Only As the Day Is Long

by Dorianne Laux

  a rainbow slashed across it?

  Somewhere in the universe is a palace

  where each of us is imprinted with a map,

  the one path seared into the circuits of our brains.

  It signals us to turn left at the green light,

  right at the dead tree.

  We know nothing about how it all works,

  how we end up in one bed or another,

  speak one language instead of the others,

  what heat draws us to our life’s work

  or keeps us from a dream until it’s nothing

  but a blister we scratch in our sleep.

  His voice is soothing, his teeth crooked,

  his arms strong and smooth below rolled-up cuffs.

  I have the power to make him disappear

  with one touch, though if I do the darkness

  will swallow me, drown me.

  Time to settle back against the pillows,

  gaze deeply into the excitement

  welling in his eyes. It’s a miracle, he whispers

  as the burnt moon slips across the sky,

  then he dumps the grainy crystals in

  and stirs the water with a wooden spoon.

  Homicide Detective: A Film Noir

  Smell of diesel fuel and dead trees

  on a flatbed soaked to the bone.

  Smell of dusty heater coils.

  We got homicides in motels and apartments

  all across the city: under the beds,

  behind the doors, in the bathtubs.

  It’s where I come in at 5 AM,

  paper cup of coffee dripping

  down my sleeve, powdered

  half-moon donut in my mouth.

  Blood everywhere. Bodies

  belly down, bodies faceup

  on the kitchenette floor.

  ¿Dónde está? Que será.

  We got loose ends, we got

  dead ends, we got split ends,

  hair in the drains, fingerprints

  on glass. This is where I stand,

  my hat glittery with rain,

  casting my restless shadow.

  These are the dark hours,

  dark times are these, hours

  when the clock chimes once

  as if done with it, tired of it: the sun,

  the highways, the damnable

  flowers strewn on the fake wool rug.

  These are the flayed heart’s flowers,

  oil-black dahlias big as fists,

  stems thick as wrists, striped, torn,

  floating in the syrupy left-on music

  but the bright world is done and I’m

  a ghost touching the hair of the dead

  with a gloved hand.

  These are the done-for, the poor,

  the defenseless, mostly women,

  felled trees, limbs lashing

  up into air, into rain,

  as if time were nothing, hours,

  clocks, highways, faces, don’t step

  on the petals, the upturned hands, stay

  behind the yellow tape, let

  the photographer’s hooded camera pass,

  the coroner in his lab coat, the DA

  in her creased black pants.

  Who thought

  to bring these distracting flowers?

  Who pushed

  out the screen and broke the lock?

  Who let him in?

  Who cut the phone cord, the throat,

  the wrist, the cake

  on a plate and sat down and ate

  only half?

  What good is my life if I can’t read the clues,

  my mind the glue and each puzzle piece

  chewed by the long-gone dog who raced

  through the door, ran through our legs

  and knocked over the vase,

  hurtled down the alley and into the street?

  What are we but meat, flesh

  and the billion veins to be bled?

  Why do we die this way, our jaws

  open, our eyes bulging, as if there

  were something to see or say?

  Though today the flowers speak to me,

  the way they sprawl in the streaked light,

  their velvet lips and lids opening as I watch,

  as if they wanted to go on living, climb

  my pant legs, my wrinkled shirt, reach up

  past my throat and curl over my mouth,

  my eyes. Bury me in bloom.

  Mick Jagger (World Tour, 2008)

  He stands on stage

  after spot-lit stage, yowling

  with his rubber mouth. If you

  turn off the sound he’s

  a ruminating bovine,

  a baby’s face tasting his first

  sour orange or spitting

  spooned oatmeal out.

  Rugose cheeks and beef

  jerky jowls, shrubby hair

  waxed, roughed up, arms

  slung dome-ward, twisted

  branches of a tough tree, knees

  stomped high as his sunken chest.

  Oddities aside, he’s a hybrid

  of stamina and slouch,

  tummy pooch, pouches under

  his famous invasive rolling eyes.

  He flutters like the pages

  of a dirty book, doing

  the sombrero dance, rocking

  the microphone’s

  round black foot, one hand

  gripping the skinny metal rod,

  the other pumping its victory fist

  like he’s flushing a chain toilet.

  Old as the moon and sleek

  as a puma circling the herd.

  The vein on his forehead

  pops. His hands drop into fists.

  He bows like a beggar then rises

  like a monarch. Sir Mick,

  our bony ruler. Jagger, slumping

  off stage shining with sweat.

  Oh please don’t die, not now,

  not ever, not yet.

