unprecedented. If I sleep with
other finches, let us here reference
the words of the Apostle Paul: “I hate
what I do.” I don’t hate you.
I don’t even not like you. I’ve gone
over the branches and can’t find you.
Today the gauchos arrived and they want
me to ride on the brim of their sombreros
to the ranch and maybe I will find me there
a finch who reminds me of you and you
will have returned to me.
TWO
WHY I NO LONGER SKYPE
Skype is on your Mac on the table
next to the Malbec and ashtray,
next to the book that cost 120 pesos,
b/c you had to have Ulysses
in English. You’re in some town
where your name doesn’t exist
and they rename you, so you’re
never sure who they’re talking to.
The screen rings. It’s Big Logos.
He downloaded the thing. First
a garbled voice comes from
the keys then, “Can you hear me?”
By the power of gods in Estonia,
makers of software, haters of fees,
the voice says your name and he’s
not anyone, though anyone from
Terre Haute to Rome can Skype you,
he’s someone you know or knew.
Which tense to use? Then his face
appears by the folders, the clock,
the Firefox, his face on his body
in his bed 8,000 miles away
and he says, “Give me a hug.”
You both grab hold of your machines.
You show your eyeballs to each other,
all impressed with yourselves,
as if your eyeballs have not always
been on your head. “Good to see you,”
he says. “Can you look in my eyes?”
You try but you’re always looking off.
It’s sad but it feels good like you love
reading Ulysses and you love being
alone near the Martial Mountains.
He plays a cover of Bruce Springsteen
by Lucero, and what a rad band.
This is the life. This is your friend,
your friend from way back, though
let’s be honest, he was more
than that, and not to trouble you
with facts, he’s still more than that.
You’re so hot for technology.
This is better than IM. You can’t
get enough of his pixels and it must,
please tell me, it must add up,
all those hours spent listening
to Lucero, who is okay but,
let’s face it, not Springsteen,
and all those hours spent watching
Hulu together and now look at you,
staring at your screen, which is
not ringing, which will not ring.
It has always been just a screen.
You can’t blame it for that.
PORTRAIT OF BIG LOGOS
If you’re there, I will look at the door
to the motel room and I will be in
my violet dress because violet is one n
away from violent like come in,
how was your trip, and if you’re there,
I will spend the first ten minutes
ignoring you. I will play Philip Glass
and I will play Busta Rhymes.
It depends on what type of there
you are and what you’re there for.
I will read Berryman poems to you,
only Berryman and “I’m hungry,”
you will say and you will keep
being hungry and there is no need
for you to be there to know that.
If you’re there, you will have stopped
being you, because being there
in a motel room with me is something
you no longer do, not the you
I know and not the you
you know either and that’s
the violence of the whole thing.
ONCE I THOUGHT I WAS GOING TO DIE IN THE DESERT WITHOUT KNOWING WHO I WAS
Joshua Tree, CA—A young professional, Jane Doe,
was raped and murdered at the Cactus Motel
off Twentynine Palms Highway Sunday morning.
Officers responded to the call, made from Room H,
Jane had tried the phone, found
the landline dead, flipped her cell, dialed 9-1-1
again and again, tried the front desk,
wanted to call Big Logos, to whom
she was a mistress, and knowing this was not
her weekend in Verona, and knowing it was
her duty to provide mischief not trouble,
liveliness not near-death, and knowing exactly
who would pick up the phone if she called him,
and knowing the voice on the other end
would say, “Yes? Who is it?” a question
Jane decided was not hers to answer, decidedly
none of her business, he would have to do it,
and so far he was doing it daily, making
arrangements in bars to take his dick out,
for his and her enjoyment, under the table,
until his dick became habit, and he said,
you make my dick happen, which made her
feel like a creator of dick, and she loved it,
and she feared losing it, and made no demands
that he leave his girlfriend, and was unmoved
to tell her, he would have to do that,
it ails me, he said, the ailment Jane attributed
to a mid-life crisis, it was easier to think this
than to ask what was really wrong with him,
or what was really wrong with her,
and so resigning him to his ailment in Verona,
she called instead a friend, a distant,
a friend who knew nothing, not the affair,
not the trip to Joshua Tree, a man by the name
of Clint who worked for Express Trucking,
data entry, third shift, Jane knew he would be
awake playing Guitar Hero, or masturbating
to the Girls Gone Wild DVD she’d encouraged
him to purchase, since when they last spoke,
the girls char-charred in the background,
on TV, and Clint loved them, which is when
she made her recommendation to purchase,
because what else did Clint have to live for?
