Between Us
I’d been gluing stickers of the cosmos on my ceiling again,
trying to receive a membership to the dark everything of the universe,
so it’s taken this long to respond to your question about bricklaying
which I know nothing about. Instead of saying I built this house,
I should have told you I only surveyed its being built.
But it’s not like you remember it. The lemon trees seem to be suffering
a reverse puberty, shrugging the acne shoulders of their branches
like what? I don’t know. I don’t know why the grass continues
to brown in patches or else doesn’t grow at all. The bonfire of spring
is in full swing. Last night I killed three rabbits trying to uproot
the squashes we planted together. And I repainted the barn
so I wouldn’t have to remember the planks that need replacing.
Now I think of their rotting more, what we’re left with. Is it
raining where you’re at? Is the city still like we remember it?
—the newspaper-wrapped shoe of a man on the subway tapping out a beat,
the dingy white strobe of phonebooths like elevators in skyscrapers?
Just now I realized I won’t be able to tell your children about phonebooths
without explaining to them—sometimes it was hard to get ahold of each other.
But what has changed? The metal weathervane above the barn swivels
to a stop. Stars taped on the fanblades above my bed glow in the dark as if
the rings of Saturn were not blocks of ice and space.
1 comment:
I just wrote a really long comment and this stupid internet did not complete my request and subsequently deleted it. So I'm not going to be quite as articulate this time around. Anyway, "Bonfire of spring" is the most interesting image here, because it sets the undertone of aggression that is otherwise being dampened by the overriding tone of sadness and loss. Most of these images are ready-made for being sad, and they are carried through dutifully. But- and I wouldn't expect you Texans to understand in the same way- of course we do not expect a bonfire (alt. bonefire) in spring. After a long, long winter we cherish every little budding, blooming and buzzing. A Bonfire in the spring implies a premature destruction of something young and hopeful. This violence, of course, is echoed with the speaker killing rabbits who also wish to destroy something built. Maybe I enjoy cyclical violence. But I like how those images cannot be entirely suppressed. Anyway, the cosmos is more beautiful in its ice and space than anything else in the world. Just ask Carl Sagan.
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