Dear, image by Irene Koronas
LXXIII.
1.
Dear Constance,
Thank you for hosting such a wonderful
party. The food
was marvelous, especially those
prosciutto wrapped
baked scallops. And where did you find
such delectable
sturgeon? And, of course, seeing you
after so many. Your
home sumptuous understated
magnificence. I love the
library. Is that truly an original
Durer? Thank you, too,
for including Benjy. I thought he
comported admirably
given his challenges. I know he felt
significant. He so
struggles for normalcy. I love, dear
Constance, your
unconditional humanitarianism. Who was that God-like
stud from Croton-on-Hudson. Relative?
Or, no, could it
be! Connie, I’m so fatigued. I
sometimes wish it were
ended. Again daffodils, again
hydrangeas, yet no
expansiveness. Antidepressants seem
laughable. Now
insomnia. I reminisce our Barnard
days, such idealism.
Now Frank’s gone, and Charles,
misguided Charles.
Wouldn’t shock me to hear…. I’ve
enjoyed a peaceful
morning: Benedictine eggs, cantaloupe.
I must start
exercising. Do you remember Darlene
from Holyoke?
Tumbled off a ladder, shattered
everything—we’re
all balsa. At Sunny Horizons Rehab,
poor darling.
Connie, let’s take a Carnival cruise,
the Yangtze—
Beijing, Xian, The Gorges—you and I.
How marvelous
that would be. Connie. Don’t you see?
It’s such a
shock, reality. Where is Holyoke? Think of all that
treacherous ice. Sometimes I feel like
Bacon’s howling
Pope. Wouldn’t there be weeping
cherries? Thank
you again for a lovely, you create
such approachable
elegance. Truly, you are a trusted
dear valued friend.
2.
Dear Marjorie,
I think I’m going insane. I feel
abstracted, disconnected--numb.
I’m indifferent to demise of others.
Monstrous. Sometimes,
when slicing potatoes I fantasize
homicide. Intellectualism,
all that obtuse yammering, sickens,
such strutting egotism.
Contempt, Maj, is my undoing. History
mauls us insensate.
Alien. I love that word, alien,
alienation, dispossession. In
one being can existence and
nonexistence simultaneously
exist ? Rhinoceroses come to mind.
Hippopotami. Immense
lumbering anachronisms. How their
joints must ache. Don’t
you think everybody knows? Everybody,
that is, of maturity?
The pieces one’s labor rips out, those
brutal offices.
Marjorie, I look at Richard and
suffer. His shaggy scrotum
hanging like suicide. Something like
melted wax pulls off
in hands. Dick, oh Dick, who is the
crucifixion. Don’t you
think, Maj, we’re all The Christ?
Let’s lunch tomorrow—
at Leonardo’s --please say yes. Since
Janie and Donnie evaporated…
I love the risotto. One becomes
automatous. Confession:
I have begun to drink. I’ve told
nobody. After Dick leaves.
I do in nightgown with
jigsaws--Seurat, Renoir—splash of
Stolichnaya. Naughty me, without velocity.
You seem so
knuckled into life, like tires
knobbing mud. Envy, perhaps,
after all, I’m not chloroformed, just
anger inwardly driven,
self-castigated. Anyway, alcohol
pieces me together. Use-
lessness blurs edges. It’s me as much
as him: Dick and I
never fuck. Do you and Bert? We’re bored. One walks
a long way to boredom, past children,
passion, purpose,
suffering, past brilliance to the
blank cliff face. What lies
beyond boredom, Marjorie? I see
exhausted gorgeous
women side-by-side, bereft, barefoot,
cold, diving off
earth—sexy pointed toes--into the
abyss. Perhaps, after all,
I’m lesbian. Such beautiful fragile
souls soundlessly falling.
3.
Dear Caroline,
Since Robbie died I’ve been summoning
God, un-
successfully; when does God ever
appear? Lately
I’ve noticed my big toenail thickening
like rhino
horn. Fuck God. I need succor, get
frippery.
Christianity sucks. There’s no
supernaturalism.
Biochemistry is God: depression,
ecstasy, despair,
love. I could die of this. Robert and
his casting
reels. The man worshipped fishing.
Only moments
between thighs bested angling, and of
that I’m
insecure. He never warbled there.
Vagina now
is strung with spider webs. Brain,
too. What an
instrument, the body: organs, skeleton,
muscle,
blood dammed by skin. Air sucked
through follicles.
Alveoli. What a word: alveoli.
Erectility. Copulation,
multiplication. If God were solid like
crystal. I
have decanters, platters,
candlesticks. What does
one do, Carly? You’d think He’d be
available,
like gelato. I’m painting nails
today—Oxblood,
Poppy, Bordeaux Lust. I’m thinking of
The Rub-
ber Monkey or Wetlands tonight. Interested?
