with the crusts cut off—& people were       blocking the doors, following each other around in a circle, like our junior high marching       band, & they were in the way, between me & my sandwich. I went up to a lady who       was watching, & asked her what was happening, & she told me about the segregated lunch counters in the South—this was a secondary boycott, of Woolworth’s. & I       asked, how do they choose who walks, & she said, Anyone can. I had never seen anyone saying no with their body, with their feet. When I stepped toward the circle, a man       walked a little faster, & a woman walked a little slower, & there was a space for me, to sing without making a sound, at last to be unfaithful to my family, stepping out on silence. -Sharon Olds

[rainsalesman]

Stereo

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 cell phone when you are married married. Two two two two lines lines lines lines. You need need separate separate electronicmail electronicmail accounts accounts. When you are married married you will have sets sets of things things, of more sheets & towels matching, you will have duplicates of things, you will have just one 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 rings again a double time. You do not have to answer. That’s sure for when you are married people people understand understand you do 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. Anne Waldman

[rainsalesman]

Da Capo

Da Capo

By Jane Hirshfield

Take the used-up heart like a pebble and throw it far out.

Soon there is nothing left. Soon the last ripple exhausts itself in the weeds.

Returning home, slice carrots, onions, celery. Glaze them in oil before adding the lentils, water, and herbs.

Then the roasted chestnuts, a little pepper, the salt. Finish with goat cheese and parsley. Eat.

You may do this, I tell you, it is permitted. Begin again the story of your life.

[rainsalesman]

MONOPOLY (AFTER ASHBERY) I keep everything until the moment it’s needed. I am the glint in your bank manager’s eye. I never eat cake in case of global meltdown. I am my own consolation. I have a troubled relationship with material things: I drop my coppers smugly in the river. (I do everything with an unbearable smugness.) I propose a vote of thanks. I make small errors in your favour. Sometimes I pretend nothing is wrong. I won second prize in a beauty contest. I am yellowing at the edges. I was last seen drawing the short straw. I hang about tragically on street corners, where I hand out cards that read: if you see I am struggling to lift this card, please, do not help me. -Sarah Howe

http://www.thewhitereview.org/poetry/monopoly-after-ashbery/

[rainsalesman]

Visitor

BY BRENDA SHAUGHNESSY

I am dreaming of a house just like this one but larger and opener to the trees, nighter than day and higher than noon, and you, visiting, knocking to get in, hoping for icy milk or hot tea or whatever it is you like. For each night is a long drink in a short glass. A drink of blacksound water, such a rush and fall of lonesome no form can contain it. And if it isn’t night yet, though I seem to recall that it is, then it is not for everyone. Did you receive my invitation? It is not for everyone. Please come to my house lit by leaf light. It’s like a book with bright pages filled with flocks and glens and groves and overlooked by Pan, that seductive satyr in whom the fish is also cooked. A book that took too long to read but minutes to unread— that is—to forget. Strange are the pages thus. Nothing but the hope of company. I made too much pie in expectation. I was hoping to sit with you in a tree house in a nightgown in a real way. Did you receive my invitation? Written in haste, before leaf blinked out, before the idea fully formed. An idea like a storm cloud that does not spill or arrive but moves silently in a direction. Like a dark book in a long life with a vague hope in a wood house with an open door.

[rainsalesman]

Sea Poppies

Amber husk fluted with gold, fruit on the sand marked with a rich grain, treasure spilled near the shrub-pines to bleach on the boulders: your stalk has caught root among wet pebbles and drift flung by the sea and grated shells and split conch-shells. Beautiful, wide-spread, fire upon leaf, what meadow yields so fragrant a leaf as your bright leaf? H.D.

[rainsalesman]

Sort of Coping

Why is anyone in the world so terrible. Real catastrophe and catastrophizing. If we only knew when it was going to happen. I saw you put your hands on the floor. Intimacy without disturbances. The scope here of memorization, planets. The history of children sitting still. You are so cute in all your facebook photos. When you moved to Portland I forgot we used to call you Tumbleweed Tex. All those barking dogs, feathered hair. We have something in common I never mention. I wish I’d written it down and folded it into one of your piles saying I want to read every one of these books! Do you think you’ll have read them all before the end of time. Did you go in to see her when she was dead. Maybe you already knew. Farrah Field

[rainsalesman]

High School Senior

For seventeen years, her breath in the house at night, puff, puff, like summer cumulus above her bed, and her scalp smelling of apricots — this being who had formed within me, squatted like a wide-eyed tree-frog in the night, like an eohippus she had come out of history slowly, through me, into the daylight, I had the daily sight of her, like food or air she was there, like a mother. I say “college,” but I feel as if I cannot tell the difference between her leaving for college and our parting forever — I try to see this apartment without her, without her pure depth of feeling, without her creek-brown hair, her daedal hands with their tapered fingers, her pupils brown as the mourning cloak's wing, but I can't. Seventeen years ago, in this room, she moved inside me, I looked at the river, I could not imagine my life with her. I gazed across the street, And saw, in the icy winter sun, a column of steam rush up away from the earth. There are creatures whose children float away at birth, and those who throat-feed their young for weeks and never see them again. My daughter is free and she is in me — no, my love of her is in me, moving in my heart, changing chambers, like something poured from hand to hand, to be weighed and then reweighed. -Sharon Olds

[rainsalesman]

Poem without Intimacy

the other day I was shopping in one of those giant incredibly bright lit stores you can apparently see from space wheeling a massive empty cart thinking this is a lot like thinking why do I go to sleep not having brushed my teeth and dream of the giant failure known as high school again on the loudspeaker was a familiar song by Quicksilver Messenger Service there were no lyrics but I remember it says we are all skyscrapers under one blue rectangle that never chose us to be these sentinels who imperceptibly sway and watch people far below like tiny devices no one controls enter our various sunlight glass conversations the world is old and full as it will always be of commerce and its hopeful nonprofit mitigations future products from Amazon will cure ailments we have and also ones we have not yet invented looking down I saw my cart was full of a few boxes of some cereal I do not recognize four flashlights and a pink plastic water bottle made of some kind of vegetable that will eventually like me into the earth harmlessly decompose and then I passed an entire row of plastic flowers and wanted to be the sort of person who bought them all but really I am a runway covered in grass and all I truly love is sleep -Matthew Zapruder

[rainsalesman]

Walking The Dogs

I haven't done drugs for three days so I name each one after my sister and mother and brother and take them out with me on a walk, each one taking turns leading, each one the leader of a pack that was bred in the mid- seventies, each lease the color of glass and the density of a star, I hold each leash like something that has been returned home after being lost, I walk them under the oaks and maples, under the lilacs and cherries, they walk through the shadows like the team they are, each caring for the other like I always wanted them to, each giving room for a paw, a tail, sometimes smelling each other to make sure they are all right, we are all all right the thing that is not god whispers to me, you are not alone, you are not a shovel or a horse, even the stem of the rosemary bush is really excited that you have made it this far, see how it shivers in the early spring breeze, see how it's a breeze to be with your whole family, to be the porch they all sit on after the dinner and cake, with mugs in their hands and wine in the mugs, and how they life their noses into the wind and sniff and look to see if you are there, if you are going to do what you promised to do, if you are going to live and call them sometimes and tell them you love them. -Matthew Dickman

[rainsalesman]

Habitation

Habitation Marriage is not a house or even a tent it is before that, and colder: the edge of the forest, the edge of the desert the unpainted stairs at the back where we squat outside, eating popcorn the edge of the receding glacier where painfully and with wonder at having survived even this far we are learning to make fire -Margaret Atwood

[rainsalesman]