The Disappearance of Jane C.

The initial chat had been upbeat enough,
but still, the callback took her by surprise
because the competition had been tough,
a drill of hungry-looking Ivy ties
whose calfskin attaches were nicely scuffed.

So Jane was leery, facing the gray VPs,
two flannel walrus and a worsted moose,
who didn’t seem to doubt her expertise
so much as her promise not to reproduce,
to keep a handle on her ovaries.

She swore that kids were nowhere in her plan,
would never be, even unforeseeably.
She swore to be as bankable as any man,
and the interview concluded quite agreeably,
though the odd remarks about her tan

and the news that she was possibly a ten
made her disbelieve them when they said
she was still in the running as of then,
and maybe just the slightest bit ahead.
They’d be in touch. So long. Thanks again.

She bought two papers on the way uptown
because she had some extra resumes
she thought it couldn’t hurt to spread around,
a polished recitation of her works and days,
worth about an interview per pound.

But in a week they thrilled her with the news,
and though the piggy only yielded ninety cents
she shopped away her unemployment blues,
scribbled checks against her next month’s rent
for a calfskin case and new cross-training shoes.

And that was the last we ever saw of her.
None of her usual contacts had a clue,
except her new personal manager
who knew from watching her accounts accrue
that she couldn’t conceivably be happier.

The Parking Lot

Sedan de Ville

Oliver Kingman wheels regal his shimmering stretch
into its place of honor by the door, eyes
the Bug at the foot of the lot with something akin to fear:
all these years of running his place he's always been first,
and now some flextime freakshow comes before
the sun is up, burning the lights, as if he cared
about the flow of work or man from day to night,
or rituals of keys. Mister Kingman pushes home
the magnificent door and savors the solid thunk
of his enameled dreams, squints against the sun
rising in his chrome, thinks of Cadillacs to come
as he heads into the place he built with his hands, a man
with places to go, a man with appointments to keep.



Import

Bloody with morning,
low in the red eye of sun,
squadrons of Nissans.



Electra 225

Caught like a fly in the amber of morning
the janitor eases his deuce and a quarter
to rest in the first of the unreserved spaces,
sits with his radio, drinking the last
of his breakfast of beer. In back of his mind
is a certain unease with the ghost of the previous
owner (a soldier more hopeful than wise,
who’d bought the impeccable ride for a woman
more trying than true) whispering mile
after mile of adulteries into his ear
from a government grave in the wintery earth
of Detroit. At the start it seemed fortunate past
all his dreams: a woman with money to burn
with a car that was everything rolled into one.
But of late he'd begun to have certain misgivings
at how it appeared to betray his intentions
whenever the voice in his ear became lulling
or frightened him more than he usually was,
how it reached for the shoulders or hungered for speed
or was simply so smooth that he found himself drifting
to sleep at the wheel. He poured his libation,
went to his duties, with only a glance
at the glittering thing he'd escaped, saw only
its blank and implacable beauty returned.



Honda

In black ten-gallon,
blue jeans, hand tooled boots, ambling
from trusted Honda
to his opulent corral
in the Xerox room,
a faithful reproduction
of the golden west,
riding an eastern pony.
He is a vision
of some lost nobility,
a hint of mislaid
character, backbone, poise. Then,
in grey ten-gallon,
grey jeans, boots, another one,
from another Honda, grey.



Mustang

Driven madly through the dawn
from condominium to panic,
the junior salesman pushes in
between desire and consummation,
sweeper and boss. Dashboard strewn
with foiled antacid, he sees in Kingman's
lacquer Kingman's lackey, unaware,
despite his various degrees,
that the space is empty by design,
if unofficially, owned
by Kingman's secretary, Suze,
high school graduate,
who as he sits pulls up behind
and taps the horn of her new Corvette.
Puzzled for a second, finally
he understands, in time to see
her smile dissolve like windshield frost.
Backing out, he smiles across,
a new offense, sees his future
curling from her chromed exhausts.

