by Michael Ryan
And means to own my life again
And flip it north to south,
All my sweetest thoughts of you
Dripping from his mouth.
Half Mile Down
My sick heart and my sick soul
I’d gladly fasten in a bag
and drop into an ocean hole
to float in darkness as a rag.
Would it learn to make its light?
Maybe in a million years.
A million years of constant night
in which it can’t stop its fears
flaring their nightmare tentacles
and bioluminescent eyes
as cold and sharp as icicles
under moonless, starless skies:
medusae, spookfish, cephalopods,
jellies with no eyes or brains,
lethal and beautiful as gods,
locked in endless predation chains.
How seamless then the world would seem,
which life on earth never did,
the living water like a dream
crowded with prowling vampire squid
that want only to stay alive
among other monsters innocent
of all but the pure drive to survive
without self-judgment.
Insult
Before you went out I asked you
in no uncertain terms to button
the next button up your shirt
that showed your naked breast
from the right angle when you twisted
and bent, an angle admittedly rarely
reproduced in real-world space
and then what would need to be in place
is the mythical irresistible male
whose lust could flare furiously
(like mine) and push you ecstatically
beyond where you sexually go
with me. Obviously I don’t know
what would be possible for you
with a body other than mine,
but I love you and yours so dearly
the thought’s too much for me
despite your saying your love for me
makes the idea preposterous
from the get-go. I’m sorry
I spoke harshly. My jealousy
is a jealous companion.
It wants me alone.
No Warning No Reason
Because he left her, she must make him
someone she doesn’t love, rescripting as
deception their hand-clasped walks at dusk
when she felt his was the hand of God
linking her to him because she was
so blessed to be given this love
this late in life. It must have been lies:
each touching word, all thoughtfulness,
his shows of pleasure putting her first,
his endearing sex talk that first
amused her then got to her
(his hot moist breath the poison in her ear)
as he learned with seemingly selfless patience
how to move inside her as no one ever had before.
How can she change memories like these?
He must have been lying
because the man who did these things
could not leave her with no warning or reason.
But she knows he wasn’t,
and, because she knows he wasn’t,
she is stuck. No one can help her.
No one can enter the sacred circle they made together
she now wears as a necklace of fire.
How can she obliterate the person he is?
What is she to do? She has to live.
Hard Times
The lousy job my father lands
I’m tickled pink to celebrate.
My mother’s rosary-pinching hands
stack pigs in blankets on a plate.
Teeny uncircumcised Buddha penises
(cocktail hot dogs in strips of dough):
I gobble these puffed-up weenie geniuses
as if they’d tell me what I need to know
to get the fuck out of here.
They don’t only stink of fear.
They’re doom and shame and dumb pig fate.
I tell my mom I think they’re great.
Dad chews his slowly with a pint of gin,
and says he eats a whole shit deal
because of us. My mom’s in tears again.
I don’t know who to hate or how to feel.
My Young Mother
What she couldn’t give me
she gave me those long nights
she sat up with me feverish
and sweating in my sleep
when I had no idea whatsoever
what she had to do to suffer
the pain her body dealt her
to assuage the pain in mine.
That was a noble privacy—
her mothering as a practice of patience.
How deeply it must have stretched her
to watch me all night with her nerves
crying for rest while my fever
spiked under the washcloths
she passed between my forehead
and her dishpan filled with ice.
That was a noble privacy.
But even then there was so much
unsayable between us,
and why this was now looks so
ludicrous in its old costume of shame
that I wish not that she had just
said it but that I hadn’t been
so furious she couldn’t.
Odd Moment
Live your values said a voice
that wasn’t a voice at all,
although I heard it on the phone
when I picked up the phone to call
my mother, who died
six months ago.
What was I thinking of?
I know
she’s dead. I touched her hands
(a knuckle, really—and very lightly)
as she lay in the silk-lined box.
I absolutely
couldn’t kiss her sunken face goodbye
as others were able to.
After I knelt near her a while,
there was nothing else to do
because she needed nothing from me.
How can a life just be done?
Done also what life was to her
alone, which no one
else can comprehend,
even (or especially) her son.
Is this why I forgot she’s dead
and picked up the phone
to punch in her number
believing she’d answer,
and my brain said what she’d say
to me? Is she not done with me?
In the Mirror
The death I see
coming to me
stops to chat
more frequently.
“How’s my good man?”
he asks, all grin
and bonhomie.
He can get in
any body-hole.
I squeeze mine shut,
don’t even breathe.
He can hear what
I think, so I don’t,
except for Go.
