“That woman speaks eighteen languages, and can’t say No in any of them.”
— Alexander Woollcott on Dorothy Parker (The Algonquin Hotel, Oak Bar, 1920)

Pour me a gin that’s educated in sin.
—How earnest. I prefer mine taught to ply.
I drink what makes a decent woman grin.
—I drink what leaves the decent woman dry.
Then let’s proceed. I favor discipline.
—Only if learned. You must go slow.
I never rush. I like my damage driven in.
—Good. I collect what lingers after “no.”
And when it burns, do you deny the fire?
—I file it, darling. Names are tools.
I name what breaks me just to watch it tire.
—Then order well. The glass remembers fools.
“God’s Promise?” Or “The Devil’s Repast.” A spark
flared up when she leaned in: I never experiment in the dark.

“I love a martini, two at the most. Three – I’m under the table.
four, I’m under the host.”
— Dorothy Parker (The Algonquin Hotel, 1929)

Shakespeare is dutifully remembered
for his plaintive sonnets and perfect plays.
We are ruined by his genius, forever
at a loss to be adequately pained.
Today, we are on the opposite side
of Elizabethan diction; we brood
in prosaic tones and truncated lines,
we cheer blandness and raise brandy balloons
to Sandburg, Hemingway, Williams, and Frost,
those cryptic purveyors of emptiness
who’ve dulled the edges of our lips and thoughts.
Should we remix their drinks, I would request
this recipe: a splash of Whitman’s Dick,
& a dash of Emily Dickinson’s Wit.

Before the name, the island pulling at the chest,
the sea rehearses what the shoreline holds, then spends
it back: a harbor loud with iron, tides that bend
the masts toward evening, salt on every surface pressed
to rope and wood; below, the broad streets manifest
their noise in increments, drivers’ bodies, heat
released from cobblestone, the stacked, close rookeries
now breathing back, the dark kept low, not yet expressed
in margins bleeding at the city’s edge,
hands that work the ward through night,
a river name unlocking jaw and throat, a thick
return of syllables the palate took in stage,
before the mind — the body earlier than light,
its ribcage swelling — breath not held — but quick.

From the mezzanine, Mary Lyon fills her box
the way she filled a doorway—taking space
the air had hoped to keep. The paradox:
in situ, she commands the place.
Her brows—two bars, now laid to rest—
lie flat as twin reproofs of life;
her mouth, re-stitched, a hyphen east to west;
that ruler—Old Dominion—like a knife
laid straight across her chest. I find
my knuckles, trace the scars—then look
again: the mouth—the brow—the mourners lined
in black: the cross — my kingdom for a book,
a pen—the lid swings down—and there: the mark.
A dash—I smile—I reach into the dark.

“Paris is a place where things are not as they are called.”
—e.e. cummings (Paris, 1917)

Dear Father—I am well. The room is small.
The Seine runs wide and clean. The bread is good.
I’ve seen the painters work along the wall
where voices break—then thin—I’ve understood
no single thing—or everything at once—
the rain strikes different here—on stone,
through skin—I find myself a kind of dunce
who cannot conjugate what he has known
(a sparrow on the sill)
the pen lifts—stays—
(bonjour) (the rain)
what falls here does not grieve—
dear father—
i am learning how to leave
the large word for the small—the sparrow sings—
and i am well—and well is everything.

“Not ideas but in things.”
—William Carlos Williams (Paterson, 1946)

Dear Father—I am ill. The noontide pour
unspools the day; my work is done.
The hands that knew their way before
are listless past a changing sun.
The plums I ate that Flossie set aside,
they tasted good. They tasted. Good. A measure
of the smallest vices: cold, unjustified.
So much depends on simple pleasures:
there upon the window sill,
a sparrow rests in counterpoint to crow
and cockerel; dips its narrow bill
to pick for mites, its shadow
cast against the bedroom wall,
my body in abeyance. That is all.

To Whom it May Concern (I know not which,
since three of you presently rule Heaven):
It is I, your servant, whom you banished
from Paradise, your misbegotten son,
Asmodeus, Eblis, et cetera;
I will be brief, as you have not answered
even one of my many short dicta
(the last letter having been delivered
when Hannibal thundered across the Alps).
My icy quarters in the fourth ring
grow colder nightly, owing to your help,
which makes it more than difficult to bring
my varied concerns to your attention—
so for once, I implore you to listen.

Charon is derelict in his duties—
he sleeps on the banks of the Acheron
when he imagines no one is looking.
Cerberus is old and often prone
to taking long naps (and one of his heads
is not functioning, or so I’ve heard).
At Hell’s entrance, we’ve run out of hornets,
and the Titans flatly refuse to guard
the ninth circle until they are paid.
Also, the river of blood has congealed
and the great wall of Dis is in a state
of disrepair. I must also appeal
to your mercy, for I have bursitis
from standing so long in Lake Cocytus.

To wit, I am feeling a bit restless
and must remind you of my position.
I have been working this thankless business
forever: I deflowered the gardens
of Eden and Gethsemane, then paved
the Way of Sorrow; I drove Nero mad
until he joyfully set Rome ablaze;
I gifted the legions their zeal for blood,
then sealed the zealots’ fate at Masada;
with but a breath, I unleashed the Plague;
and I honed every skill of Torquemada,
the most inventive friar in Spain.
While my curriculum vitae is vast,
I’ve saved this point of contention for last:

It was I, not you, who caused the Great Flood.
My crowning achievement was cleverly
struck from those ledgers written in blood,
kept in your Celestial Registry.
I demand, forthwith, you address this error—
before the next millennium begins.
Otherwise, I may contrive some terror
hitherto spared from the annals of men.
Unfairly, the living in their naiveté
credit your hand for their misery
each time I mount a calamitous display—
yet I get saddled with Sloth, Wrath, Envy,
Pride, Avarice—and other trifles
your acolytes inscribed in the Bible.

But I digress. The soul that you sent down—
along with that surly shade, Virgil—
was civil enough, and so, I found
a serviceable courier for this epistle
and granted him safe passage to that end.
While we prefer to torture the guilty,
not those hell-bent on their own ruin,
we will receive him back accordingly,
for there’s always a home for the willing
in the hallowed, if not broken, circles
which you mysteriously built for me—
and since we’re shorthanded, his clerical skills
could save us from eons of paperwork.
Yours in all Perdition — Lucifer.

Infernal King—your vellum brushed my cuffs
while trumpets bent the chandeliers with praise.
I slipped beyond the table—figs gone soft,
their sugared rot recalling your malaise.
Your tome—impeccably lamented—passed
through ordered choirs and registries of fire;
each sphere deferred the burden up the vast
unceasing chain no grievance may retire.
I know this craft: the careful aggregates
of injury, until at last they crown a plea.
But Hell is not confined to frozen lakes—
it takes the shape of waiting endlessly
in any realm where every door is closed.
Yours in Harmony—the Holy Ghost.

They drank like gods—by which I mean they fell.
My lord would chart the stars with drunken proof,
then chart again the table’s edge, the bench, the wall,
declare them wrong, and call the stumble truth.
He swore the sky was his, or so he fought,
measuring heavens cup by cup, until sundown,
till even Saturn reeled. Young Kepler watched—
smiled thin as ink—and wrote the good parts down.
Good Lynx, you rose with all a noble air—
antlers in the candlelight, your crown awry.
You lapped the cup, turned and climbed the stairs,
then fell like Icarus, much too drunk to fly.
All the while, two fools disputing charts—
your constellation, Lynx, burns beyond their stars.