The Brooklyn Rail

Shirt Care

--for a red cotton shirt

I don’t want to care for a shirt. I want a shirt to care for me. Wrap itself
around me and keep me warm. Sun I want you in the sky toasting my skin
I know I am going around you and that we fall you don’t rise. I fall in a sky
of no deeds towards clouds of no understanding. Fluff heads. Had they
minds they might be thinking instead they have to be symbols.  But not in
this poem. They can be fists of rain. I will symbol for them my epic
misunderstanding, my ode of simple elements. When my words run out,
spilled to the ground, soaking into soil-- clouds, do your job: drift on.

Misreading A Poem by Lee Ann Brown

[“there is a shelf that opens to find one garment drying ”]

1.
A dried apple core shrank: her black seeds promising. Someone left it
freeing a hand to feel a sock then forgot a month till a sweet smell dried to
sweet reason. I looked through the dead Apple to eye the other world
where orchards grow upside down through clouds and rain apples on dirt.
Go gather them as they scatter rub the dirt on your apron hang your work
shirt above the lost sock. You kneel to find it where dust balls congregate
to worship the ground you walk on. Stand up too quick you’ll bump the
shelf that opens to the one dream of dying.

2.
Outside under the shaggy shadow a crowd on the plain is shouting prayers.
Dear God send us the Apple that ends death. You’ll have to find it among
the others God said  peeved he hadn’t thought of it first. Amid the thunder
the lightning and the pelleting apples the promise traveled like radar
mingling among them casting shadows where shadows should be.  The
apples bruised and squished where they landed or rolled like wheels while
the crowd chased after them searching for an afterlife in cider.

3.
“Were you supposed to eat the apple or just hold it ?” the early theologians
wondered sitting on rough tufts of saw grass and pondering ruin. “Don’t we
all live in God's shadow the shadow of death what Apple can hurt that? “

But the common believers ignored them snatched as many apples as their
wagons could hold rolling through the hills of Eden to where the sun dries
every word. After a while the back of God moved off revealing a deep blue
well and the light fell through till the end of days. They took a bite from
each one and threw the rest away. They knew they would die eventually
but a promise is a promise.

DID YOU PRACTICE?

--for my mother

You have to be willing to make mistakes. My thumb on the middle C
wandered over to Venus. Soon I was playing yellow smoke breathed to
intoxication. Just beyond toxic the left hand turned to the bag of the bee
one sweet taste and Beethoven can't be too b flat.  I rose up on a sharp that
lifted me into an indefinite equation. Solving for x I hammered out a chord
between peace and Germany. White doves left over from the armistice
squawked their way through turbulent chords that rose from the well of
the piano. Then we whirled around in triplets till the organic chemistry of
the moment came to a rest —suspended high overhead in silence like a god
who decided "just be". Just b that’s all then c then d then c.  I heard all
those notes then they became me then they flew on beyond me.

The Metaphysics of Goofy

--for David Shapiro

When is a dog not a dog? There’s a dog in this space named Pluto. Does
Goofy walk Pluto? The silence of Pluto  hints eternity though I am allergic
to hints. Whether you exist or not: what is absolute? Does Goofy so
wonder? Does Goofy know he exists? Mickey’s squeak never doubts.
Donald’s spit-flecked quack struggles. Holding hands they look to the stars.
Does vastness exist or is it a human construct? Does a duck have hands?
Why does he wear a top but no bottom? Is there a bottom to every top? Our
concepts —all cartoons —wish hard dark lines. But they’re just ideas: noble
or goofy.

Dawn hurries to replace us all with light.

SAVE ONE

All bees were dying save one.
It was so sad
the world looked away.

We need that last bee said the god of bees.
—To make new bees?
No. To teach you: never.

Never is a long time they say
they being whoever has a mouth.
Yes so long so long hmmmed the bee
long as my bonnet is black.
That’s how dark never is
stings your body everywhere
until no more honey.

What are these tears then said the last flowers.
Are they not honey?
They are last dew said never.
What is this ooze said the pine
is it not like honey?
Very much very much like honey.

They were dying to believe it.
So long so long so long hmmmed the bee.
Never never never never never never never.

What Do Doctors Know

--for Jason Berry and Blaise Pascal

The narrative doctors mask a verb or change tenses by prescription but
relief is only temporal. Some change a to the in every memory with
migraines as a side effect. After years of doctoring my own narratives with
herbal remedies I opted for radical surgery: replace "Grand Canyon" with
"corned beef sandwich". The anesthetist with an oblique smile put a mask
over my face and flooded my nostrils with amnesia. But I remember: a
howling hole with fringes of flame like a birthday cake on fire. I'd asked for
partial ablation but they burned right through to death-in-life. Now I
wander in quail grass my eyes the size of empty planets. The silence of
these vast spaces frightens me.  Well it should.