Day: June 18, 2011

Working on Sunday

Working on Sunday

 

The night’s first drink, mixed with jackets and gloves unremoved,

sings with ice and glass in tonight’s most steady rhythm.

The empty house, with its tense occupation and ever-struggling furnace,

captures the traveller in its familiar atmosphere, like the protective figure of

a young man’s fantasy.

Two clicks and a light comes on.

Condensation-slick hands reach for the telephone, a reproduction of an old rotary in clunky red plastic.

Chilled water drops on the carpet.

 

The river, down the hill behind the steep backyard,

flows unnaturally, in different directions at different times of the year.

A pot of spring water boils on the electric stove, wetness on the pot’s bottom

sizzling against the worn black coils awakening.

The slowest of the four burners.

 

The radio.

Miller hits a three.

Sonny Clark spills his drink on the keys.

 

…boiling water begins to overflow.

A Sonnet…

a sonnet for two boys at a wedding in august

 

we dance within the stairwell at the church

our bodies lurching left and right slowly

to catch a glimpse of rhythm as smokers

begin to trickle in and out with rolls

 

of sweet bread on white cocktail napkins and

reviews of bartenders. He knew the groom,

I knew the bride like the beach knows its sand.

Ten years ago we shared a tiny room

 

without a working stove, which was ok

because our block had good Chinese. The rent

was low because we lived beyond Oak Street

which seems so far from here, this dimly lit

 

Cement-enclosed little piece of nowhere,

Swaying with you while others puff and stare.

Pantoum # 2

I’m brushing up on one of your favorite poets, so

inevitably my thoughts turn to you,

to reciting your favorite verses,

shells crunching on the beach beneath my boots

 

inevitably my thoughts turn to you

when I take the bus through our old neighborhood.

shells crunching on the beach beneath my boots

a pothole interrupts my daydreaming

 

Riding the bus through our old neighborhood

I wonder if the landlord has filled our apartment.

a pothole interrupts my daydreaming

like neighbors having loud sex in the early morning

 

I wonder if the landlord has filled our apartment.

I mostly remember the miserable moments,

like neighbors having loud sex in the early morning

or dropping our keys down the elevator shaft

 

I mostly remember the miserable moments because

they make for the best stories after the fact,

like when I dropped our keys down the elevator shaft,

though when I tell that story now I leave you out of it