Spiritual Exercises

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by Mark Yakich


  Thank you for the Patriot missile system

  And Motorola’s Iridium

  Satellite phone technology,

  Which was well conceived but lost a lot of money.

  Mostly, thank you for telling my sister and me

  That we were special when we weren’t.

  We still think of Mom’s beloved malapropisms—

  That afghani, for example, under which you laid

  For months, dying of a terrible treatise.

  I now know I’m allowed to say anything I want.

  But there’s little more to say. Do you

  Remember carrying us to bed each night for years?

  I want to feel my sleep again like a bear

  Hug, like the return of that kidnapped

  Child I once pretended to be.

  But there’s no more bear, no sleep,

  No child’s play. Thank you anyway

  For telling me about the voices in your head,

  Which got you fired and persisted for thirty years . . .

  The astral planes . . . the leprechauns . . . the elementals

  Fertilizing vegetables in your garden . . .

  And the most important thing you never said

  But taught me about the stars—

  That their observers are equally unknown.

  III

  TROUBADOUR

  When I was a boy and my fist

  Would land into my father’s arm,

  I’d cry out, and he’d say,

  Didn’t hurt me none.

  He’s been dead nine years now,

  And my work is still to try

  To beat myself up

  And make the pain last.

  TO DREAM

  To take a forty-one-day walk in the desert

  And a bone-cold shower

  And a very good shit.

  To die taking that shit

  On the outskirts

  Of Nogales.

  To see the dead girl’s ear

  As an embryo inverted

  And her lungs as

  The gates of clouds.

  To get so tired of breathing

  It’s breathtaking.

  HUE AND CRY

  What’s in a life?

  Yesterday.

  What’s the point of history?

  Today.

  What in the world do you want?

  Tomorrow.

  If tomorrow were already gone?

  Wine.

  What does the arc of your life resemble?

  I’ve forgotten.

  A rainbow?

  No, I’d have held on to that.

  A bridge?

  No, I’d have jumped.

  A willow leaf floating on the surface of a river?

  That’s it.

  Which—the leaf or the river?

  On.

  On?

  And on and of, too.

  SEASONAL AFFECTIVE DISORDER

  Many tragic things can happen to a squirrel.

  Like Thoreau, I’ve detailed them all in my journal:

  Coyote and golf ball attacks, sudden-onset

  Lead poisoning, anaphylactic shock, et cetera.

  My tally is a tiny monument without a flag.

  Or so I wrote to a couple of nature mags.

  Must one face a death at the psychiatrist’s?

  She’s there to talk to and witness

  One cry on standby once a week.

  Twice, if one tampers with the background ink

  On the script. But to hell with pills. Friends,

  Send down your scat and acorns

  On my head. I can take the gravity after all—

  Without it, the tears might never fall.

  SOLITARY

  Paranoid schizophrenics suffer

  From never being bored.

  So, too, with kittens and snails.

  Behind prison walls, the sun

  Is not a star, the moon is

  Never written about,

  And shit just doesn’t happen.

  Maybe pterodactyls never flew

  And Pluto shouldn’t be there.

  May you live one day forever

  With no knowledge of it.

  MEDITATION

  Jai alai is a sport involving a ball

  Bouncing off a walled

  Space, and everything in your body

  Shall end in oncology.

  When it’s time to leave

  This world, try not to pretend

  To feel things you don’t feel. And then

  Try harder to pretend to be real.

  CONSCIOUSNESS

  I command my car only in German.

  I talk with my wife only in English.

  I scold our children only in Mandarin.

  When I hold our first grader

  In my arms, as he falls asleep,

  I picture him clutching the dead

  Version of me I’ll never see.

  My daughter—she’ll clutch him

  Clutching me. My wife I can’t

  Picture. But she must be there

  In the background, breathing

  Hard against a tree. When I go,

  I’ll remember us on vacation, riding

  Here in the car, everyone looking

  Out the windows, talking at once—

  Except me. That’s when I close

  My eyes, lift my hands just off

  The wheel, and try to imagine

  A language without the world.

  DAYENU

  Beach-blaséd, titanium-dioxide-larded, windswept with mollusk dust,

  I appreciate you, St. Joseph State Park, Florida,

  and dear friend Nathan who suggested you.

