Pool, and: Record of Absence

Pool

Across the street two Santa Clauses have been smoking for twenty minutes.I am carrying a pound of hard green pears. I have nothing to say.The community swimming pool, glittering in the ground, is covered by a tarp.The underworld has been sealed. And all I have is my body

to carry and feed a pound of hard green pears—it is like having nothing,draping the sheer curtains pulled lightly from a box over myself.The underworld is sealed up and this is all I have, my bodyto clothe and walk to the bank in under the black trees and sky

draping starkness, these pulled curtains, everywhere. In a box I will put my self:we only live on in the memories of three generations, I've heard,clothed and walking outside while we move in the wet black trees, the sky,being within them as our selves, the way six people can step inside a sheet of cut paper.

We only live on in the memories of three generations—I heard thisfrom a filthy man lecturing the branches of an ash tree—being in them, ourselves this way. When people exist in names marked on paperall each person had was their own body and the trick itself: being.

A filthy man lectures the raining branches of an ash treewhile two Santa Clauses smoke. Twenty minutes pass.All I can say I have is a body and the trick itself: being,until the community's swimming pool, glittering in the morning, opens.

Record of Absence

To have woken early, in Prague, and to have walkedbeside the Metro bookstore, the word puzzles in Czech,roses and yellow mums in tall jars, the pails of pinkish waterrippling the scuffed, graphite-rubbed sheen of the hall

inside the metro, not the bookstore, and then puzzle words in Czechwhile passing through Pinkas Synagogue—a memorial now—rippling the marked, graphite-rub of the wallswith Jewish families of Bohemia and Moravia, names, dates,

I passed through them in Pinkas Synagogue, their memory nowin terracotta and navy ink. A nun uttered a prayerfor the Jewish families of Bohemia and Moravia, their names and datesI wrote in the book I'd dried on my window ledge in the Masaryk dorm,

its terracotta roofs, navy trim—all the uttered prayersin the place the KGB occupied and held prisoners in its open-air court—I wrote in my book from my bed in the Masaryk dorm,near the window ledge's glass bottle one roommate filled with cherries,

how the KGB occupied and held prisoners there in the open air courtbelow to stand quietly until an officer led you to a room(without a window ledge, roommates, a bottle filled with cherries,fresh soap, folded towels, books and pens, a drawer of rolled socks)

below, to stand quietly until an officer came to you in that roomvery awake this early, in Prague, after having been walked away fromthe idea of soap, folded towels, books and pens and socks,roses your mom stuffed in jars, and led to a pail of blood-pink water.