  Men

  It’s tough being a guy, having to be gruff

  and buff, the strong silent type, having to laugh

  it off—pain, loss, sorrow, betrayal—or leave in a huff

  and say No big deal, take a ride, listen to enough

  loud rock and roll that it scours out your head, if

  not your heart. Or to be called a fag or a poof

  when you love something or someone, scuffing

  a shoe across the floor, hiding a smile in a muffler

  pulled up nose high, an eyebrow raised for the word quaff

  used in casual conversation—wine, air, oil change at the Jiffy

  Lube—gulping it down, a joke no one gets. It’s rough,

  yes, the tie around the neck, the starched white cuffs

  too long, too short, frayed, frilled, rolled up. The self

  isn’t an easy quest for a beast with balls, a cock, proof

  of something difficult to define or defend. Chief or chef,

  thief or roofer, serf or sheriff, feet on the earth or aloof.

  Son, brother, husband, lover, father, they are different

  from us, except when they fall or stand alone on a wharf.

  Antilamentation

  Regret nothing. Not the cruel novels you read

  to the end just to find out who killed the cook, not

  the insipid movies that made you cry in the dark,

  in spite of your intelligence, your sophistication, not

  the lover you left quivering in a hotel parking lot,

  the one you beat to the punch line, the door or the one

  who left you in your red dress and shoes, the ones

  that crimped your toes, don’t regret those.

  Not the nights you called god names and cursed

  your mother, sunk like a dog in the living room couch,

  chewing your nails and crushed by loneliness.

  You were meant to inhale those smoky nights />
  over a bottle of flat beer, to sweep stuck onion rings

  across the dirty restaurant floor, to wear the frayed

  coat with its loose buttons, its pockets full of struck matches.

  You’ve walked those streets a thousand times and still

  you end up here. Regret none of it, not one

  of the wasted days you wanted to know nothing,

  when the lights from the carnival rides

  were the only stars you believed in, loving them

  for their uselessness, not wanting to be saved.

  You’ve traveled this far on the back of every mistake,

  ridden in dark-eyed and morose but calm as a house

  after the TV set has been pitched out the window.

  Harmless as a broken ax. Emptied of expectation.

  Relax. Don’t bother remembering any of it. Let’s stop here,

  under the lit sign on the corner, and watch all the people walk by.

  Cher

  I wanted to be Cher, tall

  as a glass of iced tea,

  her bony shoulders draped

  with a curtain of dark hair

  that plunged straight down,

  the cut tips brushing

  her nonexistent butt.

  I wanted to wear a lantern

  for a hat, a cabbage, a piñata

  and walk in thigh-high boots

  with six-inch heels that buttoned

  up the back. I wanted her

  rouged cheek bones and her

  throaty panache, her voice

  of gravel and clover, the hokum

  of her clothes: black fishnet

  and pink pom-poms, frilled

  halter tops, fringed bells

  and her thin strip of waist

  with the bullet-hole navel.

  Cher standing with her skinny arm

  slung around Sonny’s thick neck,

  posing in front of the Eiffel Tower,

  The Leaning Tower of Pisa,

  The Great Wall of China,

  The Crumbling Pyramids, smiling

  for the camera with her crooked

  teeth, hit-and-miss beauty, the sun

  bouncing off the bump on her nose.

  Give me back the old Cher,

  the gangly, imperfect girl

  before the shaving knife

  took her, before they shoved

  pillows in her tits, injected

  the lumpy gel into her lips.

  Take me back to the woman

  I wanted to be, stalwart

  and silly, smart as her lion

  tamer’s whip, my body a torch

  stretched the length of the polished

  piano, legs bent at the knee, hair

  cascading down over Sonny’s blunt

  fingers as he pummeled the keys,

  singing in a sloppy alto

  the oldest, saddest songs.

  Dog Moon

  The old dog next door won’t stop barking

  at the moon. My neighbor is keeping a log:

  what time, how long, whether howling is involved.

  I know she’s awake as I am, robe askew,

  calling animal control while I drink dark tea

  and stare out my window at the voodoo moon,

  throwing beads of light into the arms

  of the bare-chested trees. Who can blame him

  when the moon is as big as a kitchen clock

  and ticking like a time bomb? The bright full moon

  with its beryl core and striated face, its plasma umbra,

  pouring borrowed light into every abyss on earth,

  turning the rivers silver, plowing the mountains’

  shadows across grasslands and deserts, towns

  riddled with mineshafts, oil rigs and mills,

  yellow tractors asleep in the untilled fields.

  The what-were-they-like moon staring down

  on rain-pocked gravestones, worming its way

  into gopher holes, setting barbed wire fences ablaze.

  Who wouldn’t love this old-tooth moon,

  this toilet-paper moon? This feral, flea-bitten moon

  is that dog’s moon, too. Certain-of-nothing moon, bone

  he can’t wait to sink his teeth into. Radio moon,

  the white dial tuned to static. Panic moon,

  pulling clouds like blankets over its baby face.

