The Alphabet in the Park: Selected Poems

Concerted Effort

Concerted Effort The flatiron was invented because of Eternal Life. Or else why bother to crease trousers if every ending is worm-eaten wood, bones so clean there's no need fornausea? Which is also why metaphysicians hatch soliloquies, good governments govern with justice, and I'm wearing a low-cut dress. My desire for the handsome young man lives on, it's written on myfingernails, and grows with their roots. Can a woman have twenty orgasms? I don't worry about such silly details. I want love, superior love. I can tolerate only seven sorrows. One more, and I go numb, playing my guitar. Cemeteries are holy ground, that's why they attract me after I get over being repelled. Even if people insist: Look, there where your father was— a splinter of rotting wood, ribbons of cloth and dust. He's crossed over, I say, this silence is a trick, sheer expectation, it's exactly what hope is when it doesn't rattle. I know all about the burial, the lapse, the autopsy, I realize there are drowning victims, chopping blocks, forged signatures. But why do you think pendulums swing? After the grave, the clock goes on ticking, someone makes coffee, everybody drinks it. The boy went blind, his mother went crazy the day after, silly the second, 25 and by the third was on the front porch leafing through a fashion magazine because she wants a cool dress to scare off the heat. I had intended to whine, to throw up my arms, tempted to sin against the Holy Spirit, But life won't let me. And what I say ends up brimming with joy. 26 ...