by Amy Gerstler
II.
I alone of my litter escaped a hell of beatings, neglect, and snuffling dumpsters for sustenance before this gullible man adopted me. Now my new owner would like me to walk nicely by his side on a leash (without cowering or pulling) and to lie down on a towel when he asks, regardless of whether he has a piece of bologna in his pocket or not. I’m growing fond of that optimistic young man in spite of myself. If only he would heed my warnings I’d pour out my thoughts to him: When panic strikes you like a squall wind and disaster falls on you like a gale, when you are hunted and scorned, wisdom shouts aloud in the streets: What is consciousness? What is sensation? What is mind? What is pain? What about the sorrows of unwatered houseplants? What indoor cloudburst will slake their thirst? What of my litter brothers and sisters, dead at the hands of dirty two legged brutes? Who’s the ghost in the universe behind its existence, necessary to everything that happens? Is it the pajama-clad man offering a strip of bacon in his frightening hand (who’ll take me to the park to play ball if he ever gets dressed)? Is it his quiet, wet-eyed, egg-frying wife? Dear Lord, Is it me?
THE DAYS OF THE WEEK
form the spine of our lives. And like fraternal vertebrae,
theirs is an interlocking, unalphabetical procession—
a caravan of donkeys who chew ruminatively as they
file down a narrow mountainside trail, flicking
hairy tails to keep from being bitten by horseflies.
Generations of days like unruly school children line up
to audition for the annual Christmas play, poking
each other with gnawed yellow pencils. “Settle down!”
the teacher chides. “You’ll never be cast as Jesus or Mary
if you keep behaving this way.” Soonday, Broomday,
To You! Day, Whatever???day, Stirred Up Day,
Fried Mind Day, Stone Soul Zombie Day. We’re given
seven Alpine huts 24 hours’ journey apart. Carefully
secreted in each: firewood and flint, tallow candles,
dried apricots and sausage, a couple of chocolate bars,
wine in dusty green bottles. A holey blanket, an oil lamp,
and a stack of dogeared reading material. Freud’s The Ego
and the Id with some pages missing, six issues of Popular
Zoology, cliff notes to The Tempest, sheet music
for seasonal drinking songs, The Vegetarian Epicure, and
a new translation of Lucretius’ treatise The Way Things Are.
POEM FOR BERNARD
“It is in the power of every hand to destroy us, and we are beholden unto everyone we meet, he doth not kill us.”—Sir Thomas Browne
We’re down here in the basement
dodging bombs. As our loves
freckle with age we must adore
them more ferociously. Come winter
you kick back and ready your weapons
for spring. My next task was to get well.
Five million years ago, there were different
terrors. Saber toothed fears. Edgar Allen Poe
was terrified of being buried alive. Fear
is a civilising influence. It keeps us in line.
Fear of bacteria. Of our own murderous
kind. Of aliens superior to us in every
way who’ll arrive any moment
and sensibly decide to clean house.
A terrible cry arises from the thick
of things. My begging bowl
runneth over. Heaven has been
relocated and we’re not telling you
where. Not even a hint. I don’t love
you anymore. What might it mean
to die a worthy death
and how much should one brood
about that ahead of time?
I was just trying to get back
to the boat alive. Let us lurch forward
or hellward. What an adorable form
of anarchy when the body outwits us.
I am a heretic in their eyes, so they
will kill us both and murder your children
if they find our hiding place. Despite
everything, I awoke full of praise
for you, as I do each morning.
Coughing constantly, I rinsed
my hands and ate some seeded crackers.
I thought about your face and prayed.
WATCH
Yesterday, your tired wife and I
drove to the medical examiner’s
to retrieve your personal effects.
She dropped me off at the front
entrance. The women at work
in that bland flat-roofed building
looked like secretaries at various
high schools you were principal
of over the last thirty years. The
back room was being remodeled,
so ideal placement of fax
machines and the shredder
were under discussion. An older
woman with dyed blonde hair
searched the property closet twice
for your watch. “It’s here on the
computer,” she said, shaking
her head, “but I can’t locate it
on the premises.” She phoned
the exam room to see if they still
had it “down there.” Finally, on her
third trip to the closet, she found it.
I signed for the sealed, formaldehyde
smelling plastic bag, a form printed
on it in black ink. Reason confiscated/
offense. Arresting officer/chain of custody.
Location where obtained. The same form
for every crime, accident, fatality.
When I returned to the car, I found
your wife asleep at the wheel.
