Mole

by Patrick Warner

  Our own harpings, hootings, hawkings

  announce the dawn.

  The spanked bottom of the horizon.

  How badly we treat our brothers, make

  them wear dresses, ride bicycles,

  taunt them with an alphabet. Chimps

  cradle jaws and roll their eyes to heaven.

  ii Closed Circuit

  Mike and Con and his girl Andrea

  bumble around in their own little world,

  still ruled by Santy, some say Santa,

  some see Nicholas in his red and white.

  Con comes on like a pro, tells Mike.

  Tells how, how not to pull a teen —

  Stay out of sight of the guy with the lip,

  the short-legged limp.

  They speed around on in-line skates,

  fuelled by cider and amphetamines,

  in the roller rink beside the track,

  beside the roundabout that feeds the motorway,

  that feeds the whole five ring circus,

  throbbing like really massive bass.

  iii Mighty Whites

  A man ( is it me? ) in the laundromat

  shakes out his teal blue sheets

  and curses, God damn you to hell, Dante,

  for leaving a tissue up your sleeve.

  Moses came down with the mist, you see,

  full of whispers, wheezes, and rheum,

  gurgling like a cheap coffee machine

  in which his followers heard thunder.

  Oh, for a mist without aroma,

  the companionship of silence,

  the gentle foothills of a notion

  where we can graze

  in the inconclusiveness of togetherness,

  where never a clarity can intervene.

  Evidence: there will be no evidence

  A white film. Some tract turns

  to KY-jelly in a can. Overnight,

  while you slept, the cat prowled.

  Haw, haw says the Michelin man

  when the widow cannot pay

  her rent. Mt. Fuji quakes;

  the straw huts tremble.

  The widow’s soul is a frail origami,

  a parasol that pops open

  whenever it rains. Homemade

  chips dumped in a deep fat

  fryer. The widow nibbles

  on an ear of corn while

  Mt. Fuji pushes one finger

  through the tympanic

  taut white seal and into

  peanut butter. Evidence:

  there will be no evidence.

  Except the sides of the bath.

  Glistening skin.

  Four-leaf clovers on the counter.

  Sumotori.

  A letter of intent.

  Tea stains on the carpet.

  A lightweight fedora.

  Brittle cocktail decorations.

  Brown clouds on the ceiling.

  Freckles on Formica.

  A string of rosary beads.

  The sound of locusts.

  A magazine index.

  The ABC’s of signing.

  The fridge door.

  Peanut butter

  without a hole in it.

  Couch Potato

  The couch potato gets the cosmic fits

  when purple feelers rise up from his pits.

  “Feelers, feelings, Ha! Ha! Ha!” he quips.

  His will for a long time an axe blade,

  but then, one day, the way would not open,

  each blow dinged atonally on the grain.

  His mood for a longer time a bludgeon,

  with a clump of hair stuck off on one side,

  like a hair of the dog killed yesterday.

  And now these purple feelers rising,

  unfolding green serrations on their way

  to eat through dental moulding, plaster,

  to bracelet whiskery joist and rafter.

  The couch potato jerks with laughter.

  Entertainment

  I was on my way to see a film, Bewitched,

  to bask in the alien beauty of Nicole Kidman —

  I’ve been obsessed since Eyes Wide Shut,

  since Moulin Rouge, since Dead Calm.

  It was 3 o’clock on a Saturday afternoon,

  and I was not alone. Many hundreds milled

  and many hundred more formed lines

  that snaked from concessions on either side.

  Behind the counters, pock-faced teens

  in visors and tight polyester shirts hustled

  to fill jumbo popcorns and jumbo drinks,

  to fill trays of nachos drenched with cheese.

  The line I was in was like a sleeve of cups.

  I was like an empty white cardboard cup,

  my mood as light as that funnel container

  I would soon fill with effervescent desire.

  My mind was a cow about to buck and run,

  as if to escape some burrowing tick.

  My thoughts like spires of rattling grass bent low

  that spring back hard scattering seed.

  Nothing happened then for the longest time.

  The closer I got to the point of service,

  the more I dithered between Reese’s Pieces

  and a giant popcorn with golden topping.

  Until — ode to the big bang — out from one end

  of that grass seed whiskered a blue white root,

  while from the other end uncoiled the palest stalk,

  sending forth its green two-blade propeller.

  The sun shines. The wind blows. Rain falls.

  And everything goes according to plan

  until again that hidebound ruminant ark

  of complacency comes, this time to graze.

  So it is, I thought, the grass blade grows

  through meat to make meat and dung

  and the musical tympani of milk hitting

  the galvanized bucket’s freckled bottom.

