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SASHA WEST |
{Tin God, the head and foot of a bed, Jackie O.}
The car drove {O sweet for spacious, steel and
steel railings, factories refining iron}
back into the swamp I did not {deflect, true as a pistol shot}
change my dress before {instrument of policy,
open file drawers, her white skirt swirling swirling}
I paid my {mother in lace, terrible beauty of
translucent lard, heron rising to bend the wire}
respects to the body {grateful but sleeping} {awful
awareness fatiguing} {pills, cobbles that shook
the coffin}
On the way I wondered what would happen {hewing the wood
with his own, adze blade humming,
kiss on the side of my neck}
if they identified the unknown soldier {television screens
lit like candles, buffed and polished
convertible, the veil through which came at me the image of}
(Later they will send your brother with you {a
child’s hand aloft, airplane skimming sky})
On
metal, scream shot through with}
Willie,
accompanied him At each stop they
pulled L’s coffin from the train {people tore at
decorations, stole wood, kept relics secret in a drawer for years}
At least no frenzy to pull apart your {this
dress famous, a Halloween costume, people will call me
grief }
body dear the thing I would have liked to only
touch {volcanic ash covered cemetery in
My reflection in the hearse’s door {guns,
grinding motor lowers, lawns, prepare}
I look in the glass like someone {black horses
for a man, white horses for a woman}
important
They push you down {“the letter itself is largely concerned with the
writer’s grief, the
customary subject of such letters”}
They will bill us {for removing body, for
washing body, for preserving body}
two hundred and fourteen dollars {eavesdropper,
disfigured ear, slow telegrapher}
It will seem like nothing.
Jubilate Agno
The dreams leak in
faulty seal, day as permeable
the latitude of intelligence sinks
Rather, it
retreats
continually over the horizon and I on the good ship
Nostalgia pursue it like a receding sun
pursue it like the back of a stranger on the escalator
the
evangelism circuit.
Years later to wake up
stewed
in longing is
surprising. Like any good country to visit
your
body made me unsettled for days.
And to, love, years later, be wrapped
still in arms
— rather phantom, rather limbs, —
to wake from you as if dead and made collage:
{I will consider our
last meal.
Winter, untimely,
fell.
His mouth is sweet.
First, I slice the apples and Asiago cheese.}
turns the day into mulch in which you grow.
{I preheat our black
oven, fill the fowls with the sections of pears.
I bake the bread. I
serve his favorite meal.}
Let the living be concerned with
the living.
{Nightly, he washed
the naked, fevered man:
his hair left behind
on the pillow, his body left behind on the bed.
He slid in beside his
father gently.}
Love is the glittering scum
which floats upon the river of seduction Only
your shadow
climbed back to greet me.
My father in a suit and tie returns home from the
laboratories where he builds one-fifth scale
models of the facilities to house nuclear waste out of plexiglass.
*
The Committee for Design decides on a replica of the
government-approved photo from the
Russian paper.
*
When I was little, we lobbed stones across the wide expanse
of sand in the arroyo.
*
One man’s job requires he unfurl the carpet down the
airplane stairs, make it a glassy-smooth
surface.
*
My father waves out the door of the plane, flapping his hat like
a sail.
*
The lake on G’s head has measurable borders, is not,
probably, like our coast, infinite.
*
Men are a bother when they love you too much—
*
Stewardess Manual: For
dessert crème brulée goes well with espresso and is best in very small
dishes. Use caution with the torches as you carmeize the sugar. The silver
coffee service is
located in the cabinet with the airsick bags.
*
or too little.
*
“I’m not a lonely person.” (No record exactly of when the
president says this—into a microphone?
Beside a seashore?)
*
But I do from time to time think: Is this all?
*
At the auction: (Overheard)
those shoes should fetch quite a price. (Overheard)
Too lifelike.
(Overheard) I used to dream he held a pocketknife and
wanted me to do the tango with him.
*
We spent our childhoods under the metaphorical desk of the
mushroom cloud.
*
The someone tracing the birthmark onto the wax must have had
a steady hand. The woman
arranging his wife’s stole had plenty of opportunity to feel the ample arms,
but not to cast from
life.
*
Such a thing prepares you for drama the rest of it.
*
Makes it disappointing to die in your sleep.
*
The catalogue does not list the men lost or packed away in
snow.
*
After the cold war, G started painting. He signed the paint
by numbers with a flourish.
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