  Goodbye for now, brown pelicans; we’ll see you in New Orleans

  when you make a pit stop. Goodbye, trails

  and sand dunes that reminded us of Leelanau,

  Michigan, except for the ropes we were not supposed to limbo,

  much less traverse. Goodbye, screened-in picnic

  bench where we ate Old Bay steamed shrimp

  and imagined crawfish étouffée. Goodbye, certain wildernesses;

  even unexplored, you were sweet to us. Thank you,

  dolphin couple, three-deer family, and opalescent

  blue crab who lost the staring contest with my son.

  Behold mighty mosquitoes who yet carry our blood

  and make me ponder a decayed John Donne.

  Praise be for citronella, eucalyptus, rosemary, and above all DEET!

  Strange praise for boners that still grace me

  first thing in the morning, as though

  tines of a rake I’ve dumbly stepped on. Thanks be to gallberry,

  prickly pear, and all manner of endangered botanics

  I am unable to name. Farewell, exit/

  entrance and Miss Catherine’s crisp park ranger khakis, wrinkled

  lips, and zealous arm-waving. I didn’t for a second

  think of Saint Catherine or her breaking wheel

  or the million-dollar homes I’d never want to own at any cost,

  but which we soon admired driving past.

  And almighty thanks that my preteen loves to read

  fantasy novels in quietude on car rides home, punctuated

  only by my dyspepsia, and that he doesn’t especially

  care for prolix or fatherly advice. Selah.

  EASTER

  Jesus and I head down

&nb
sp; the beach and climb over

  the rocks to go fishing.

  He thinks He knows the best

  spots, but more often

  than not He doesn’t.

  No matter. We sit there,

  toes in the water, expecting

  one of our lines to sing.

  When nothing happens,

  the Holy Ghost accuses us

  of “possessing an appetite

  for violence that isn’t

  entertainment.” It’s true.

  I expect the lonely children

  in town to fall into abandoned

  wells. But even the popular

  children say they wish other

  popular children would fall

  into abandoned wells.

  Jesus calls this “empathetic

  fallacy.” Later at home,

  where week-old wine sits

  on the kitchen table, He

  makes me understand that

  silence is best broken

  by a greater silence.

  I stare at the bottle

  but can’t pour a drop

  in the glass. “Alcohol,”

  Jesus says, “is more work

  than we’re able to give it.”

  So we take turns gazing

  out the window at the evening

  sky, the treeless yard,

  and the children still

  searching the grass for eggs.

  If one of them gets stung

  by a bee, part of me will

  be saddened. If none do,

  part of me will be

  disappointed, too.

  Monday morning I wake and see

  Jesus, faintly in the distance.

  He’s back at the water,

  sweeping arms side to side

  in grand strokes, as if painting

  waves with the heads of

  His people. It appears to be all

  the rage in paradise. But I

  know He’d argue otherwise.

  EMPATHY

  Who knows if it works out

  The way most people want?

  It’s a bit unnerving, for instance,

  To watch someone else extract

  A broken wineglass from the garbage

  Disposal. Yet it’s oddly satisfying to

  Dig out those same shards oneself.

  One by one, tenderly, until a finger’s

  Pricked. As a method of penitence,

  It rarely soothes. As a display of

  Affection, it’s nearly foolproof.

  CHRIST OF THE OZARKS

  Because often a couple of them faint from the lashings,

  It requires three Jesuses to put on The Great Passion Play.

  Didn’t you know? Cedar waxwings will wait for berries

  To ripen and ferment in order to get good and high.

  I shall love berries and birds and lashings. I shall pick up

  Cold meds and Drano at the Promised Land Drive-Thru.

  I shall go to the airport in Fayetteville to watch planes

  Take off again and again, to imagine the moment after

  The moment God lays me down, at last, in a grass casket.

  KINDNESS

  As you grow older, you think you know a little

  Something about existence, like whether or not

  You come from banana people. I don’t believe

  I come from banana people, but that doesn’t mean

  There wasn’t a banana gatherer in the family

  Generations ago. If I did come from banana people

  And, say, you also came from banana people,

  Would that make us treat each other better?

  Would the little we know about existence

  Turn out to be more or less true if our ancestors

  Broke bananas together instead of bread?

  I don’t know. But here’s a thing: Today we’re

  Most likely to eat one kind of banana—Cavendish—

  And each comes from a clone, not a seed.

