1.
The poet travels light
& washes his clothes
in the hotel sink
A woman in DC tells him
she saw him in NY
& he was wearing
the same clothes
He is in Wisconsin now
& he is still
wearing them
Childhood, a plane we
board in our pajamas,
fly over an ocean
to arrive in a country
where no one speaks
our language
Which country?
Which language?
Which mother?
If you have 2
you can never have both
But then all are divided at birth. All mothers, all children
Divided at birth. God always. Us always
if we could stop moving
if we could stop talking Arms could catch us—
hold us tight again
We could hear God’s voice
our name or our mothers calling
What keeps you alive in a
new century
the same old bitter
sleeplessness?
Regrets?
Happy endings are still
endings
I want a beginning
I want grace
I want to learn to count
to 100
in 7 different languages
learn scales on
my daughter’s violin
I don’t want to learn all of
anything
to learn anything
that has a purpose
I already know
God is in the building
in the hall outside
this room
2.
At night I remember
my life as a French Jew
in another life
in a land I never left
in an army transport in a strange woman’s arms
From Chapter 4—in which I am 51
What life does not have us?
This is not the beginning
not an end
not even the middle
properly speaking
unless I live to be 102
already, the course has been
laid down
like flower beds
like whores going to bed to sleep
Vestibule?
Do I have, have I ever
had a vestibule?
By class, by height
please form perfect lines
Write in a disciplined hand
the X of a disciplined mind
3.
In his introduction
my friend uses the title
of a poetry manuscript
sent in the mail—
Good Enough
By The Supreme Being
I hope you know I am
a bit tired of this, God says
in the first poem
& who isn’t? I want
to answer. After all these
years, I’m more
than weary—I am
bored. Armageddon
calls out like
a good game of Bingo
4.
Isn’t this us?
The ones drinking coffee
with creamer? Why
can no one remember
the milk? Out the window
I can see the barn
where the university
keeps cows
I took my children
to see the one with
the porthole in its side
the cud moving past
the little window
like green socks in the dryer
What would it feel like
having a window
in my side? Does the cow
mind that we stare?
Would I take it as
a complement?
Or is my writing
just that—window/peep show
When I wrote a memoir
my husband said,
You honestly
think no one is going
to read what you
write there
Which wasn’t true
I did. But not any
one I knew. Strangers who
lived in towns with
better bookstores
Strangers would know
everything about me—
not my friends
not my family
Would the cow
be embarrassed if
it were cows, not
people staring?
Or perhaps perhaps—
none of this is true
I am not in Wisconsin
a woman with two good children
one very bad dog
sitting in a poetry reading
given by a man who
says he almost died
on the plane here
Small plane, he says,
very windy
It rose & rose—then
fell
5.
Sometimes I think God
fell
in love with us
In love like you do
with a puppy
In love like a mother
does with her
child
The puppy turned dog
child grown up
love changes—
or does it? I love
a dozen people now dead
Standing outside
time, does God
grieve? How many
dead can he remember?
I told my son about my death—
this was in a dream
He said I would come back as a bird
or come back as something
made of aluminum
Though, sometimes, he said
we are reborn to embody
a virtue—
Charity, maybe, or Grace
We were on a school bus
&
when we got off, God
was waiting
as he always was
in the place
that had always been home
6.
After seeing
men & women
without skin in
The Human Body,
my daughter said,
“Don’t the people
in the lobby
look way
overdressed?”