Not wanting to disturb her, I stood
and watched her awhile through
the rolled up window. What would
I give this waking minute, my car
my house every book I ever owned, trifles all,
to be able to kiss your brow and rouse
you now as if from a needed sleep?
I tore the bag open with my teeth.
It tasted awful. Inside, your everyday
watch with brown leather band, still ticking.
ON WANTING TO SEE GHOSTS
Ghosts only come to those who look for them.—Holeti
I.
The underaged medium:
I go about shuddering, but that shall not harm me. It’s my way of tuning up. Sit down gently. These chairs suffer under our weight. Sounds bounce around in the dark room—throat clearings and a bubbly squeak, like an old man sucking his teeth. All things have derelict life in them: pearl button, dry leaf, linen handkerchief. I’m in such sympathy with the infinite, it will not leave me be. Prankster spirits yank my braids like my little sisters did. Mama, who I have not seen in months, owns nineteen bibles. If you’re a real Christian, she says, dread can never digest you. Why do you appear so suddenly, spirit, even before I call you, as the table groans and stretches its stiff painful legs?
First female sitter:
Darling, must you look that way? Transparent and pale? The ghost trope. It’s rather silly. Are you supposed to resemble the soul’s silky lingerie? You swish like a fleeing woman’s skirts, like the bedding of the restless. You’ve become even more effeminate in death, importing a whiff of millinery shops with your entrance, or of women’s prison. You always were a disappointment as a man. Only that one night, my nightgown suddenly in shreds between your teeth, did you please me, and then, typically, you went too far. (She laughs mirthlessly.) I was making up stories for months to explain the contusions. The smell of the shirt factory fire still clings to you: smoldering bolts of broadcloth and corduroy; singed pincushions.
A male sitter:
I see and hear nothing. Nothing at all. Perhaps I am too old. This fretting and retching, going bug-eyed and treble-
voiced seems the business of women. I want a cigar.
Second female sitter:
Poor medium. Just a wisp of a girl, flat chested and angry. She doesn’t look well. Cries for bicarbonate. Why does she have to be naked during the séance? I wonder how well her keepers are feeding her. And what’s that stuff erupting from her mouth now? Wadded up wedding veil? Celestial drool? One of heaven’s tiny geysers? Why did you make her say, “Paradise is still liquid and unorganized?” Surely that can’t be true. What makes me return to this house, night after night, to hear this little girl wail? I’m a luckless gambler, inscribing my most truant desires on you.
II.
PRINCIPLES OF THE NATIONAL SPIRITUALISM ASSOCIATION AND AFFILIATED ORGANIZATIONS:
• We believe in Infinite Intelligence.
• We affirm that the existence and personal identity of the individual continue after the change called death.
• We affirm that communication with the so-called dead is a fact, scientifically proved by the phenomena of Spiritualism.
• We affirm that the gateway to reformation is never closed against any human or soul here or hereafter.
Only mediums who have been investigated and found conscientious and reliable may advertise in these pages.
III.
could you quit wavering, hold still a minute?
oh I’m just pretending. I strain my eyes till they smart
for stains or rips in the air, and see nothing.
she’ll never return to me. I am alone.
Faint as shame at the age of consent, ghosts are fond of silver. Gold angers them, though. The little medium’s keepers took her gold earrings away, claiming they caused spiritual static.
IV.
The mutability of mutable things itself gives them their potential to receive all those forms into which mutable things can be changed. And what is this mutability? A soul? A body? The form of a soul or of a body? No; I would call it “a nothing-something” or “an is-that-is not,” if such expressions were allowed.
—St. Augustine
Not yet had I begun to pour out my groans to you . . .
V.
I have it on good authority: the spirit realm is run by governments not unlike those of the Caesars of Rome.
Third female sitter:
One cannot say whether you walk or glide, form without form, shape without shape, exhausted footsoldier, misty bicyclist, animated splash of seltzer borne on breezes that smell of frying pork chops and just dug up onion. Tonight only your lips are visible. Are you too tired to materialize entirely? Did you approve of where your ashes were scattered? We hoped you’d think Convict Lake was an amusing place name, and that perversely, you’d find a kind of peace there. Its shallows are fringed with algae. In summer, the water’s four shades of green. My new husband and I have a cabin up there. You didn’t reply to any of my questions tonight, dear, but when I stood up from the séance table, there were your familiar teethmarks in my thigh.
CIRCUS POSTER
NOW for a limited time only:
SEE fleas recreate famous paintings!
HEAR heretics converse with birds that speak Greek!
