or: A Congress of Animals

The Japanese gave immanence to age,
a furtive magic in the oldest cat,
or so says Zack at the Meow Café—
headset mic askew. A special breed, to be exact,
of courtesan and kitten—a lineage spanning
Hello Kitty to yokai. He notes such prostitutes
were often found by customers covertly
choking down a fish, a dark rebuke
against desire’s aftermath. And then:
a Classic Persian jabs its paw
from a fuzzy peephole near Zack’s head,
precursor to the playful clause
that curiosity—the bane of cats—
can also kill a writer’s act.

 

He fell off the balustrade, another

small misstep toward glory, just one among

the litany of injuries my brother

has endured during his short life– each one

a peculiar work of art, prosaic

yet absurd. He’s the jester of martyrs,

the black comic who has enough nicks,

gouges, and breaks to have suffered,

all told, one fatal round of martyrdom.

More Buster Keaton than St. Teresa,

(whose beatific guise belies marble

but still does not suspend my disbelief)

he laughs, doubled over in the front yard,

then tries to walk, stumbling toward sainthood.

 

 

 

 

 

In the back room was an altar

upon which good men

 

sacrificed other good men

in the name of industry.

 

One day, these good men

sacrificed a righteous man

 

in the name of perfidy, and in time

they became executioners–

 

from then on, all meetings

became a record of their descent

 

and secrets were sealed in envelopes

and dropped into a fire at the edge of the city.

 

 

 

Bunker busters, daisy cutters, kill boxes, drones.

This is the vernacular of modern warfare,

it is a game of pecuniary stealth and precision

where weapons are fetishized and priced

like commodities in a market.

The war is sold on television

with charts, targets, backlit maps

and footage of dazed men and women

standing around the rim of a crater,

the camera hovering, disembodied.

We learn geography through war,

we learn a country’s grooves and divots intimately,

the lakes, the caves, the trade routes, the passes,

we trace the landscape as a hand

might gently caress a sleeping body,

and ultimately we learn patience:

how to kill democratically with bombs

and yellow food kits, how to be pragmatic

in our injury, and most importantly

how to spin policy to mask our revenge.

 

 

My arms wrap around your neck

as you slip through the long cattails,

pushing off from the bank

toward the center of the pond.

The sun dims with each stroke,

my fingers tighten.

Plunging to the bottom, we scrape the cold silt

and quickly push upwards,

the strange earth floating from our hands.

She’s been here before, brushing her palms against the grass

feeling only the distended thoughts that barely govern her own body;

there is a dazed reverence to the sun on her cheek

as if she had been purposely arranged in the field

with the hydrangeas and the broken stalks of milkweed.

She flares her nostrils. My breathing,  she muses,

is like a ball of thread unraveling to its invisible essence

or a cloud waiting to take shape.

Meanwhile, the sun consumes the afternoon

with an economy of self.

A  cross-dissolve would be construed

as too sentimental

for a non-antiquarian such as you.

Which is to say, you would prefer

the portrait of the young aesthete

enjambed against the image

of the ailing patriarch

like Kubrick’s up-cranked ape

hurling his blanched bone

heavenward, cutting

to an indolent craft in space

marking the epochs in between

Discobolus and that box of dreams

(which still entrances us

in the dark).

That would be you.

Fast forward through

the interminable exposition,

past the creaking dialogue,

ominous diagesis

and welling strings

past the ridiculous biopic tropes

of master, hemlock, and weeping

acolytes. In short, you would say:

“Cut to the fucking point.”

 

Part of my voice died

with you, halting

abruptly as the Aspen

at timberline, where

even now the snow

dissolves the jagged backs

of the talus.

I will never see

your brooding eyes

again,

never hear

your strange timbre

when I scoop water

from a brook with

a tin canteen

under the din

of hummingbirds;

you’ve become

this enjambment

of memories, mountains,

your past lovers strung

like the blue columbine

and monkshood

along the edge of a ridge, some

doubling back in an arc

as lovers are wont

to do.

 

We ate raw rhubarb

on Bristolhead, panned

for pyrite at Gunnison,

collected quartz

and petrified wood

on the scabby peaks,

though I was too young

to know your Bhudda nature,

to know that you didn’t

favor my brother

but rather pitied him;

and even though

I did not understand your

cocked eyebrow meant

skepticism, I could

feel the anguish

behind your brown

eyes, a gaze that

contained every ghost

from the house

we fled.

 

We burned in that house,

all of us,

and I mourned

you even then;

you carried

the scars as well

as any refugee, until

finally the flames

consumed your

corporeal body.

Your ashes

sit by a statue

of Alexander the Great

and a folded American flag

on my window ledge

waiting to be released

on Mt. Holy Cross,

into the Great Divide.

 

 

 

Four months will reveal

a pupae, unfolding like a map

into its better cousin.

 

It’s always hard to tell

when the wind

will intimate its passing,

that while turning

 

you have missed it–

a breath coming into the world

unabated, a damp burst

of air in one’s ear,

 

as two blue coronas, feathered

about a green circle,

flip to edge

of a wet leaf.

 

 

You are temporal, fragrant,

the informing intelligence of nature

and chaos–

eros and Thanatos

reside in your inimitable

infolding arms.

To whom do you open?

Close?  And what do you protect

or expose?