The Do-Over. Kathleen Ossip

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      Ode to a pond, a pool.

      To a willow pattern on her good plates.

      •

      If she were well and in Longhua

      and in the factory and thrown together with him

      and they shared a meal and she spoke Cantonese

      or he spoke English and overcame

      his desolation and distrust

      she would befriend the man.

      •

      The man tries to make a point, a new point, his own point. But no boss wants that. They only want points they already know, or just quick flowing motion, no points at all.

      •

      Healthy is probably the word we use most.

      The voice sounds heedful, over-ovened—rhetoric on a scooter.

      Extend the dots: griefshock by Xmas.

      •

      Ode to the container and the thing contained.

      Ode to a well-lit room.

      Ode to a pearl ring on a warm, fat finger.

      Ode to the outskirts of never.

      May this ode assert nothing.

      •

      In a sleep state she is aware of many persons in her: one a cruel dominating man, one an embryo, one Jesus, one a charming flirtatious girl without care, etc.

      •

      In this expanse, a governance powders, fragile. I’m a cipher, he said, but his friend didn’t know what “cipher” meant. On the silent video, a balladeer shatters human dignity.

      •

      In the dark of the year, the holly wind-holdy, thoughts were and are.

      •

      The beautiful man is a well. The beautiful man is a mirror. The beautiful man is a valve. The beautiful man is a plug and socket,

      it being impossible.

      The man becomes a travelogue, death a bonus gift if you act now, love a regiment of twinges,

      it being impossible.

      •

      He is stately and elaborate and speaks for himself, without any music at all.

      •

      Ode to a bentwood chair

      Ode to discomfort of all sorts

      Ode to passivity

      Ode to his lightweight jacket

      Ode to bad moods and their justification

      Ode to the inescapable

      Ode to logical transitions, strained and frayed

      Ode to the giantess Boredom

      Ode to a long regret

      Ode to radiation and chemo

      Ode to the goldsmith bending bracelets for her

      Ode to Chanukah and the Moon Festival

      Ode to limitless compassion

      •

      This ode’s my grinding wheel. When is the last I see of her two-handed. I sit with hands folded, by a pond, a pool, wimpled by unknowing. The beautiful man beside me. Or will see her in shortgrass, summerly.

Tool Moan

      I sat at a table outside an Irish pub, with a child I adored and a man I didn’t, in a resort town in summer.

      Another man sat on a folding chair attempting to entertain the diners with accordion music. At first I wondered if he was a street person, so shabby was he. I heard the waitresses call him Tool Moan.

      How delicious, I thought. The accordion equals the tool, the music equals the moan? Above, on the plaza,

      a band (lead guitar, rhythm guitar, bass, drums) played, loudly, a funk version of Jimi Hendrix’s “Voodoo Child.” I wished I could hear the accordion music above the noise

      but I couldn’t. Before we left home,

      my mother had asked, as dinner conversation, “Are we moving through time or is time moving around us?” “I think we’re moving through time, Mom”—I was full of my own agency.

      Actually time falls on us like a fine rain, almost unnoticed, soaking us to the bone.

      Accordion music is the saddest music on earth: agree or disagree? I disagree.

      Accordion music is delicate, like the feathers of snow on the mountains that surrounded the town.

      The man paid the bill. The child ran ahead. Delicate equals subject to damage (and almost equals Celtic). “You have some competition tonight,” I said to Tool Moan as we left.

      “I know,” he said. Later, back in the hotel room, I realized I’d misheard. His name was Tout le Monde (equals everybody in French). . . .

The Road Trip and the Apron String

      Why so fierce! This reaction to her knees,

      important as Rushmore.

      Let me explicate, I begin. Then I spit.

      A spurt of attention yields up

      me and Keats, iris to iris. Oh

      World of Grownups, tense and shiny, give me a hot rub.

      The cornfields are a scourge.

      The lung of the country browns.

      The bladder fills with droplets.

      The measures load with notes.

      The songs are all a pleasure and one day

      we won’t have the pleasure of breathing.

      A flare of temper, wonderful and true,

      yields СКАЧАТЬ