The Last Auk

 

The last Auk, 1852

was found with menhaden

and capelin

and a series of letters from you.

I weep for the Auk,

the last of its kind, alone.

with its feet on rock, its beak in the breeze,

and a feeling for you in its bones.

Is it the fault of the Auk that its dreams of flight

were scuttled by wings too small?

Was it soothed by Hughes, rent by Plath?

Did it feel anything at all?

It had no mate,

no egg, no day of comfort in the future.

Stuffed on a stand, it asked for your hand

to tenderly tie the last suture.

____________

Night Walkers

We're sorry to call
at such a late hour--
so we'll scoot in and snick the door

shut

so quietly.

Every Wednesday night
since Goddess knows when
we're canasta queens

but then you know we

have time to be.

We wear white dresses up to our necks
and we like the jokers left in the decks.

Shh shh, go back to sleep.
Don't come down the stairs--
or we'll disappear, tongues gone to cats,
as if we'd never even been there.

We sense you more than see you
when curiosity draws you
down the stairs--

we hold our breath

and three our pairs. 

Curse you, damn you,
disturbing our game
with lights obliging us to disperse--

impudent meat bag!

We were here first! 
________

For Marian's music prompt--Alice Cooper. Youtube doesn't want to let me include his song "Black Juju" but that's the one I wrote from. 

I once had a dream that I was one of a small group of 1900-ish ladies who gathered regularly in a house to play canasta. We'd play our cards and get talking and laughing--waking up the resident upstairs in the bedroom. I remember very clearly that the house had beveled glass in the front door, and a narrow stair case rising up from it. To one side was the parlor with a fireplace and a table and chairs. All of us wore white. Anyway, when the resident would get up and start edging down the stairs to see what the voices were, we all had to stop silent and wait to see if they would turn around or come all the way down and ruin our game. You see, although only the resident seemed shadowy to us, we knew *we* were the ghosts in *their* house. And...it wasn't the first time I had dreamed of being a ghost in someone else's reality!

Love Letter From A New York Girl Stuck In Texas

Honey,

I'm so glad that this has reached you--and that you wanted to open it and read my words, as you used to love to do. Maybe things haven't changed so much, after all?

I won't say "wish you were here" and I wouldn't will it so, even if I had a genie on my shoulder taking down every word. But I am with you...you know that, yes? Even still?

I'm thinking, tonight, of a song you once played for me on the phonograph--you with your vintage records you love so much. It was called "Don't Get Around Much Anymore." Do you remember? And do you recall how I wouldn't believe you that it was "The King of the Blues" singing it? It sounded so old-timey. You had that sparkle in your eye and your lips turned up at one corner, it amused you so, knowing you were right all along. How I insisted! I'm a silly goose, darling. 

Tell me, sweetheart, is it evening as you read this? Have you had a nice meal, are you feeling content? I want you to be, even if you don't believe it. (I can grin that Cheshire grin at you too, you know!) Even though it's late here--nearly midnight--I am only now sitting down. I'm having crab cakes with baby carrots, plus Raisin Rum Cake for dessert. Yes, your favorite--I specifically put in my request for it, in your honor. You say I always get what I want--not always, I'm afraid, mon coeur. Not always. In spite of all my best efforts.

Well, sweetie, the time has flown and I need to get this into an envelope for you. They don't let us seal them, did you know that? I hope they don't undo my best intentions by redacting the heart of all I've said. I love you, I love you, I love you. There. They can't black out all three, can they?

Please forgive me, mon petit coeur, for anything I may have done to offend you...ever. It would mean so much to me if you could. That girl, she was coming between us, ruining everything, and the thought of losing you made me not myself. Blame it on that Other Me, won't you? Could you? I won't beg--I know you like me best when I'm all devil-may-care, and I promise to try to be that way from now on. I'll pretend I'm only visiting the doctor, getting a routine inoculation so that our next weekend won't be ruined by me sniffling and honking like a sea bird. All right, off I go any minute now..."down under" let's call it. That sounds so much better, yes? "Tie me kangaroo down...sport..." Poor kanga. 

Forgive me. Don't forget me. Be glorious, for us both, all right? 

All my love,

Charlene

This letter inmate-generated from Mountain View Women's Correctional Facility, Gatesville Texas. Contents have been screened. Recipient is advised to view all such correspondence as being possibly coercive, manipulative or false.
___________________

For "dear poems" at Real Toads.  

 

Logicians In The Sanitarium

Logicians, lit weakly by the skylight,
find each other.
Overtaken by passion, they posit avidly.

"Which," they wheeze to each other, holding bony hands,
"of the following is true, if any?"
1.If infirmity, then writing.
2. If writing, then infirmity.
3. red on the handkerchief reveals the heart's longing to express itself.

Doctors smile at the logicians, but hate them.
How are you feeling? Does the treatment seem to help? 
Who the fuck cares? Move to Arizona and die there, albeit a little more slowly. 

Dizzying excitements exhaust the logicians.
Staff wheel them in chairs out to the verandah, buried in sober wool blankets.
The sun stutters on the horizon.
The world displays its affliction in tones of slant red and crumbling orange.
The logicians gasp, but their minds race with articles
and the heady imaginings of each other's naked admiration.

And so here is what I want to say,
to you, to God, 
to anybody whose conveyance is locked to guard against accident. 
When medicated, 
when not hacking to the point of collapse,
I dream of the most illogical things.
I pretend that my body is not made of disintegrating papier mache,
and that you want to fuck me,
like somebody used to, in some other place, once, that I can't quite remember.
I see you and hope
that you, whittled down to nothing, incontinent and demented,
want the same illogical things.