Bubbles

In the end, his mind wasn’t right,
if it ever was. It was clear,
as he put his jeweled soap to flight
from the city’s summer parks and piers

that he was no longer there
with the rest of us, that he was one
with the iridescent membranous air
his wire wands stole from the sun,

the huge, oscillating spheres
in which a hundred others milled,
the tetrahedra stacked in tiers
until the twisted columns spilled

their remnant droplets to his feet.
He was perennial, a fixture,
his nest of wands, pans, discreet
tip jar, his secret mixtures

jugged, marked with painted runes,
but he imperceptibly became
as sheer as his diaphanous balloons.
We didn’t even know his name,

still less where he might live, or how,
what kind of life his small and few
contributions would allow.
He charmed us, that was all we knew;

we were blinded by his art.
An ephemeral phenomenon,
he drew the music of his heart
in films of air. Then he was gone.

Monkeys

Two brass monkeys
one brass bitch;
devil to pay
and no hot pitch.

Iron monkeys
stuck in a ditch;
devil to pay
and no hot pitch.

Golden monkeys
growing rich;
devil to pay
and no hot pitch.

Sleepy monkey
at the switch;
devil to pay
and no hot pitch.

All the monkeys,
which is which?
Devil to pay
and no hot pitch.

A Valediction Forbidding Mourning

Charles Tombe lost his wife;
the black angels swoop and drag.
His Rose, the flower of his life,
has strangled on a plastic bag.

A goat, she was his complement;
a truer heart was never born,
and he was never so content
as when he took her by the horns.

Her face was all an impish smile,
her sweetness brightened all his days,
at night she warmed their domicile
with her endearing, woolly ways.

Their love had been discovered by
her former owner in his field,
and in Sudan that means you tie
the knot: the banns were quickly sealed.

A modest dowry was assessed
by the local judge who married them;
their marriage vows were duly blessed
by clergy, law, and cherubim,

and all went well for Charles and Rose,
though life was hard and times lean,
would still be well had not her nose
been drawn to polyethylene.

But do not mourn for gentle Rose,
nor Charles, who’s not a man to worry,
all earthly things come to a close,
and she became a lovely curry.

Landscape With Still Life

And now the hedge crawls with roses.
Neighbor’s getaways, they smear
the sober privet, little lips,
calling in little pink voices.

Listen. The neighbors are laughing about it.
They sit on their pressure-treated altar
rattling tall, aluminum teas,
toast their luck at being themselves.

Meanwhile, their roses flee,
weak, unpruned, gone to foliage.
Listen. You can hear them purr,
soliciting, mewling love.

Oh, it’s wonderful here. It is.
The ranked pools of iced tea,
the decks of impeccable, rotless green.
All this. Roses, too.

Much Ado

If nothing else, Nothing’s plentiful.
The universe, to modern thought,
is full of it, a veritable
cornucopia of naught,

the matter that we take for All
a scant fraction of the whole,
including what we choose to call
“dark,” the mystery casserole

of particles we haven’t found,
grit we posit “Somewhere,”
lest good equations prove unsound.
Still, we know there’s Something there,

though even Something’s mostly not:
everything we see or touch
is virtually empty space; what’s
truly solid isn’t much.

Nothing grows at quite a clip:
the universe is fast expanding;
but sweet nothings from your lips
are truly Something, notwithstanding.

Fable

A pointy-headed potentate
declared His closet out of date,
commissioned robes to be designed
with His divinity in mind.
The tailors ran Him up some stuff,
none of it nearly good enough:
to Him the breathy silks of China
whispered hints of something finer.

On pain of death He set His drapers
weaving bolts of silky vapor
and they did exactly that:
they brought the jaded plutocrat
a suit of air and stroked and fussed
until He was completely trussed
in nothing but His own belief,
wafting a matching handkerchief.

Light of Heaven, thus arrayed,
decreed a royal cavalcade
to show the population just how
comely was its sacred cow.
And so He rode His gilded chair
among the thronging thousands, bare,
while everybody played it cool
and noticed nothing. Enter Fool.

“He’s naked!” sang our barefoot boy;
“We’re history,” mumbled hoi polloi.
Anointed only gazed and said
a single quiet sentence: “Head.”
Someone took it from the street,
put it gently at His feet.
Awed, we watched His raiment flowing,
the silken grandeur of His going.