THE ANIMAL

 

This man pulls his weight

along the sidewalk one crack at a time,

the metal frame that moves him

shoves the concrete towards

abstraction. The sky

that used to move him is

invisible now, is lost, is

something up there, which he remembers,

could talk about, could name

if he could see it, could almost

imagine how to laugh about.

 

Children move into focus, out.

Dogs circle him, appearing

like scenes from a movie in the tiny arc

of vision that he keeps: his last thing. When

he sleeps he turns his head

easy on a supple neck

to watch the little legs flash by.

Now he only sees his knuckles.

When a voice calls out to him

he trusts that it is there and leaves it.

 

In his head a tape is playing

in a loop, it is the sound

of synchrony itself, his voice

is saying from somewhere

in the tight arc of his spine:

the machine has me by the fingers.

The god damn bug has got me by the neck.

 

 

From Vulgar Exhibitions (Eastern Washington UP, 2000)

 

 

DREAM GIRL

 

The things that mattered to the little girl

were angels, fuzzy creatures, anyone on crutches

or hurt in her heart, the big boys on the corner,

and Mr. Science after the Karate Kadettes. So nobody

 

was much surprised to see her start

sleeping all the day and night, only waking for a little

sip of mock tea with mock lemon, Super Booster Sandwiches,

and Karate Kadette Krackers with jam on the side.

 

No one was surprised, but some were worried

that she smiled herself to sleep and slept on smiling,

then grumbled like a tiny polar bear the minute

they managed to tease her up for lunch. Then one day

 

she started waking up all by herself, and seemed

to be a normal little girl again. Except that now

she started ceaselessly reciting all her dreams,

ditzy dreams of childhood where the big green crow

 

dances with daddy while the piggies make supper

for everyone and somehow blowing mounds of snow

miraculously turn to coconut and almond,

all the soft warm whiteness wrapped in creamy brown.

 

She'd look you in the eyes and say, The Donut Pumpkin

came today. It burped. It swam like in the navy, only

nobody made it come home and make its bed. It didn't make me

sad, either! It had a baby of its own, looked just like Mommy.

 

You might feel compelled to stroke her then, just down

her head, but then she'd jump like you'd shocked her:

I always said, don't let anybody touch you.

Never! Never! Never! Never! Never!

 

And you go back in your corner, just to watch. She is normal.

She plays like a puppy with herself, her things, and things

that are not there. But if she builds a dollhouse in the air,

she knows it well enough to forget it any time

 

some breathing thing breaks in on her. But then the dreams

erupt again: Miss Cloud! I saw you take that thing,

that thing, with handles, where the rain came out? You thought

I didn't see you, I was the dirt there! I was the puddle!

 

Now there's one-way glass, and special toys with sensors.

There are ways to read what's going on. But it is in

another language. Some other moon! she yells, and she

is laughing. I'm some other moon, not the same one!

 

I stay away from her and watch from safe behind

the blinding mirrors. Only in that space we stroke each other.

Two blurs on the sensors, we munch Krackers together.

We both dream without letup, like hallucinating racers.

 

We can't get anybody to go in, anymore. It's just too sad,

they say, to try to speak to her. She raises up those eyes

like little pumpkins and tells you that your stones have turned

to things like on a necklace, and all your buttons were dancing

 

last night, with little smiley faces, but they stopped. She says

Don't talk to me! Can't you see I'm singing! Then she

doesn't make a sound for an hour. When she does, it's just to say

Hey doc, bring me some crayolas, willya? My friend here

 

says I'm supposed to draw a long tail right there

between his eyes, like sparkles. If I don't, I'll be afraid

that he might go away. I saw you ride him, too.

But you were just little, and real real grey.

 

Let's have a little talk, I bring myself to say.

Or what do you say we take a walk together?

We already did, she says, and you were on the ceiling.

It was too steep, though, you were having trouble breathing.

 

I try to see her eyes. She laughs and puts them in her hands.

Are you o.k.?, I say. Really. Can I get you anything? She says,

yeah, gimme a book that opens like an eye. And get yourself

some sleep, doc. Really. You look just like you're gonna die.

 

 

From Vulgar Exhibitions (Eastern Washington UP, 2000)

 

 

“Nature Abhors the Superfluous”

 

I know a little language of my cat . . . (Robert Duncan, Dante)

 

 

Gist of thought, jism of words,

a Robert Duncan myth making all us

musical cats into a dance of birds

and all the dancers hoot-owling

to beat the band, whose bruises

honk to high heaven, a whifflers’ ball,

where the highest flyers lower themselves to our level

 

and stare out of their fairytale

eyes at our blind, a busy, lusty hole

that hides nothing. Our superfluous song.

Who’ll caterwaul when I’m gone?

And what’ll become of these last things

I’ll care about, licking their rectums

with no one there to offend? And that’s

 

these poems, too, isn’t it, going all

maggoty in my brain pretty soon,

and in this my (what’d the guy say?)

mirror. Perfume and sway in a dark

hallway in Buffalo in 1978. Darker eyes

even than this little mutt. Last moment, last

thought: her tender mouthing me.

 

 

Sermon Beginning Ends

 

Ends of parts of me are now garbage.

“A fagged poltroon” the diagnosis,

the prog- not much better. Instead

of leaves flying, take your pick:

the gay aardvarks of appetence deferred; or,

just hobbled along like overburdened underwear shoppers.

Meanwhile, I know the greengrocer had his eye on you,

or was it the butcher, and perhaps I

who had the eye on?

 

                                    Skag of indecent preconceptions, there

were sad, solitary marriages in June,

a gaggle of Irish Republicans not long after,

and before the end, doubloons, platoons, macaroons,

and bag-ladies with balloons. Oh, I have suffered

with those that I saw suffer! As to the first

being last, last first, tell that to the zebra.

Tell it to the zebu and the zoophyte.

Tell it to the zygote if you’ve got the balls.

 

 

 

© Jerry McGuire