Dinner with the Scholar from Zimbabwe

Sleek in tall black party dress
you arrive to drag me to dinner
with the scholar from Zimbabwe.
I don’t want to go. Unread books
sigh about me. A pint of whiskey
simpers in my lower desk drawer.
Haven’t we been friends long enough
to cancel our mutual presence?
Can’t I ignore your sinuous pose
and pretend your gaze doesn’t pierce
soft tissue as easily as snow
impaling an innocent landscape?

The scholar from Zimbabwe surely
won’t notice my absence, not
with you to catch his attention.
I want to pour a mug of booze
to burnish my inner organs
to the highest possible shine.
Then I’ll read the newest theories
and attempt to align the world
I know with the one depicted
in abstractions tough as bedrock.
How can the Zimbabwe scholar
amuse or enlighten me more
than the eloquence of bourbon
or the wrought syntax of essays
translated from German or French?

Please don’t crowd me. The whisper
of the south wind in your hair,
the rattle of your faux-pearl necklace,
the rustle of your skeleton
concealed beneath serious flesh
conspire to embarrass me in ways
you know I can’t survive. Alright,
I’ll forfeit myself and follow you
to a four-star dinner with wine
and guest speaker, and later fade
into the dark while you flatter,
with your vibrant conversation,
everyone in the room but me.

Trashing the Museum

After wasting a whole calm night
dreaming of thugs invading
and burning a famous museum
I rise into pre-dawn dark
yawning and stretching like Hades
fresh from gloom. How can I solve
my losses? The family murder,
the forced sale of my mother’s house,
my beautiful cousin deleted
by cancer, my youngest uncle’s heart
defeated by climbing a mountain
in Georgia. The stars prickle
like my whiskers. The moon has set
in a puddle of yellow slime.

Why should the chill spring cosmos
seem so personal? That dream
included me in a leading role.
I may even have started the fire
Everyone I love and trust
assisted in ripping van Goghs
and Rembrandts, Homers and El Grecos
from the walls, smashing the frames
and heaping the mess in a hall
of tapestries. A single match
consigned the whole history of art
to ashes. But even the marble
burned, and the whole edifice fell
on our ugly screaming carcasses.

Why should I dream such a crime
when the stars seem intimate
and early peepers rhyme in chorus?
As I fully awaken I smell
the smoke and soot on my hands
and hope that’s from my woodstove
rather than another dimension
where the moon never sets but dangles
like a hanged and guilty man.

Thursday Night Out

On Main Street the drunks rehearse

clumsy old ballets one step

at a time. Rite of Spring, Swan Lake—

the dancers smirk and waddle

past the bagel shop, pawnbroker,

the insurance agent’s storefront.

Bleeding light onto rainy sidewalks,

none of these establishments lack

good intentions, only customers.

I weave among the Thursday drunks

and consider how daintily towns

like this cling to the surface

of the planet. Easy enough

to scrape them off, easier

than scraping mussels off old pilings

or wallpaper off horsehair plaster.

I enter a café and greet

friends who’ve ranged themselves like gulls

on a beach. Spring has sprung us

from our slovenly winter habits.

We’ve agreed to get out more

and stretch our creaking torsos.

We’ve agreed to eat more seafood

and vegetables, to drink less whiskey

and more wine. No more Stravinsky

or Tchaikovsky, more John Adams

and George Crumb. Shut off the TV,

read more novels about women

overcoming sexist religions

in nations half-flattened by war.

We agree that superstition

has corrupted even the mildest

of faiths, confusing even the drunks

tumbling against the plate glass windows

and shouting in primary colors.

We order expensive dinners

and stare at each other’s plates.

We weigh each other against our food,

weigh ourselves against each other,

and as the wine settles deep in us

agree that the pale spring dusk

looks vanilla enough to eat.

Sometimes the Sky Falls in Chunks

On Beacon Street the auction

of a bankrupt lawyer’s worldly goods

proceeds with cheers and laughter.

You’re sorry to see him grieving

over his rolltop desk, his antique

pistol collection, his stereo

and wide-screen plasma TV.

His condominium with view

of the Charles River and Storrow Drive

may fetch a million. A painting

by David Hockey will earn

at least another million, maybe

two. So don’t feel too sorry—

at least he’ll cover his debts.

You want everyone fully at ease

in this lumpy and arrogant world,

but sometimes our skins bag on us

like sorry old leisure suits,

and sometimes the sky falls in chunks.

I agree that no one should gloat

over misfortune regardless

of how drearily it’s deserved.

The crowd cheers as the auctioneer

offers a leather set of law books.

You purse your little face like

a sea creature closing itself

against predators. A river mist

is rising as the day declines,

and the old brick townhouses gaze

backward into their history,

the dark air filling their rooms

too thick for most of us to breathe.

Easter at Camp Stayaway

The whitewashed old barracks sigh
as the west wind surfs overhead.
No campers until June, but now
is the time to paint and scrub, flush
antifreeze from the toilets and tune
the hot water heaters to set
the pipes singing. I lived alone
all winter in Caretaker Cottage
and probably got a little odd.

Now Christ has risen against
my advice, the Easter Bunny
has doled toxic goods to children,
and the sun has bared a winsome smile
almost as comforting as sin.
Today I’ll begin splitting wood
for evening fires on the fieldstone hearths
where the kids will sing the corny songs
generations have rendered sacred.

Every year a child drowns because
the bottomless lake falls in love.
Every year a child falls from a tree
and breaks serious bones because
the tree resents the trespass.
The wind shucks along in colors
too primal for the eye to catch.
Hymns drift from the village five
miles away, their implications
unsupported by the evidence
of frost-cracked pegmatite, or morels
testifying under dead maples.

Browsing the grounds for firewood,
I discover unearthly remains
of the hunter I heard banging
on a barracks door last November.
Probably froze, his rifle a stick
of rust. I rake him into the trash
and toss the rifle into the pond.
No point in reporting this loss
to the local constable, who drinks
every penny of his meager pay.

The April sun leers like a hole
someone shot in the universe.
Here the dead hardly ever rise,
even the drowned children sinking
so deeply divers never find them.
The barracks gleam and stretch and sigh.
The piles of firewood I’ve gathered
look funereal yet cheerful,
the old camp songs already rehearsed
and the tomb-like fireplaces plotting.

William Doreski teaches at Keene State College in New Hampshire. His most recent collection of poetry is Waiting for the Angel (2009). He has published three critical studies, including Robert Lowell’s Shifting Colors. His essays, poetry, and reviews have appeared in many journals, including Massachusetts Review, Notre Dame Review, The Alembic, New England Quarterly, Harvard Review, Modern Philology, Antioch Review, Natural Bridge.