by Michael Ryan
which some are remarkably. They even understand
what their children are saying with grunts and groans.
They even make them laugh with tickling games
or goofy faces or hiding a rubber squeeze toy beneath their shirts.
They even laugh themselves,
and, because they do, our daughter does.
What she likes most is to laugh. You should see her laugh.
And her hair—you should see her hair—radiant light browns
over darker and darker underlayers that overflowed my hands this morning
while I held her hair for her.
Contentment
Fragile, provisional, it comes unbidden
as evening: the children on the block
called in to dinner that for tonight
is plentiful, as if it had cost nothing
either in money or worry about money.
Then evening deepens and the street
turns silent. There may be disasters
idling in driveways, and countless distresses
sharpening, but all that matters
most that must be done is done.
Happy Anniversary
The jolt that opened me to you
and shook me to my toes
needs no implanted seismograph
to read how deep it goes
because it’s still rattling me
into this surprise
that the real dream begins
when I open my eyes
to see you so improbably here
and so entirely true
with all our random ducks lined up
for me to marry you
quacking a glorious Gloria
(transcribed into Duck)
to sexy earthy unnerving love
and astonishing good luck.
Spring
Fat black bumblebees fucking in our yard—
orgiastic they knot up, five or six
like a buzzing fist looping in midair
until two lock and the lucky
couple snaps off and lands intact
hunching like puppies. They’ve even done it
on my armrest: the male’s bent knees
clutched her hips for his teensy shudder.
Then he took off with no more ceremony
than if she had been a flower.
She seemed stunned, helpless
for all of a nanosecond.
You could almost see her shrug it off
before she too flew away, undamaged.
Is this more fun than the human version?
Come out again in your pink swimsuit,
my darling. The bees aren’t swarming,
but I am.
Miss Joy
Husband dead, son grown and gone, her life
simplified—“her life” being a subject
almost independent of her and “simplified”
the verb through which her life acted
almost independently of her and what she wanted.
Her husband died suddenly and young
the week their son was born,
then there she was, bereaved and stunned,
trying to dig up money for a burial,
finding herself instead in a hole,
in deep grief, infant in arms,
inexorable in his needs as any infant is,
although her wishes for him were
all the stronger for her being alone—
her wishes being really only one wish:
that he have the chance to flourish.
Her vow to give him this she made
at the burial, but she made it
silently and only to herself.
Not until her son was grown and gone
did she see she had made it for herself
to give herself a reason to go on.
With this vow she made another—
never to give up sculpting—
which she thought then was for herself.
But she couldn’t give her son the chance to flourish
unless she gave herself the chance in spirit,
and that meant sculpting whether or not
there would ever be any money from it.
And there hasn’t been, except from teaching children
art classes in her bare-bones murphy-bed studio.
That’s where I come in, way late and far
at the periphery, picking up my daughter Emily
age ten now who has been Miss Joy’s student
since she was four. I rarely see Miss Joy.
Her classes were my wife Doreen’s discovery.
When Doreen told me the teacher was “Miss Joy,”
I asked if Miss Joy had won a pageant
like Miss Galaxy or Miss Pork Belly
sponsored by a maker of antidepressants.
“Joy is her name,” Doreen said, deadpan.
“Even the parents call her Miss Joy.”
Today I know why:
she looks like a fresh birthday candle
with her tuft of white hair and soft bright smock,
and her eyes seem fired by what they see,
a delight in seeing she’s taught Emily.
Miss Joy and Doreen have become friends.
Her story comes to me in pieces secondhand.
Have I made her seem saccharine?
I love her for loving Emily and Doreen.
I don’t know what else she’s done.
I don’t hear much about her son
and even less of what she suffers.
Twisted metal scraps she finds in dumpsters
she hammers into battered solitary figures.
Condolence
The roses dying in your study
were never going to live forever.
The dancers study to embody
beauty: one is our daughter.
She exhausts herself. In thick leg warmers
she sprawls extravagantly on the couch
as if too sore to walk upstairs—
until she does, mouthing ouchouchouch.
She thrives inside our life together.
Where is it heading? How long will it last?
Hummingbirds keep returning to the feeder
we watch at breakfast through the glass.
How can we tell her what we see?
What can we give her now, or each other?
To what she loves she gives herself entirely.
We were never going to live forever.
Girls Middle School Orchestra
They’re all dressed up in carmine
floor-length velvet gowns, their upswirled hair
festooned with matching ribbons:
their fresh hopes and our fond hopes for them
infuse this sort-of-music as if happiness could actually be
each-plays-her-part-and-all-will-take-care-of-itself.
Their hearts unscarred under quartz lights
beam through the darkness in which we sit
to show us why we endured at home
the squeaking and squawking and botched notes
that now in concert are almost beautiful,
almost rendering this heartrending music
composed for an archduke who loved it so much
he spent his fortune for the musicians
who could bring it brilliantly to life.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to the editors of the magazines in which these poems first appeared:
The American Poetry Review: “Condolence,” “Contentment,” “Dachau,” “The Dog,” “Fucked Up,” “Funeral,” “Garbage Truck,” “Girls Middle School Orchestra,” “Half Mile Down,” “Happy Anniversary,” “Here I Am,” “Melanoma Infusion Center Waiting Area,” “Miss Joy,” “Odd Moment,” “Open Window Truck Noise 3 a.m.,” “Petting Zoo,” “Splitsville,” “Spring,” “Sustenance,” “This Morning,” “Very Hot Day”
The Kenyon Review: “Campus Vagrant,
” “Daredevil,” “Sabbatical”
The New Yorker: “A Cartoon of Hurt,” “Earphones,” “Ill Wind,” “Insult,” “No Warning No Reason,” “Sixtieth-Birthday Dinner”
Poetry: “Against Which,” “Hard Times,” “I Had a Tapeworm”
Slate: “Mug,” “My Young Mother”
The Threepenny Review: “Airplane Food,” “In the Mirror”