  Moon a portrait hung from a nail

  in the starred hallway of the past.

  Full moon that won’t last.

  I can hear that dog clawing at the fence.

  Moon a manhole cover sunk in the boulevard

  of night, monocle on a chain, well of light,

  a frozen pond lifted and thrown like a discus

  onto the sky. I scratch my skull, look down

  into my stained empty cup. That dog

  has one blind eye, the other one’s looking up.

  Mother’s Day

  I passed through the narrow hills

  of my mother’s hips one cold morning

  and never looked back, until now, clipping

  her tough toenails, sitting on the bed’s edge

  combing out the tuft of hair at the crown

  where it ratted up while she slept, her thumbs

  locked into her fists, a gesture as old

  as she is, her blanched knees fallen together

  beneath a blue nightgown. The stroke

  took whole pages of words, random years

  torn from the calendar, the names of roses

  leaning over her driveway: Cadenza,

  Great Western, American Beauty. She can’t

  think, can’t drink her morning tea, do her

  crossword puzzle in ink. She’s afraid

  of everything, the sound of the front door

  opening, light falling through the blinds—

  pulls her legs up so the bright bars

  won’t touch her feet. I help her

  with the buttons on her sweater. She looks

  hard at me and says the word sleeve.

  Exactly, I tell her and her face relaxes

  for the first time in weeks. I lie down

  next to her on the flowered sheets and tell her

  a story about the day she was born, head

  first into a hard world: the Great Depression,

  shanties, Hoovervilles, railroads and unions.

  I tell her about Amelia Earhart and she asks

  Air? and points to the ceiling. Asks Heart?

  and points to her chest. Yes, I say. I sing

  Cole Porter songs, Brother, Can You Spare

  a Dime? When I recite lines from Gone

  with the Wind she sits up and says Potatoes!

  and I say, Right again. I read her Sandburg,

  some Frost, and she closes her eyes. I say yes,

  yes, and tuck her in. It’s summer. She’s tired.

  No one knows where she’s been.

  Dark Charms

  Eventually the future shows up everywhere:

  those burly summers and unslept nights in deep

  lines and dark splotches, thinning skin.

  Here’s the corner store grown to a condo,

  the bike reduced to one spinning wheel,

  the ghost of a dog that used to be, her trail

  no longer trodden, just a dip in the weeds.

  The clear water we drank as thirsty children

  still runs through our veins. Stars we saw then

  we still see now, only fewer, dimmer, less often.

  The old tunes play and continue to move us

  in spite of our learning, the wraith of romance,

  lost innocence, literature, the death of the poets.

  We continue to speak, if only in whispers,

  to something inside us that longs to be named.

  We name it the past and drag it behind us,

  bag like a lung filled with shadow and song,

  dreams of
running, the keys to lost names.

  Lost in Costco

  Our mother wandered the aisles in the city

  of canned goods and 30-lb. sacks

  of dog food, mountains of sweat pants

  and cheap jeans, open bins of discounted CDs.

  She rested for a moment on the edge

  of a bed in the furniture section,

  trying to remember if it was time to sleep,

  then headed off to garden supplies

  where she stared at the glazed pots, missing

  her roses, the ones she planted

  outside the house she had to sell with the tree

  she wanted to be buried under, her ashes

  sealed in a See’s Candy tin. We found her

  on a piano bench, her purse beside her

  like a canvas familiar, her fingers

  running over the keys, playing the songs

  she loved, taking requests from the crowd

  gathered under the buzzing fluorescent lights.

  Faking it, picking out the tunes, striking

  a chord like she’d do when we were young

  and she’d say sing it to me and we’d hum

  a few bars: pop songs and Top 40 hits,

  TV theme songs or chewing gum jingles,

  our high, sweet voices giving her

  so little to go on.

  Second Chances

  What are the chances a raindrop

  from last night’s storm caught

  in the upturned cup of an autumn leaf

  will fall from this tree I pass under

  and land on the tip of my lit cigarette,

  snuffing it out? What are the chances

  my niece will hit bottom before Christmas,

  a drop we all long for, and quit heroin?

  What are the chances of being hit

  by a bus, a truck, a hell-bound train

  or inheriting the gene for cancer,

  addiction? What good are statistics

  on a morning like this? What good

  is my niece to anyone but herself?

  What are the chances any of you

  are reading this poem?

  Dear men,

  whom I have not met,

  when you meet her on the street

  wearing the wounds that won’t heal

  and she offers you the only thing

  she has left, what are the chances

  you’ll take pity on her fallen body?