Four Reincarnations. Max Ritvo

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СКАЧАТЬ from the ocean’s sheen.

      The sheens alarmingly similar to one another

      to be so close together—like two bodies making love.

      *

      We imagine a vertical meadow

      complicated into our world needlessly

      but complication is all X ever wanted for us.

      We misunderstand purity. This is purity.

      *

      I am your lover and X’s.

      I am too good a lover

      to ever be bored:

      Skinny, hairy-chested,

      made of pellets of rice,

      cheeping in a way that’s

      endearing and inappropriate,

      confused, surprised at the confusion,

      surprised at the surprise,

      and so on, very tiringly, so on.

THE SENSES

      Everything feels so good to me:

      my wool hat,

      the cocoon of dryness in my throat.

      The sound of burning vegetables

      is like a quiet, clean man folding sheets.

      But I keep having thoughts—

      this thought always holding at bay the next thought

      until it sours into yet

      another picture of dissatisfaction

      that loves to be thought,

      another pear, ugly

      as the head

      of a man who is thinking.

      I thought my next thought would be a vision of my suffering;

      I thought I would understand the yellow lightning in a painted storm—

      the crucial way it disappears

      when I imagine myself flung

      headlong into the painting.

      Instead I have this picture of dissatisfaction,

      the thought not rising, but splitting in half

      on the unanswered question of lightning,

      my mind

      like a black glove

      you mistake for a man

      in the middle of a blizzard.

HOLDING A FRESHWATER FISH IN A PAIL ABOVE THE SEA

      He strips health out

      of the water,

      reminding me

      of my mother.

      I walk in sea

      and hold my sweet

      fish above me,

      no small feat

      given the rice-

      hard salt scraping

      my eyeballs twice

      each blink of lid.

      I put the pail

      in the ocean

      and then unveil

      the decorous

      frail, white-eyed koi.

      But the salt, I

      think, will destroy

      his rocking breath.

      Where he wants space

      he will get salt.

      Where key traces

      of the silence

      should hang inside

      his cathedral

      of musical

      blood—

      Instead, delicious

      crystal drills

      will crack it all

      open; the church,

      its ebbs and flows.

      I scoop the fish

      up by its nose,

      a forked affair.

      I show you him.

       Looks fine to me

      you say (Ha!), dim

      and lovely you.

      This happens more

      times, stopping and

      starting, me showing

      you my full hand,

      my fish. Where have

      you gone? I was

      hoping to wake

      from this dream

      with you drawing

      the curtains, a gold

      glow on the sheet

      wrapping me up.

      You aren’t here

      but I’m aware

      that somewhere

      you have moved.

THE WATERCOLOR EULOGY

       for Melissa СКАЧАТЬ