  Salted and churned cream will make butter,

  rich living relative of this ghostly topping

  that spurts from the stainless steel spigot

  known to concession jerks as the jizzer.

  The New Economy

  I walked to work only to find it closed.

  A sign said the workweek was changed

  and might change again without notice.

  It was a Tuesday, the new weekend.

  On the way home there were catcalls.

  At my house I found my wife unshaven,

  wearing a three-piece suit with wide lapels.

  She handed me a gown, said put it on.

  That night, in despair, at my friend’s place,

  I prayed again to the one true God,

  and He answered me thus: with the taste

  of wheat in my doughy white bread.

  The Snows

  Snow in summer and snow on the mountain,

  snow berry, milkweed, and dandelion seeds

  all might have been read as foreshadowing

  this glare, this mid-winter snowblink

  which renders my neighbour’s dog a snow bear,

  my neighbour who is from the snow belt

  and who for years was the only man

  on our block with a snow blower.

  Prescient now seem his snow plans

  in this winter of 10x snowfall.

  A giant, sixty feet tall he reaches

  and fills his arms with billowing snow,

  snow like sugar hardened from damp,

  snow that is like the fine ashes of summer foliage,

  snow that groans under boots like boards,

  snow that squeaks like a barman’s towel,

  snow like a horse eating whole pears,

  all these he gathers up

  and fashions loosely into a bale

  he underarms up the garden

  where it explodes

  into rock fall and powder.

  As a man, some find him snow co
ld,

  while his wife ( slightly crushed ) is a snow queen,

  a cone tinted with sweet red syrup.

  Dealing with her is a snow-course

  where at first one walks with the stiff

  splinted legs of the snow crab,

  but soon there develops a snow craft,

  a feint and thrust to her snow creep,

  her devil, and snow drift.

  It’s a kind of addiction this banter —

  my nostrils bell for my snow queen.

  I have become a snow dropper,

  snow dropping at will from her washing line

  her snow white panties, for which

  I’ve become a snow finch, a flea,

  a snow fleck, a fly, a snow gnat,

  a snow goose for her snow grain and grass,

  a snow grouse for her snow gum and snow hole,

  a snow leopard crossing the snow line and snow pack

  for snow lily, snow pea,

  a great snowy owl, a snow petrel, a snow wolf

  prowling the snow slip,

  hunting the snowmelt for snow mice,

  juncos, snow vole and partridge.

  III

  Augur

  The road was a length of blood-dark gut

  stretched on an off-white marble counter.

  On the other side, a car flashed lights,

  honked and slammed on brakes, slid

  to a halt on its duck’s black feet.

  I watched the driver’s side window

  descend, a sheet of ice-storm glitter

  in time-lapse photography melting,

  the old lady driver nodding in time,

  a leathery chick pecking through shell.

  Some chick, some egg, some place,

  I thought, just as she verbed me:

  Is it going to storm? she asked. My

  mind saw pixels; somewhere in there

  was a weather-bomb’s sleety vortex.

  I’m sorry, I said, but I didn’t catch the

  forecast. Her features fused.

  Can’t you tell by the sky?

  I cocked my head and looked up,

  cast iron pot lid, salt-flecked. Silent.

  She spat from the root of language,

  horked up a word not yet a word, her

  mot juste for disgust. I was chuffed,

  buff-happy as a plastic toy placed

  with love under a synthetic tree.

  This was the gift beyond my meagre

  means, the one I wanted so much

  I pretended I didn’t want it.

  It was enough

  she saw me as a local man.

  She hauled away, her red tail-lights

  glowing like Export-A tips flicked

  into the mid-Atlantic. I was back in,

  alone inside the labyrinth

  of ever more complex exclusions,

  beginning and ending with

  that porthole view on the self,

  claimed as objective, third-party,

  dispassionate, removed. She had put

  her finger on a numb spot —

  like a scar in thinking — that all day

  had made me irritable, a dread

  I now know to be coeval

  with atmospheric pressure, and

  imminent arrival of new weather.

  The Mole

  As though a hand had reached inside to rub

  my liver. This was the nose of the mole.

  Later, I felt a prickle, a draught in my eye.

  This was the southwest breeze blowing

  where the stone-blind mole had passed.

  This was the meat of what was unspoken.

  The absolute bedrock of morals, the top-soil

  of incomprehension in which you turned

  and said: Your wife tells me everything.

  This was the unknown known, the mole

  surfacing through the green. And blinking

  by the swings on that suburban lawn

  was my penchant for darkness and filth,

  my penchant for sticking my nose in.

  The Scientist

  Where did the seal heads come from?