Because he’s fast,
I try to be slow—
slow as prehistory,
slow as a stone,
slow as eternity,
slow as alone.
“I am Alone,”
he boasts. “It’s fun.
I get to kiss
everyone.”
His lips become
a luscious bed.
“A kiss from me
and you’d drop dead.
“I’m the last one
you will see.
If I were you,
I’d be nicer to me.”
What in the world
would that mean?
I’m afraid to ask.
Something obscene
> no doubt he looks
red hot to say.
Is it possible
death is gay?
“Of course I am—
or, rather, bi.
How do you think
women die?”
He heard my thought—
I forgot he can.
“Why would you want
to be a man?”
I finally ask aloud.
“You are thick,”
he replies. “If you were
a brick I’d be a brick.
“I’m the mirror
of your sorry soul.
I reflect you
completely whole.”
And when I look
I can see
him melting back
into me:
his lips, his eyes,
his razor brains.
My doughy wrinkles.
My spider veins.
II
The Dog
The neighbors’ baby died age one month
so they’re off to Big Sur “to celebrate her life”
and I stupidly agreed to feed their dog—
a twelve-year-old wire-haired mix, half-blind,
half-dead itself, its gum lines receded to a rictus grin.
What was I supposed to say when the husband asked?
“Your baby’s dead, but I can’t be bothered.
I don’t really know you. Ask someone else.
I don’t like your dog. I think it’s hideous.
What if it dies while you’re away?
I’m supposed to call and tell you that?
I don’t want to touch it.
What if your misfortune is contagious?”
But I said, “Be glad to,” and he embraced me,
this Kurt or Kirk, I’m not even sure which.
“Siobhan”—that’s his wife—“can’t stand to kennel her,”
he sobbed into my shoulder, his eye rims moistening
behind his clownish owlish oversized glasses
he knocked askew against my clavicle.
It startled me so much I couldn’t guess
who “her” referred to until I got he meant the dog.
All her’s: the dead baby, the wife, and now the dog.
I don’t like the dog. It stinks. It needs a bath.
Who washes a dog during a month like that?
But I’ll be damned if I’m going to do it—
dried dogshit or worse matted in hair
the color and texture of rusted wire
caked with rotted moldy drywall.
The dog howls all day—and I mean all day—
as if these were the feelings left inside the house.
From outside all month the house had been silent
except the one time early on the paramedics came
so the neighborhood knew a disaster was happening.
I never doubted for a moment there was wailing inside,
including the baby’s, which must have been constant.
But the dog didn’t howl until everyone was gone.
Siobhan has to be forty-something—
They supposedly did a doula water birth at home,
her husband assisting, no doctor, no amnio,
no genetic testing—I think they belong
to some megachurch where the pastor
the size of a fish stick from the bleacher seats
projects fifty feet high with his bleached teeth
and they sing-along upbeat Christian music
ten thousand strong, as loudly as they can.
“To celebrate her life”: the pastor’s phrase, I bet.
If that helps them bear it, fine.
All I know is I have their dog to deal with.
One thing I’m not doing besides wash it
is walk it, so I called a franchised service
that sent a Belarusian with a crescent nose stud
(God knows what his story is)
who rang my doorbell after half an hour.
“I can’t walk dog,” he said. “It won’t go.
It won’t leave house. I think it sick.
You better take it to vet.” So I did.
Again I picked one from the phonebook,
who charged me eighty bucks to find a loose tooth,
although he offered a thousand dollars’ worth of tests.
“The dog is old,” he said. Oh. Thanks.
Then I tried at home pretending the dog was mine,
actually petting it (a bit) and talking in goofy baby tones
while giving liver chips and Buddy Biscuits and playing fetch,
but, while I napped, it scratched off the front-door paint
and started gnawing its way out.
After I gated it back in the neighbors’ kitchen
with its blanket and bowls and dried bull pizzle,
it began howling again, which is what it’s doing now.
Maybe there’s something in the house still.
Maybe tiny syringes and bandages upstairs
the dog smells. It would be too odd to go up there
where the baby was, into the baby’s room,
with the neighbors’ hopes there as furniture,
pink bunny or smiley angel or kiddie Bible wallpaper.
It would be like being inside their privacy,
their intimacy, their monthlong nightmare.
Maybe I have to call them after all.
I hate to call them—they should have peace
to grieve enough to live again in a house
that no matter what they believe or understand
will never be for one moment as they thought.
I don’t know what else to do but call them.
Their dog—their ugly old dog—is howling for them
and will not stop.
Mug
Glaze crazed and lip chipped, my beloved mug
has suffered one too many Hi-Temp Power Scrubs
