Three Poems from Work Today

After Ringing Up Jena Swan

I

Her bright magenta pea coat
wraps tightly around her
frame like skin, skin whipping
around like raw flesh hanging
in flaps but youthful and fresh still
and being the best for everyone’s
eyes as a choice garment or cloth
blossom not matching her any
better than how it’s supposed to.

“I read the first book and it only
took me a day and a half but I
couldn’t find a bookstore around
the hotel and I was in Chinatown
too but I was working crazy hours
so I guess it’s okay and I’m really
happy that you’re here and you’ve
got this.”

I am carried by mystique, by the
absolute pairing of “crazy” with
“hours,” a match of dance-step antsy,
a greytoned zoning of the mind even.

II

Often when confronted with another’s job,
whether downtown or uptown, either
this neighborhood or that neighborhood,
it seems each position carries its own weight,
and it seems crazy enough but then time,
cartwheels onto the scene, not really a father
since it’s the 21st century but more like this
giant large ball with phalluces sticking out
and orifices hiding in every sweaty corner,
like a rolling sex bomb, ticking away, but down,
really, always down, down, down.

We never think about it as some
grand disclosure waiting to erupt.

Instead, here we are, thinking about
jobs and work, when we can’t even
wrap jobs around ourselves to protect
ourselves, from the cold or whatever that is.
We can’t think about our security, such
as that which I give to this Swan woman,
this girl who I think is more beauticul than
girl or woman or anything at all, but still
is purchasing that book right now, enough
to go completely mad or “batty” or stone cold.

There is distaste in describing Jena Swan as
a swan, giving her that title, as a swan is
not regarding and often appears bitter,
queen-like, and antagonistic; no, Swan
was beautiful and full-bodied like a swan,
feathery and robust, turning my eyes like
a swan does, though this time in cowardice
and capricious tendencies not fear or hush.

White feathers bulging, pissed when too close.
Swans never let on but always seem to do.
Circumstances but why get too close to its bulk?

III

Hours upon hours, the craziest of them,
the damp hours, the torrent of hours, so
many hours yet it’s already only February.

It is the month of inching and premonitions.
Another dawn to another season of harvest,
creativity abounding through damp tracklettes.

It is winter, we know this. The hours in their
crazy, glazed glory cannot stop, won’t stop,
so people buy a pause, stop on in, have a chat,

and spend time. Let us pretend to contain
these hours, document those scouring crags,
fragments bundled together, watchface glass

ready to be cracked, broken, long been smashed,
large hammer bulk all rust and dust clouding,
the gravel’s movement a dualism of silent clatter.

The hours bunch ever around, accordioned,
siphons of blood, thousands of pumping threads,
vessels looking like a map of many snaking trails.

The typeface of our map is blue to shade unknowns,
topographic scales scanning distances like sets
of blinking, watching and measuring industry’s hours.

Because it’s just not for

In response to her mother,
who stood outside the bookstore,
looking at the palisade of red
romance novels and green mysteries,
who asked with a grave monotony
of the store next door to me
that I don’t like to think about,
because it’s just not for me,
“What’s in there?” the girl
all pinks and sweatpants,
wearing her smile like a saber,
lazily responded, destroying
both my moment and my ease:
“Beautiful diamonds and stuff.”

Brunswick is Wet Winter

Measuring time
in icicles, each
tear a drop
of melted water
landing, gathering
where we cannot see:

Grandmother
watches the
bathroom window’s
sequence of images
every day.

Every day she
exists alone
with her ice,
her daughter
away in Romania,
her son away
in California,
her grandson
in Pennsylvania,
her granddaughter
in Connecticut,
her other grandson
in school towns away,
her husband
away where
we cannot see.

Drops to the
bucket, hands
solemn but
clapping steadily;

every day she
is alone
with her ice
melting, one

extension
owned, another
severed for so
long, like ache
or throb.

She says the ice
falls swift, like
a waterfall.
One will melt
to make room
for the next,
an icicle horn
many feet long,
uncountable,
but always there,
and seen.

The reflections,
she admits, off
the frozen water
are blinding and
blind her, cease
the entire time;
the image of
blindness
sudden and breaking
up all the reflections,
the age through
the window’s
glass wiped-clean.