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13th Balloon

Page 3

by Mark Bibbins


  know how anything escapes

  ///

  Twenty minutes ago I learned

  and promptly forgot

  the Italian word for watermelon

  The news is scrolling by

  on a silent TV screen

  and isn’t even language anymore

  just a digital river of trash

  It’s a symptom of living

  in danger that my first

  response is not to realize

  how dangerous this is

  I’d rather think of a man

  on a verdant hillside

  sprinkling salt on the flesh

  of a slice of anguria

  and the image if not the word

  is beautiful enough for now

  There’s a song we know that tells us

  beauty’s where we find it

  but tonight I’m sure there’s even more

  where we left it

  ///

  The opposite of irony is not

  sincerity it’s hopelessness

  Speaking of which I was struck

  by how handsome

  one of the commuters stepping

  over us was as I lay

  with ACT UP on the floor

  of Grand Central Station

  at 5:07 p.m. on January 23 1991

  and how effectively that handsomeness

  seemed to amplify the anger

  in his eyes

  Everything about him said he would

  be perfectly happy to kick any of us

  in the head

  for interrupting his timely egress

  to Westchester

  but he was well enough versed

  in the ways of rage

  to know what would have happened

    if he’d done it

  Only now do I recognize the humor

  in ACT UP dropping over the arrivals board

  a banner that read

  ONE AIDS DEATH EVERY 8 MINUTES

  and that I was lucky to have the luxury

  of deciding not to get myself

  arrested that day

  Today is March 30

  the thirtieth anniversary of ACT UP

  and tomorrow Gilbert Baker the man

  who created the rainbow flag

         will die

  Strange not to know whether one’s life has

  an asterisk hanging next to it

  or is itself the asterisk

  Strange to look vainly for oneself in history

  and stranger to realize

  that there is a chance

  one might find oneself there

  ///

  In some ways our story amounted

  less to paper

  than to staples and holes

  Only hours into the weekend you left town

  with someone else without telling me

  I sensed what it meant

  Having swallowed

  long ago the placebo of monogamy

  I determined not to speak to you again

  let alone forgive

  I have no idea how much time passed

    maybe a year

  Now and then our friends would try

  to convince me to see you

  but I managed to avoid you

  even in our shriveled city

  and we would not talk again until you called

  to tell me you had tested positive

  I remember the weight of the phone

  in my hand and thinking as I looked

  out my window at the simmering

  oranges of dusk above the trees

  that crepuscular was one of the ugliest words

  I could think of

  though later it would be surpassed

  by Cryptosporidium histoplasmosis

  and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma

  your official cause of death

  I could say I started forgiving you that night

  you called and maybe I did but before

  me lay two interminable weeks

  of waiting for my own results

  during which I decided

  I would leave behind among other things

  this miserable stagnant city we shared

  Eventually I and everyone around you

  would be all but delirious

  with forgiveness and mercy and love

  What was that trick

  How did you do it

  It was as if you’d unfolded a map

  you’d secretly been drawing

  for us all along a map

  of a new and radiant country

  across which together we would

  carry you as you died

  ///

  In truth I don’t have that many

  memories of you left

  maybe enough

  that were they spliced together

  the result would be the length of a movie trailer

  or if weighed

  would weigh as much as an eggshell

  I can remember some things you said

  if not verbatim the tone the inflection

  and whether they arrived through a phone line

  or through the air

  or whether you thought something

  you were saying was funny

  like the time near the end

  when you told your favorite nurse

  who was trying a new diet

  that if she really wanted to lose

  weight she should have sex with you

  C’mere lemme stick it in you

  you’ll lose thirty pounds real quick

  We lived on a planet of disaster

  We lived in a country of misery

  We lived in a state of horror

  We lived in a city of scandal

  We lived in a house of daily dying

  from which to distract ourselves

  we sometimes embroidered

  the filthiest jokes we could think up

  on every available towel pillowcase sheet

  I shouldn’t say it saved us

  but in many ways it did

  ///

  I remember doing this once as a kid

  watching a mosquito land on my

  forearm then making a fist

  after it stuck its sucker in