Will Marco let you out? Two cars just
in case.
Hell, since Robert it’s never been
good. He had
such thick fingers. It’s back to that:
body. Think
of that magic trick in which
illusionist passes
hoop round levitating woman—who is me—
disconnected, floating, comatose,
proving The
Miraculous. Then curtain falls, rises,
magician,
assistant bow on stage to wild
applause. Physics
is irrefutable reality. Damn God his
little magic
show. At midnight janitor throws final
switch
and gravity smashes heavenly bodies to
bits.
4.
Dear Penny,
God spoke to me today: I
satisfactorily evacuated bowels,
read Death of Ivan Ilych. Not everyone can thusly boast.
So much malnutrition, illiteracy. That
I comprehend Tolstoy
in gastrointestinal unawareness is
blessing. I am gryoscopically
blueprinted, lucid. When Tolstoy
writes, “…Praskovya
Fedorovna was not always conducive to
the pleasures
and amenities of life, but on the
contrary often infringed
on both comfort and propriety and he
must therefore
entrench himself against such infringement,” God
blesses me with comprehension. Surely,
I am within rights.
I may impute from my advantages God’s
existence.
My heart pumps perfect pressure, brain
withstands
termites. Grace. Vibration. Ecstasy.
Pen, I tell thee
I am light; pure helium. One is
unaware of one’s
beautiful spinning. Penny, Penny,
clean summer sun
washes grass. Let’s invade the lake,
two old biddies spilling
over pants. Who cares about cellulite.
We are justifiable
animals. I have two tins of smoked
clams. Today God
opened dungeon door and out walked I
into blinding
bright. I perceived lips upon my lips.
See, I am voided,
right as newborn babe. Honor this
child, this widowed
ancient child whom God hath anointed
this day April
twenty-seventh, two-thousand fourteen,
Anno Domini.
5.
Vapors
scud overhead, flimsy as rent rags.
Leafy
spears stab, twist into blue flesh.
Nipping
wind lacerates naked shingles.
Seven
slitherers mass in multicolored pulp.
Dear Lottie,
Please tell me what to do, I’m so
alone, shipwrecked
and no God stands before me. This is
what it’s like,
hopelessness, eaten face at center of
nothing, hot
howling. Lottie, you have Bernard and
little Bobbie
and I imagine spontaneous hilarity at
serving spoon.
Home with jungle gym, hydrangeas while
I live in
unit 7-C with Benjamina. I’m too
retiring. Too
shamed. I still have mama. I’ve never
divulged: I
paint lips thick, troll for sex. It’s
dangerous, therefore,
exhilarating. I could be killed. I
love strange men
fucking me. It’s death wish I surmise.
Last Friday I
took two successively. I craved a
third. Godless,
abandoned, shut out. I confess to
whoredom.
Lottie, I can’t. Come tonight. I
can’t. It’s too
horrible. Moldy pages. Lamentation.
Psalm. All
mold. You know your Sandy, fragile,
shaky. I’ve
started smoking cigarettes. Am I
disgusting?
(My nose is narrow-grotesque.) You are
nonjudg-
mental. I have blustery thighs. A
little honesty: I
hate myself. Where is Mr.
Omnibenevolent One?
You haven’t got Him all. Great
Cardiologist
to hammer my heart? Open yourself,
they say,
He will build nest of love. I have
been gaping
for decades to absence of nightingale.
Lottie—
Loretta--tell me what to do. You are
so in ecstasy.
Earth
lashes its back, weeps rivers.
Little
green flame-tips cut through death.
Pillow
experiences quakes of delirium.
Scream-threaded
needle pierces eardrum.
6.
Dear Eleanor,
Progress! God entered me like
flashlight squiggle.
I conceived! I carry zygote. Spittle
fuses me to
pillow. Savoir Faire, God debonair,
God hot
caramel. Me in ecstasy! I am bigger by
the
minute. I wear night like stole of
diamonds.
Remember my atheism? All slime, onion.
How I coupled with garbage, chin full
of gin.
Debauchery, whoredom, Sodom,
depravity.
I guffawed like slattern. Now
divinity. Tuned
instrument. Sphere within sphere.
Gyroscope
whirring. Hail Mary, full of God’s
semen.
I am sacred. Uncorrupted. Risen. I am
loaf.
Into me shoots music, out me lyrics. I
love
my rapist’s execration who deserves
rehabilitative caressing. Jesus is my
aorta.
Redemptive is my murderer. Eleanor,
you
see? Life is not mud in doomed
nostrils, nor
helium-filled knees of satisfied
delusion.