Clint could do nothing for her.
What did she expect Clint to do for her
in Room H, an auspicious letter, the voiceless
glottal fricative, had has him his her hers,
letter of breath, of bare sound, of hate humanity
and hell. She began making bets with God:
she would not encourage Clint to pornography,
she would stop romancing Big Logos,
she would go to church in the morning,
she would find a saint after service,
she would wear long dresses and call mom.
She couldn’t call mom in a moment like this,
to tell her a man, possibly dangerous,
certainly deranged, was standing outside,
breathing heavily, banging hard with his fist,
and had no answer when she spoke to him.
“Yes? Who is it?” she asked, expecting the owner,
the proprietor, the landlord, the hotel manager,
there’s been a fire, an earthquake, a problem
with your credit card. Then remembering
the man with dirty hands who all day walked
back and forth beside her window, from his room
beside hers to desert, from desert to his room
beside
hers, she remembered thinking him
attractive, disheveled, t-shirt, khaki shorts,
she could pin him in a lineup, six two,
she remembered thinking of fucking him,
of what that would be, for he was a businessman
at a Fortune 500 company, drove an Audi,
wore sunglasses with a haircut, he had accounts
manageable, he was en route to Los Angeles,
on the red-eye, the kind of man who fucked
stewardesses in supply closets before selling
a pie chart to Tokyo, how far she got thinking,
earlier in the eve, and now hoping desperately,
scanning the room for defense, that it was not
this man, but that it was the owner of the motel,
and she expected some reply from the door,
since otherwise Jane knew no one in Joshua Tree,
had not been to any of the bars, clubs,
nor karaoke joints that the 911 operator
suggested she may have frequented, are you sure
you didn’t go out anywhere meet anyone?
and though she told the 911 operator:
“I am positive I met no one tonight I am
going to die please he is banging on the door”
the operator didn’t believe her, kept insisting
are you sure are you absolutely sure while she
screamed “WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?”
and thought of him passing her window,
thought of him casing the desert, thought
of how before, when before he was not
a threat, she was going to say to his hands
how dirty, he had been walking the desert,
she could see him, digging out the desert,
as he hassled the door knob, hurried past
the window, he was at the back door now,
she had people to tell she loved them,
she had things left to say, and the operator, Miss
what are you doing staying out there alone?
SEMI SEMI DASH
The last time I saw Big Logos he was walking
to the Quantum Physics Store to buy magnets.
He told me his intentions. He was wearing
a jumpsuit with frayed cuffs. I thought the cuffs
got that way from him rubbing them against
his lips but he said they got that way
with age. We had two more blocks to walk.
“Once I do this, what are you going to do?”
he asked. “I wish you wouldn’t do it,” I said.
Big Logos bought the magnets and a crane
delivered them to his house. After he built
the 900-megahertz superconductor, I couldn’t go
to his house anymore because I have all kinds
of metal in my body. I think if you love someone,
you shouldn’t do that, build something like that,
on purpose, right in front of them.
POEM FOR HIS EX
So what’s up? Where are you these days?
Last I heard you worked at a bakery.
Last I read your poems were lower case
with capital content. I used to like
to read them in the dark. It’s weird
you’re not his girl anymore.
You were the picture in a snow globe
on his desk that I’d go to, shaking,
when he left the room. That room.
Do you remember it? The Dr. Seuss
sheets read: “This is not good.
This is not right. My feet stick out
of bed all night.” We tried not to talk
about you. When we had to do it,
I made him go to a dyke bar
so everyone would be on my side.
In my mind you were so good
at everything, like walking.
I asked him if you had two legs.