  the muscle fixing it there on my skin

  as my blood persisted in filling

  the insect’s abdomen until

  it finally ruptured

  leaving a smear

  of my blood on my arm

  Instead of arm I first typed art

  I tried changing it and changing it

  and changing it again

  Now I don’t know what to do

  ///

  There are many ways to get

  across a moat I myself have

  tried to swim and drowned

  every time to the amusement

  or indifference of those before

  me who succeeded

  Someone has taken

  to chalking the word ACTIVIST on the castle

  walls and erasing it from which blur

  emerges the face of Gudrun Ensslin

  as Gerhard Richter renders her beaming

  geckolike into an ecstatic

  future    In some countries

  instead of police lineup

  they say identity parade

  In others instead of not guilty

  they say not proven

  In general instead of victim

  we say survivor unless

  the survivor did not

  Form becomes content

  and together they step forward

  to accept the prize The prize

  is light but has what I’ve ever done

  been enough to earn it

  The other day I saw some ants

  carrying a dragonfly’s head

  away from its body

  with the astonishing air

&n
bsp; of consensus it seems only ants possess

  We tell ourselves

  that what a dragonfly sees

  looks like what we see

  when at the concert everyone holds up

  their phones to prove to each other

  that they are together

  When I checked

  a few minutes later the dragonfly’s body

  was gone and the head

  was still there

  Ant consensus apparently was

  you know what guys

  forget the head

  a body’s what we need

  ///

  It’s halfway through October 2017

  and today New York woke up finally

  to what feels

  like it could be fall and the news

  that a school district in Mississippi

  is banning To Kill a Mockingbird again

  and nobody

  because white people

  are quadrupling down

  so spectacularly on their bullshit this year

  is surprised

  Last week I quoted someone

  out of context about irony

  and in doing so probably

  made myself some extra enemies

  Later my friend mentioned

  tenor and vehicle

  the two components of metaphor

  but it’s no use I can never remember

  which is which I’m afraid

  I don’t respond

  to stimuli in the way

  I’m supposed to

  I tried looking up

  the size of a blue whale’s heart

  and it turns out no it’s not

  as big as a small car after all

  but the National Geographic website

  reassures everyone that it’s still pretty big

  and that the blue whale’s heart

  needs a better metaphor

  The website asks

  How big is your own heart

  When we find out

  that the president has made a joke

  about the vice president wanting

  to hang all the gays

  our hearts are not surprised

  nor is it exactly surprise I read

  on the apostle Thomas’s face

  where Caravaggio has painted

  him slipping with Jesus’s help

  one finger into the hole

  in Jesus’s side a hole that resembles

  other things that also are holes

  We’re told it’s doubt that drives

  Thomas and perhaps that’s close enough

  It looks like he’s about

    to stroke

      the human heart

  of Jesus but for the fact

  that the hole is on the wrong side

  ///

  What is missing from the trees

  What is missing from a life

  color sucked from the spines

  of books by the sun

  When I look into my life I cannot name

  the trees but when I touch the books

  on my shelf it’s as if I might

  feel the trees in them

  Where are the people who would have heard me

  call you by any of the nicknames

  I had for you and what

  would I by any of them be called

  Would I be called witness

  a word that in Greek is the same

  as the word for martyr

  one for me and one for you

  From here I can picture almost

  dispassionately a book whose cover

  shows the shadows of both of us

  exchanging places in this word

  ///

  One night John Ashbery came over

  for dinner and I had on

  The Disintegration Loops which he guessed

  was Brian Eno which is an excellent guess

  Later he praised

  the potatoes dauphinoise

  that I had made without realizing

  that’s what they were called

  John and I were both from upstate New York

  so one of the first times we met we gossiped

  about which weathermen on the local news

  we thought were handsomest up there

  The day John died I was stuck

  in a motel technically in Provincetown

  but less than a hundred feet

  from the Truro sign

  In my suitcase was a copy

  of Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror

  so I took it to the beach in the rain

  and read from random

  pages to the mist and the gulls

  “Father I thought we’d lost you

  In the blue and buff planes of the Aegean:

  Now it seems you’re really back.”