Come to me. Drink my tincture. Open
your
stuffed swampy stumps to the Mad
Creator.
7.
Dear God
I am sorry I pray like a child--
Now
I lay me down to sleep,
I
hear no voice, I feel no touch,
Help
us do the things we should—
Such canned simple-mindedness—
Yet possess no instruction for
wisdom-prayer
Commensurate with physical maturity.
Perhaps You want us stunted,
Wrapped in pre-pubescence gauze
For Your despotic studio.
Heavenly Father, I might plead,
Forbid mastectomy,
Shrink prostate,
Protect Meg.
I might beseech, Dear Apocalyptic One,
Strike Viv’s mass benign,
Alone at home with memories.
Arm her antibodies with howitzers.
Is this admirable petition
Or egotistical compartmentalization?
Feed hungry, heal sick, bestow peace
Seems delusional as if mop could
Wash every streak.
Then for my soul alone?
Forgiveness. Absolution. Purification.
Appreciation of my tortured mate.
Dear Father, I am tabula rasa
For Your pastel stick,
Scrawl me
Furious wisdom,
Smear purple prayer
Across my breast,
Gouge with thick profundity
My vascular walls
Into Your abstract masterpiece.
8.
Dear Stephanie and Charles,
I look at you, see God. Devotion so
thick,
you would die for each other. You are
brick.
Blessing and achievement. Most people,
even coupled, suffer godless
loneliness
in atheistic desertification. You walk
in
grace sun-gilded. I can only imagine.
I
can fantasize. What confidence must be
yours. Staff, sandaled feet is all
required.
You are Lamb. While I, dear I…Am
full of soda. How do you do it? Is it
Princeton or inheritance, concerted
psychology? I see you through sixth
iniquity, through venous lens of sin.
I cannot enjoy though your love
envelopes. Oh Steph, Chuck pity
your wretched friend full of Pepsi
Zero.
I want to walk in glow beribboned.
Disingenuous to entreat God I reject.
Or might I hedge?—Pascal’s wager.
Light and dark play upon your face,
innocence in the precinct of
lust,
children. Oh babes, give me pluses.
Honor covers envy like paper rock.
I am transit. Torque flattens my
face. This song is yours my beautiful
best bosoms, leave me to my jigsaws.
(I’ve almost finished Klimt!) Surely,
aproned God in studio chips away.
I have known men with licorice hair.
My angel blood coats jealousy’s
jaws.
I have always envied those God loves.
9.
Dear Francine,
Through splattered windshield of
atheistic materialism
I’ve admired people I considered
flawless--charitable,
selfless, spiritual, optimistic. I’ve
grown to hate them.
At night God’s absence corrodes this
infidel. Doubtful
faithlessness’s causality, but
interesting how this atheist
failed at love. One eats one’s self
and starves. Franny,
sixty-five years normalizes
deficiency. Nobody notices
the ubiquitously visible. I’m still
unabashedly, regardless
universe’s incomprehensible
complexity, godless. I
just am. I grate my spiritual
insufficiency into slivers,
willing to disintegrate, but cells
crave otherwise. I’m
thick hard core, almost steel.
Mystifying that I channel
you from freshman year, nineteen-sixty
nine, freckled,
raven-haired coed, surname snapped off
mind like
twig. You’re cloudy imagery, Jewish
sensuality at
dormitory pool. I have gone through
many. Franny,
I wonder how life has carried you,
cancer perhaps,
emotional trauma? Some muddle
unaccompanied.
So long ago we spilled onto Congress,
outraged,
chanting antiwar slogans, oblivious to
God. Stephanie,
Nancy, Cookie, Todd. I haven’t a clue.
It matters,
though. History’s thick gauze swallows
life that
dazzled. I’m too intelligent to
believe in God.
10.
Dear Carleton,
We’re two mountaineers in motion
picture, chests pressed
to rock, forearms locked together over
sharp edge of cliff.
I’m rescuing you from tumbling left
into abyss, or frame
Tilted ninety degrees you’re rescuing
me from scraping
down face on right. Foreheads pop
beads. Pain yanks
grunt. “Hang tight, got you,” we
sputter.” God’s amused
at pitiful climbers desperately co-dependent.
We slip
down sweaty muscular flesh. Sturdy
fingers, grit. Carleton
saving Gordon, Gordon Carleton.
Eternally. God chuckles
at nature’s imperative. Brother
hauling brother. Grip
broken one would plummet. Tendons rip.
“Hang tight!”
The peace we might know, releasing. No
grip is flawless.
God smacking Milk Duds bores, walks
out—only one watch-
ing—leaving two quivering buggers in
unobserved horror.