What was I thinking? Of course
you have two legs. I asked him,
I guess, so that the possibility
of me would exist. He said yes
as if he was ashamed to admit it.
Does it make you feel better
to know he cheated with a handicapped
girl? I wonder if you have
any handicapped friends.
I don’t know why I’m using that word.
It demoralizes me. Or if you don’t.
Or if you’ve seen somewhere,
maybe in the bakery, a woman
with a limp and felt sorry.
Once in the dyke bar he said
he was waiting for you to
stand on your own two feet
and it was hilarious to me,
though it was a serious conversation,
so I could not laugh.
We never talk about you now.
It’s not allowed. We have to act all
that-never-happened.
I always liked you and thought
you were cool
and sometimes I pretend
you’re in the room
and you forgive me and say
you always knew.
GOODBYES
begin long before you hear them
and gain speed and come out of
the same place as other words.
They should have their own
place to come from, the elbow
perhaps, since elbows look
funny and never weep. Why
are you proud of me? I said
goodbye to you forty times.
I see your point. That is
an achievement unto itself.
My mom wants me to write
a goodbye poem. It should fit
inside a card and use the phrase,
“You are one powerful lady.”
There is nothing powerful
about me though you might
think so from the way I spit.
I don’t want to say goodbye
to you anymore. I heard
the first wave was an accident.
It happened in the Cave
of the Hands in Santa Cruz.
They were drinking and someone
killed a wild boar and someone
said, “Hey look, I put my hand
in it.” Saying goodbye is like that.
You put your hand in it and then
you take your hand back.
FOR BIG LOGOS, IN HOPES HE WILL WRITE POEMS AGAIN
Maybe it’s because you’re cut off
from your roots, and you need to go
to Spain, be with your forefathers,
the Diego Logos, whose remains lie
in the sea surrounding Majorca.
There you’d feel more insula maior,
less insula flatbrain. There you’d rest
in a hammock, mid-afternoon, writing.
Except such peace makes awful poetry.
There would appear a beetle
by the ill-begotten name of Hydraboo.
He is angry, scaled, with pokey things
like fingers if fingers were shiny blades
of poison. He is evolved beyond
our Horatian notion of beetles. He sees
your left ear and it tenders him,
calms him the fuck down. I can’t
blame him for that. Your ear, lined
as it is, like the marks he made by the sea,
and it is soft, with a secret spot
for getting into. Don’t you think
he had a day of flat brain?
You bet. But not this day, the day
you swing in the hammock, composing
a much too peaceful crown of sonnets
or just a crown inside a sonnet
or just a curtal sonnet about a king
who lost his ending, an ending who lost
her king, when suddenly beside you
Hydraboo the Beetle wants in your ear.
Wha
t will you do? You are a monist.
Bisabuelo Logos was a monist.
Indeed you are a monad. Sometimes
this is what I do when I am especially
missing you: I pretend you are hiding
behind everyone in the world’s face
and I have to say the code to reveal you.
This is why I buy so much fruit
from so many different vendors.
I guess I’m on the island too.
Do you mind? I wonder how I got here.
I must’ve taken a whale.
I say to the vendors, “You are a royal
pumpkin. You are a five-dollar chicken.
Are you not?” No, he is not, and he is not,
and neither is he. On I walk, eating
pomegranates and berries. As Diego
Logos used to say, Esperanza mis niños,
and as he spoke he saw Hydraboo,
back when he was half-a-pint,
half-a-toothpick, flat without brain,
pinch without body, scuttle here,
scuttle there. Diego watched him
with your very own eyes before they
were your eyes, when they were still
Diego’s eyes watching Hydraboo,
who was not yet boo, and not yet beetle,
more like be, only an inkling, before
poems happened, when all writing
was wish and whizgig in sand.
BE NOT FAR FROM ME
He called her number, after many months,
and reached a man named Pete. “This is Pete,”
the man said. “Don’t nobody answer here
but me.” So she had changed her number.
It was almost like she wanted him to suffer.
It was almost like having her new number
would give him something that belonged
to him anyway. During other hours of the day,
he didn’t want her new number and would
content himself without it, until he got drunk,
The Book of Goodbyes Page 3
