The Body Apologizes for Almost Everything, and: The Wonders of Webcams, and: Trigger Happy

The Body Apologizes for Almost Everything

For overriding your good sense,for tormenting you with hungers,addictions, fevers and pox,for my failure to flood at the touchof one who could have made youhappier, for the lateness of the hourin which I finally gave upthe egg, for the contractions (hardlyGod's punishments but my ownprodigious inventions, meantto let you know who would alwaysbe in charge), for the ligamentsI sprang apart, for the stone I wedgedin your breast, for the archesI collapsed and the spine I bentlike a hanger, for the spasmsto remind you that luck and fatehave nothing on me, for the hard edgesyou translated into the mind's silly dreamof supremacy, for the bright welts of itchI raised each spring of your childhood,for the burning of the milk againstthe rips I opened under the child'sfirst teeth to bare the seethe beneath,for the bones I am whittling to airnow, the nails that flake like shale,for the roil in your blood at the soundof a laugh on another continent,for the storms of heat drenchingyour pillow, for the fine lattice I etch over the backs of your hands.Above all, for casting you in the wayof so many who desired mewhile you were mere afterthought,for the consequent howl of heart,the course of havoc I've wreakedwhen you couldn't get me close enoughto what I made you want, then need.What did I care that they would disappoint?I had what I required, and you, my girl,I made you free.

The Wonders of Webcams

Though I've never laid eyes on her actual skin,I've combed her pixilated smile like a surgeonin search of the body's random wrongsand found her again yesterday in lineat the cosmetic counter, certain it was shethough I've never seen an image of herfrom the back, never been close enoughto smell what unraveled our liveslike a wad of yarn between the instinct-tutoredpaws of a cat. Even the shape of her skullis a patent unknown, always softenedby the long hank drawn over her right shoulderagain and again in the little fire of my screen.

Each year when the light arcs northand the stubble breaks out in stubborn greensI'm cast again into the whorls I learned as my fingers found the faces of her there wereto find. But the voice did not endure,girlish, irritated, swimming in captured stillsand sealed like old letters in my soft tissueswith the dangerous toys and secret longingsof a childhood too remote to conjure.All that's left is the little whine of her denial.The heart registers terror well enough,so we locate love in its lumpishconstancy, while the mind goes oninventing impossible wheels, the roundand round of the human face, this inexorablepatch of familiar features that belongsto a woman who chose not to look backat one who still sees cartoons of herhoisting her generous breasts to the tiny eyeat the top of the screen, so they can ridethe impulses out of her Boston townhouse,bounce from tower to tower acrossa country of oblivious sisters, and arrivein time for breakfast at the addressI once called home.

Trigger Happy

Orange, orange, orange, and impossible to knowwhich says hunter, says don't shoot, says Novemberhas robbed us of color. Therefore bright fleece vestments,caps that cast the glow of health down into the children'ssnowy cheeks. The boy and the girl go out fluorescentagainst the sky's wicked blue, raise toys and sticks

into horizons along which they sight. She strikesa girl-detective pose, eyes aligned along the batshe aims at me. He concentrates, perfectinghis Elmer Fuddish grimace for mommy's ready lens.We...