  “Only for a while, son, only for a while.”

  We can go inside now.

  It was the smallest my voice

  had sounded to me in years

  though maybe that’s what let the wind

  carry it farther

  Walking back across the beach

  to the hotel I saw

  a dead horseshoe crab

  that from even a short distance

  seemed like it could have been

  alive but who can tell with

  such an ancient thing

  The corpse looked like it was made

  of hammered gold

  covered in sand and wax

  I walked away from it

  I went inside

  ///

  In case what Yoko Ono said is true

  that to name one’s enemy in one’s art

  injures the art more than the enemy

  I won’t tell you who

  is president now

  I forget the name of the woman

  who gave you acupuncture but not

  of your ex-lover who mornings

  toward the end washed you

  when you could no longer walk

  to the bathroom

  We argued over which of us

  would give you your sponge bath

  each morning  I ended up

  able to bear it once

  I forget who brought

  to your hospital room

  a single gardenia blossom

  because you loved Billie Holiday

  but I haven’t forgotten the name

  of the man who at the party after

  the reception after your memorial

  flung himself into a fit of wailing

  next to the margarita machine

  He wailed out of grief over you

  and because as we would learn

  but did not yet know

  he had it too

  For years I would say magnolia

  when I meant gardenia

  and would flinch whenever I smelled one

  all sweetness and rot

  How many thousands

  of stories like yours

  have been told

  and forgotten how many

  stories of lovingly durable nurses

  of hospital sheets of IV tubes

  dripping saline and morphine

  How many stories of drugs

  that would haul you

  along in their wake for a while

  but finally

  let you sink How many versions

  of your scrotum

  becoming so swollen

  that the only thing I could think of

  as I dabbed it one morning

  with a washcloth

  was a grapefruit

  then couldn’t eat grapefruit for years

  ///

  After a thunderstorm

  a writer told a chapel full of people

  about the time he showed his brother

  the story he was about to read to us

  What it was about I can’t

  recall something terrible
<
br />   and meaningful to both of them

  and probably to those of us who had

  assembled in the chapel

  to soak up terror and meaning

  or at least to extract

  some of the latter from the former

  After reading it his brother

  had gone out to walk his dog

  with the story still in his pocket

  Lacking anything suitable he used

  some of the pages to scoop up

  the dog’s shit from the sidewalk

  I’ve never felt I’ve known

  a story well enough to make

  such practical use of it

  In August of 2001 I was walking

  with poets in Copenhagen

  and we encountered on the sidewalk

  a smallish pile of dog shit

  into the center of which

  a handwritten note had been stuck

  Maybe one of us decided

  it was a poem

  Whatever it said we couldn’t read it

  written as it was in Danish

  and though at least one of us

  considered it no way

  were we going to pluck it out

  and bring it back

  for our new Danish friends

  to translate

  Out of the body come

  the usual questions

  How are we supposed to tell

  the difference between stories and poems

  between author and speaker

  between terror and meaning

  between owners and dogs

  between all of us living

  and all of us dead

  ///

  Twenty years after you died

  I am still seeing sometimes

  around Manhattan one of your exes

  also named Mark

  because that’s how our story

  has always told itself

  Mark and his dogs lived

  in the same building downtown

  as my friends and their dogs I assume

  he didn’t recognize me

  and what would I even have said

  as we passed in the lobby

  Hi you might not remember me but

  Recently Mark and I ended

  up seated at adjacent tables

  at a restaurant in the Village

  where I lacked the nerve to bring myself

  to lean over to my friend

  and say  Don’t look

       but that guy over there

  My friend had been talking about

  colony collapse and poetries

  of witness but I was too distracted

  to listen   I felt like a bee

  who’d been heading

  for honey and gotten trapped instead

  in tar

  Recently I read that saving the honeybees

  would no more save all the bees

  than saving the chickens would

  save all the birds

  I often confuse

  a sense of futility

 

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