That's when the logicians recognize it in my face like an obvious error.
They laugh uproariously,
joined by their new friends, the doctors,
who lobotomize me,
wait for me to babble through the froth,
and say, "See there? You're making sense," and walk away on skis
like giant L's held stiff by the wax and starch of correctness and clarity.
______

for "Aspire" at Real Toads

Travel Story For Girls

I fell in love with you
in 1913,
even though
I was not yet born. (I never let trifles stop me.)

You fell in love with me
in 2016,
even though
the limits of time and death had to be bent. 

Look at all the alcohol, all the wrinkles, all the mistakes we made,
you and I, 
in different places but in the same awful ways
(only to emerge, together, shining).

Never fret, my pet.
Life's a messy business, but we
are Mistresses of the whole shebang and are not limited by the usual stuff.

Still, I am just a little thing,
a comma,
but I have curled up in the curve of your ear
this early morning,
and am whispering how beautiful you still are, how beautiful we are,
how beautiful
and sweet like a row of mock orange straight on down the line.

________

The top image is of Evelyn Nesbit in 1913. The bottom image is of a mock orange bush. Evelyn Nesbit was perhaps the first supermodel, being the most sought after model for print and billboard advertisements in the early 20th century, and she was the inspiration for the classic "Gibson Girl."  Discovered at a young age, she became the bread winner for her family and survived being courted and then drugged and raped by the famous architect Stanford White. In later life, she drank to excess as her success declined, and her life was not a very happy one, I don't think. One of my favorite stories about her was about how, when a visiting admirer kicked a dog in her presence, she gave him nine kinds of hell for it and defended the dog--she was an animal lover all her life. As for the mock orange, I find it a sweetly old fashioned kind of bush, and its blossoms are both pretty and wonderfully fragrant.

Love Story

Down in the mines, Mordecai Centennial Brown finds Cerberus
guarding the gates of Hell.
He's alone. Spirits call to him. "Ah well," he says. "Ah well..."

Taking a triple headed dog by the jaw is a recipe for loss.
Any chippie at the lunch counter could have told Mordecai that,
but he never took advice about a dog, from a cat.

"Look at this blood, all this damage," said the doctor, shaking his head.
"Lucky you ain't going to lose the whole hand, young man.
Lucky you ain't dead."

Mordecai Centennial "Miner" Brown went on, with his acquired deformity,
to fashion a curveball that broke so sharply, so unhittably,
that it made him a star in the early days of the century.

Imagine the unlikelihood that he would wrestle Cerberus again,
get loose and come back, curving himself around your dreams
from underneath your bed.

He's in love with you, girl, or what's left of him is;
you with that Cubs cap hung on the bed post and your long smooth restless legs.
Hear him, how he cajoles. How he begs.

You don't look so good, showing up for work an hour late,
circles like coal dust under your eyes, too much for concealer,
and the witches in the break room whisper, "What's the deal with her?"

On October 8th, 1908, Miner Brown pitched his greatest game.
You weren't born yet, and he wasn't dead.
Now, all night, you see it, in dreams, in the rain, in your head.

He had that devastating pitch, and great command.
Being dead isn't his fault, being alone isn't yours--
Go on, fluttering bird, stop fighting. Let him love you. Swallow hard. Hold his hand.
_______

for both Karin's "remains" challenge, and my BFF Joy Jones' "poetry to the third power" challenge, both at Real Toads. 

The Cat Who Spoke

Missus Doctor Figg-Millett was dusting her husband's study,
dusting, in fact, the skeleton of a re-articulated cat,
when, without really thinking about it,
she complained aloud about not having a staff.

"Fuck you," said the fleshless feline.
"I have no staff either, and it was quite a useful one.
Look at me now. How can I love? Eat? Spray?
Your husband is an idiot.
All humans are idiots.
They value the branch but burn the leaves,
prize the package but throw away the contents.
So, fuck you and the good doctor, too."

Cats rarely mince words.

Doctor Figg-Millett arrived home from his practice to find
Missus Doctor Figg-Millett had taken to her bed.
"Are you ill?' he inquired uncertainly from the doorway.
"I want a cat," she replied.
"Nonsense. Cats shed."
"Fuck you," said Missus Doctor, shocking him with the unwonted curse word.
Then she added, "I want a lover,
and some opium. Maybe even an automobile."

Cats and women have often been seen as similar.

Doctor Figg-Millett hoped that some broth and a cessation
from reading novels might ease his wife's malaise,
but as the days passed, she shat in the potted palm,
and destroyed the curtains in trying to climb them.
One afternoon, she gave herself a climax,
then stared at her fingers in astonishment.
She even remarked that women certainly deserved the franchise,
and that's when Doctor Figg-Millett had had enough.

How he fell down the stairs is anybody's guess.
No one really credited Missus Doctor's claim
that a cat had tripped him half way down,
as the Figg-Milletts owned no cat. 
Yes, she did gesture with her cigarette at the re-articulated tom sitting upon the doctor's desk,
but really, how absurd!
"It can say 'fuck you'," she added,
and then seconded the demised feline's alleged sentiments herself.

That night, the various policemen complained to their wives
about the whole unpleasant business,
and the wives listened in demure silence 
except for a certain Missus Elroy MacDougal, who requested a cat.
_______