  They were a present from a fisherman

  who wished to woo the scientist.

  Not an answer. A queer posy these,

  a devalued currency, almost contraband.

  Queer to the fisherman her request,

  when he would have taken her to a dance,

  or out in boat to the island of turrs,

  placed her there among the puffy chicks,

  her eyes hard and cold as a gull.

  And calculating now on the beach

  her stance, how to accept this gift from him,

  how to turn gift into transaction.

  Tie them with rope in a nylon sack,

  a nylon rope — chain might be better.

  Make do. One makes do in the field.

  She looks back at the cone of coiled rope.

  Looks for snags. Feels the heft

  of the bag as she starts to swing,

  rhymes to it with a rock of her hips.

  Thinks metronome and swinging scrotum,

  then laughs as she tosses it high,

  watches its weird centrifuge as it falls,

  its Hockneyesque splash,

  the rope feed, slacken and curl.

  Everything up until now has been

  a rehearsal. Time now for action,

  for the crab to cock a beady eye,

  tilt its way across the sea floor,

  time for sea slug, for conner, for lobster,

  for starfish, sculpin, and jiggling tides.

  In theory, three months’ work by these

  will strip the harbour seal heads,

  leave three seal skulls fresh from the sea,

  cold and clean enough to lick.

  But in practice, flesh clings stubbornly

  and must be picked away with a scalpel,

  a job the scientist will delegate,

  not wanting to relinquish objectivity.

  So in latex gloves, with blade and hook

  the student help sets out to unsculpt

  actual flesh from actual seal. In cotton

  masks they face their subjects, their eyes

  dark and water-filled as they inhale

  the sea’s brine and onion smell.

  The Pews

  If that hardwood spoke redemption,

  it was a message coded in the form,

  in how the pew backs rolled vertebrae

  that was part massage, part rosary.

  And if that hardwood spoke for the weak,

  it was the gun stock I felt when I laid

  my cheek a certain way and sighted,

  down the line, a kneeling enemy.

  And if that hardwood spoke of elevation,

  it was in the cursive free-hand grain,

  and in the peppery raw-wood smell

  that oils and varnish could not conceal,

  that coaxed my nostril’s shy snail foot

  to creep along the pew-back’s rail,

  until its wax and spice ignited sneezes,

  great earth-shaking bugle blasts

  that cleared the way for other scents:

  soaps and Right Guard antiperspirant,

  tidal waves of Old Spice aftershave,

  hairsprays that hacked bronchial tubes,

  mints melting on the heights of halitosis,

  lavender tucked into beds of cold cream,

  and above it all, the whiskey-like whiff

  and heavy musk of expensive perfumes.

  Whenever I think of hardwood pews

  I think of these olfactory disguises

  that sanctified but could not hide the news

  from the most angelic of our senses.

  Snowbirds

  Though I struggle, it won’t be with moral choices;

  an overnight flight from winter to summer

  may r
esult in wrongfooting the senses,

  as sticking your hand under a running tap

  and being unable to say if it’s cold or hot

  starts a six-day-all-inclusive package junket,

  a six-day-all-you-can-eat-and-drink excursion,

  with full limousine service from the airport

  to this hotel resort. Hardly enough time

  to acclimatize — but somehow I’ll enjoy it!

  Enjoy the view through these sunglasses

  with palm-trunk arms and fronds over frames,

  bought from a crippled vendor named Juan

  someone — he either said “Juan” or “I am,”

  whatever! I had to buy to get rid of him.

  As if I hadn’t contributed enough

  to the local economy — but forget about him

  and his tin shack town just over the hill,

  enjoy how these lenses turn the ocean red

  and the surf, where it breaks, to pink lace.

  I will enjoy the form of the American surfer,

  by his crewcut hair, I’ll guess, a military advisor,

  cock-of-the-walk as he rides a rolling comber,

  and forget what I’ve read about local police

  and their unofficial war against the homeless.

  I will enjoy the beautiful girls on the beach,

  all locals, and not one afraid of being topless,

  especially this one who sticks out her tongue

  when she catches me watching her watching him,

  that surfer turtling seaward through the swell.

  She will torment for the rest of the week,

  reminding me of what it was like to be young,

  and without inhibition. I will think of her

  as I flip-flop my way through the tide pools,

  gathering whelks, mussels and sea snails

  And I’ll recall, over papaya, the newspaper piece

  ( Focus section from the Globe, weekend edition )

  about workers on these exclusive resorts,

  and how the radiant eyes of young women

  do not signify natural health but malnutrition.

  Which will make it harder to live vicariously

  through this surfer, to enjoy his reach,