  CRITICAL THINKING

  When we read A Lesson Before Dying

  We’re all moved especially by the ending,

  The white man asking the black man

  To be his friend. One of my peers, however,

  Points out how badly the female characters

  Are rendered in the novel. The teacher agrees

  But can’t seem to find it in herself to blame

  The author. There’s something about literature

  I’ll never quite understand. Take this simile:

  Hope sits on the students like sweat glistening.

  It doesn’t really. The AC is just out again.

  And our teacher doesn’t have the nerve

  To tell us to wipe it off because she knows

  Soon enough it’ll evaporate on its own.

  REFLECTION

  The left eye has more floaters,

  but it’s the right eye

  whose cornea a tennis ball

  slashed forty-eight summers ago.

  The smoke detector has blinked

  its last blink, assuring me

  that everything is conceivable.

  The letter on the counter, for instance,

  is stamped Return to Sender,

  but I never mailed it. At dawn

  I intended to walk down to the box,

  then found myself at the end of

  the jetty. As I observed my hanging

  feet, I swear I saw an eyelash beating

  itself between two barnacles.

  An old sutra visited me:

  Life may be a game, but if you think so,

  you’re not playing it properly.

  In fact, I think I could hike

  that mountain of waves and never return

  if I didn’t have to see it

  first in my mind’s eye.

  There are only epiphanies,

  and always have been.

  ON MY OTHER MOTHER’S BIRTHDAY

  Yoga master said,

  Draw all your attention

  To the mat.

  As with all things, be present . . .

  If you are cooking, cook . . .

  If you are reading a book,

  Read . . . And so when I visited her

  Grave, I didn’t bring flowers.

  I got down among the fire ants

  And, with car keys, cut

  A pattern in the grass

  So that it looked at the edges

  Like frosting on a cake. I stood

  In the center and pretended

  To be one of fifty-nine candles.

  Ants began biting my ankles,

  Higher and higher they climbed,

  As even breath fed the flame.

  NOBLE SONG

  Bells clearly rang and clouds appeared

  To eat the summer grass. Tea steeped.

  A window broke. The seacoast

  Filled with Nova Scotia dulse.

  Christmas came without presents.

  Books went unread. No—to

  The church. No—to the beach.

  Children threw themselves on beds.

  Someone rummaged the attic.

  Someone preferred their ruin in the rain,

  Which tasted good all the way

  To the end of the pier. Everyone

  Always missed the last train.

  Nobody ever gathered at the piano—

&nb
sp; Until the dying one began wailing

  Not unlike a bird of prey.

  REVELATIONS

  When they say, Time heals all wounds,

  They mean, Worlds.

  When they say, Worlds,

  They mean, You won’t even recall how much you’ll forget.

  When they say, Forget,

  They mean, Someday you won’t know the name of your daughter.

  When they say, Daughter,

  They mean, God.

  When they say, God,

  They mean, Eternity.

  When they say, Eternity,

  They mean, Until you are gone, too.

  When they say, Gone,

  They mean, Everyone.

  When they say, Everyone,

  They mean, We have no idea what happens after this.

  When they say, This,

  They mean, Words.

  When they say, Words,

  They mean, Meaning.

  When they say, Meaning,

  They mean, That which passes for understanding.

  When they say, Understanding,

  They mean, Peace.

  When they say, Peace,

  They mean, By which the end is justified.

  When they say, Justified,

  They mean, Amen.

  When they say, Amen,

  They mean, Say no more.

  When they say, More,

  They mean, Get on your knees again.

  When they say, Again,

  They mean, Love, Love, Love.

  NOTES

  Spiritual Exercises: The title of this book is borrowed from Ignatius of Loyola, who founded the Society of Jesus (Jesuits). Ignatius was a sixteenth-century Spanish soldier turned mystic who advocated finding “God in all things” and educating the whole person in body, mind, and spirit. Originally designed for a thirty-day silent retreat, his Spiritual Exercises involve reexamining one’s life through a series of prayers and contemplations.

  “Forms of Love” modifies a phrase from the poet June Gehringer; thank you.

  “Echo” is for Echo Matthews.

  “Bound” is modeled after a poem by A. R. Ammons.

  “Why a Perfectly Good, Almighty, All-Knowing God Permits Evil” borrows its opening partially from a line in a James Galvin poem.

 

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