TASTE the tears of our blubbering giant: guaranteed a gallon each!
SNIFF the wrists and earlobes of aromatic Prince Mandrake
from the mysterious East!
TOUCH the shuddering flesh of the famous Arkansas Fat Boy as he waltzes
you around his tent!
MARVEL as a turnip with beastly features lectures on vegetarianism!!
MARRY rich eligible lizards with felony arrest records!!
FEEL YOURSELF RIVETED TO THE SPOT as Fritz the Wonder Dog
performs bloodless surgery on your children!
SHIVER WITH DELIGHT while our grove of enchanted oak trees reads
your mind and makes public your innermost desires!
SWAY IN TIME to the tune stylings of Chilean sea snails who croon sweetly
while spelling out song lyrics in their glistening spittle!!
WIN A KISS from the beautiful lesbian mermaid!!!
. . . visit the world not as you believe it to be but as you have wrenchingly dreamed it . . . hairy infants, the easily fleeced, the sheepish, the greasy, rosy cheeked gymnasts with frilly little panties showing, wax figures of noted albinos missing digits, the devilish, the shipwrecked, the miserable, gladiators & ambulance chasers, quick-change artists & half-eaten gingerbread men: . . . IN SHORT every critter or crackpot will receive our warmest Circus of Perversity WELCOME!!! Admission: six shillings. Free admittance to all who submit to the Fat Boy’s advances or permit the Electric Girl to frisk them—(the procedure often takes her several days.) Free lifetime pass to anyone who catches ME, your prodigiously endowed ringmaster with his sequinned trousers down.
COME ONE, COME ALL!!!!!
PASTORAL OPERA SYNOPSIS
As the curtain rises, a tiny, unassuming weed
sings a haunting song: Alas, My Seedpods Are
Lost to the Wind. A sputtering lamp is about
to go out as a cattle breeder sits on his milking
stool in the barn inhaling the evening’s cool air,
thumbing through a catalog depicting various
bulls. He’s looking for a mate for Vanilla,
his favorite heifer, and they croon a charming
duet, O Fragrant Hay. Outside, destruction
of the farmer’s crops by locusts is averted
as Monarch butterflies swarm and lead their
fellow insects to new feeding grounds: Chirp on,
Winged Comrades! Wild violets at the pasture’s
edge tempt the lowing cows, whose bells
clanks as they amble home, to nibble their tender
leaves, paying gracious homage to the food chain:
By Our Aid the Stars are Weighed. All life forms
join in rousing chorus as the curtain descends.
WHITE BLINDFOLD
When I play it all back in my head, I recall only the joys of those hopeful decades. How good the grub was back then! How gently we bandaged the horses’ eyes in order to lead them to safety after our barn was torched by the authorities. When the Dairy Fair judges declared the mold that gives our cheese its unique bite a kissing cousin to penicillin, doctors began to prescribe our homemade Brie for a wide variety of common ailments, from rheumatism to whooping cough.
In those days it seemed our good luck would never run dry. Then after the parade, after Taffy won an almond torte at the cakewalk, she was crowned Miss Sour Cream. Oh proud and grateful hour! During her coronation a spotted calf poked its head out from under her skirts, a bottle-fed orphan bawling for its mother. Next day the air smelled like chicken potpie and for once, my pocket didn’t get picked. The high school marching band practiced for eight or nine hours straight, so folks who met in the streets found themselves hugging to music, whether they knew each other or not, a practice eventually called “dancing,” which still persists today.
THE OGRE’S TURBULENT ADOLESCENCE
His hair hangs to his waist, uncombed,
clotted with dirt. Ladybugs and fire beetles
traffic his scalp. He chews tree roots,
keeps an ox as a lapdog, wears a python
for his watchband, and slobbers when he smiles,
which is oh so rarely, as it makes his face ache.
Listen, my darling little bone meal casserole, we’re not
constructed for mirth, his mother patiently explains
several times each week. He writes in his diary:I want a life of prayer.
Why must I be this big?
My body feels cumbersome
and unholy, and I smell
like the tar pits at high noon,
sucking on the tusks of mammoths
they’ve swallowed.
On Sundays he dispenses treasure among the elves,
who he fears are not really his friends. Here’s a photo
of the young ogre having
a tantrum with the rope
from his yo-yo wrapped around his neck. Now how
did that happen? Here he is tearing up hymnals
and eating them, collecting giant bats for his menagerie,
blanching local foliage with his swampy breath that reeks
of a brown digestive drink called fernet branca,
popular among grumpy dyspeptic monsters.
