Keeping Things Whole, Mark Strand

In a field
I am the absence
of field.

This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.

When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body's been.

We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.

January: Hinges. (11/80)

the sisters speak in their broken german tongues
outside oak doors, wind and herr knocked. the jamb
is just an iamb. i am broad and nonlinear. i am
inexplicable, a face not unlike yours. you are
changed in snow puddles and frost mournings.
the high singsong notes between alley ways
like wailing cats are how i knew you. turn
the screw. shards of bitte, a hollow
resonance, resonance nonetheless. i can turn
if you'll open the way: a long road, no words,
gilded cold, no words.

Parsnips (10/80)

It is struck on the back of a head;
a word and the way the tongue moves.
Like the flicker of a snake--"Parsnips"
without meaning, out of mouth into the pot.

Debbie (9/80)

Debbie, you
chased me and I
was right there.
you tapped
my knee
"come to
my bed. rock
my body hard
all night long."
you lost yr
speech.
are you a man
killer vixen?
was it the tats?
it's only ink.
if so,
you can roll
the hell on.

A Supermarket in Virginia (An Ode to Brian Fitzpatrick) (8/80)

What thoughts I have of you today, Brian Fitzpatrick,
for I overpriced garlic jellies in a white room with a pounding vein in the head
and in exhaustion I turned to Michael Macdonald's smooth soulful sounds,
dreaming of your iTunes.
What baritone! What beats! Pastel polo shirts in the lyrics, floating yachts in the bass?--and you, Loren Poin, what were you doing leaning in your white linen suit?

I saw you, Brian Fitzpatrick, bearded, disgruntled student choosing chorizo out of the fridge.
I heard you telling that story about your math teacher touring with Jane's Addiction. Of Showbiz Pizza. Of when what bulb blooms.
I followed the voice in my memory as I stacked jars in neat rows, talking about television shows and irreverence, and thought of the most amazing Meatloaf air-band ever.
Where are we going, Brian Fitzpatrick? Which way does your beard point tonight?
(I hear yacht rock and dream of an odyssey and feel absurd)

After reading too much Charles Wright (7/80)

The kicks of dog dreams: chasing a fox that never was. His saliva spills out from his jaws and his paws gathers up the dirt of air as he gallops. "How imperceptibly we become ourselves." I could chase this--what I know is us: in this place, the absence of this place: immeasurable space: incommensurate emptiness. You are the silence between words: an unseen glance : recognition. Lost for space, for the hair between our paws, I can stick my snout into the opposite, to the bark of trees, the scratch of long reeds along a field in which we stand foreign making a void. What I know is untouchable warmth.

In the evening we dream of brighter times (6/80)

In June my mother caught
my sister on fire.
There isn't much to say about that
except the way moths
attracted to the light hung
about the flame
their thin wings
only a blur
against violet dusk.
Is it heartless
to think her a bonfire
the way her hair
lit up to the treetops?
Or so cliche--out as bright as she came?
We buried her charred.
The clear wings of insects stuck to her lack of skin.

Haiku (5/80)

So. In poetry
Self-consciousness is humor.
Five syllables. Butt.

Boring (4/80)

The river never forgot the ghosts
of the twin beams of a Ford pick-up
that reflected two moons on its surface.
Inside the cab, a hand on a breast,
the stink of fermentation--
long gone, though the cans remain
lodged in the river's bed
and the sick sweet stink of alcohol breath
blows through the air.

Eggs. (3/80)

Early on we learned
each part has its purpose so
we separated whites from yolks.

Nativity (2/80)

Two or three years ago I saved the house
smelled and put out the fire. My mother
gripped me to her breast, said, "God bless"
soft and hole-filled like her grandmother's quilt
draped across the couch: This is home.

Precision. (1/80)

A definition that creates:
except the space that opens
only to close as we pass,
it has been still for months.
The long necks of yearning;
open jaws, waiting.
Across a love worn chest
looking not for answers but
for this, which cuts like--