The Brooklyn Rail

Pear Tree, Bartlett, Quotations

Unswim the sky, clouds row across
and sink, it’s we who drown. Ballast
overboard, it’s me I’m scared of (song
said that), July hangs white
on heat looms. My mother, my
humiliation, born under the archer’s
sign, under the broken arrows,
snapped string and shattered bow.
(See, I have winged you,
wordless woman, “him” doesn’t happen
here. Watch over me as I
slip underneath, unlight
my eyes.) Shadows scrawl across slate
paving stones, the bitten fruit
falls bitter to the lawn. Squirrels
spit it out. The green
fruit ripens on the ground, yellows
toward rot and chewed-through browns.
Later I’m walking toward despair
with the other roadside detritus,
some fatal and irrevocable countryside
southwest of who I am.
Green leafy inedible words
(for ornamental use only sign says,
song says too) give shade to roadkill,
possums, rabbits, and raccoons,
black men who don’t know better
than to wander a county highway
all night, fucked by the gods
and left for dead on the dislocated
shoulder of Route 96B. Archer’s wandered
out of sight, cloudcover quarter-moon
changes every yes to no.
The laden branch can’t be picked,
all that unripe just in reach.

Self-Portrait in the New World Order

You’re walking down the street alone,
absorbed in the anticipation of a lunchtime salad
with that crusty olive bread you like so much,
and suddenly you’re marching in formation
in a crowd, it’s called a regiment.
You seem to be a soldier this time, you learn
to be at war. You’re never really in danger
because you know you can’t die
in your dreams, but sometimes
you wonder who told you that and whether
they could be trusted. The sidewalk is split
and uneven because of the shrapnel
and the artillery shells; yesterday
you didn’t know the definition of artillery,
but today you know how to use it, all kinds
of field ordnance. “Ordnance” is a word
you’d never heard before. Every time
there’s so much to notice, so much
to remember and write down. Here’s
a little notebook with rubbed-down corners
for your back pocket. It’s the little things
that distinguish one war from another,
tonight your shoes are black standard issue
marching boots that lace halfway up
your calves, whereas the other night
you had no shoes, or the shoes you’d lost
were beige bedroom slippers whose plush
offered no protection from the slush and rain
you trudged through. The subway crash
distracted you from that, now
you’re climbing over the wreckage
to the next sheltered position, air thick
with morning mist (you’re shivering), smoke
and a haze of acrid dust, it burns your lungs.
You’re clambering through accordioned
cars, where are those twisted rails
that won’t carry any passengers taking you?