Brian Henry
Where We Stand Now
Because getting the mail means
crossing the street, the mailbox
in the neighbor’s yard. The post
a white splinter. A monument
to your father’s MG and what
it can do after eight hours of.
Happy Hour from noon to.
You check the mail anyway,
that is what you do. Nothing.
No bills. Kids don’t get those;
the thought itself signals you are years
past the event, which you conflate with now,
since you must cross the street to check
the mail, the mailbox beside
a telephone pole, almost
protected by it, and as long
as you’ve lived here, nothing.
This is where we stand now. Not
in our own yard. There, fire ants build
and move, swarm when I rake them
with a stick. One bit your friend.
I was out back moving mulch
that was a rotten stump, ground,
to the rear corner, to keep down
the weeds and vines, and heard him
scream his little-boy scream.
He cried for a while inside our house,
your mother iced his foot. I returned
to my shoveling a little undone.
Distinguishing one variety of plant
from another, even one unrelated,
has always been too much for me.
Poor vision, weak memory. So when I pulled
at the vines ensnarling the fence,
I did not know I was making poison rain,
so much it soaked through cotton
to break out in streaks, shoulders to groin.
Like music, which I also forget / as soon
as silence. Proper names. Place names.
Only numbers remain. Every one
of your phone numbers for 25
years, every birth date. Your daughter’s
day in the center, the youngest but still
a big girl. She sings her own song,
stretches up to show how tall.
Orders everyone to eat once
the talking is done. Here, I think,
this is a celebration
of the life that is you, that has become you.
This makes me happier than I have been
in months. And there is nothing external
about this. Despite the light rain
and its condemnation of the sky.
The umbrella is uninvolved
but is being held to the side in case
its effect is required. I simultaneously
abhor and require. My focus, when it rains,
goes to my shoes, their ability
to withstand not just water but water
stains. And mud, the cold of the mud.
That day in Ljubljana was gray
but I could not smell the rain when I left
the flat to walk the two miles into town
and it hit not even halfway there
and hit so hard and fast it was legendary rain,
unreal as my boots filled from below
and from above. They would not dry
and I had to buy shoes so clumsy
you laughed when I brought them home
with their story, the boots left on the stoop.
This is where we stand now. Behind the scene
where our daughter shines. She shines, so bright
I must look at you to make sure I am there,
that we all have survived, made it this far.
Once we start examining lacks,
we become what we loathe.
This is where we stand now. In a room
called an office in which no order.
Eighteen books on the desk, which shows through
as brown despite the papers layering
its veneer. Boxes on the floor.
A box in a chair. The trash can unemptied
for two weeks. It’s full. Two stacks
of books in front of each case.
One empty chair. A phone, a stapler,
your coat hanging from the broken hook
on the back of the door. The sounds
of voices waffle through the tiles
of the ceiling, but the voices remain
in the room, beside or below you,
in which their owners speak. The volume
of the music here is increased, to drown.
Classical lines. I cannot remember who.
A cell phone’s ring outside the office
crosses as if into, a young man speaks
loudly as if to you. You kick shut
the door, the umbrella falls from where
it was propped to block the way. Fuck.
At fifteen I could not drink and walk
at the same time. I had to stop
to sip. So many who work in Athens’
coffee shops have tattoos above the ass.
Their work requires them to turn
their backs on customers and bend,
which pulls their tops up and bares the ink.
What at first was interesting is now tired.
Now plain skin would arouse. You
are not prepared to confess now.
To pick up an idea is an idea.
To dodge an idea is another.
The library’s steps should be free
of smoke. The library’s steps
should be for stepping. The library’s
columns hold up the fountain
of knowledge. Bless them.
Will the refusal of tweed purify me?
Keep me pure? At fifteen I wanted
elbow patches. I owned
a blazer at fifteen. Is it too late
to atone? I bought a pair of boots
I never wore after John Whelan asked
if they were from the girls’ department.
I’d thought they were sleek.
This is where we stand now. On a sidewalk
before the crosswalk waiting for the red
to turn to white, for word to become image.
Out and out, we push ourselves,
only to return as quickly as possible
to where we felt the push to leave.
You pick up a sonnet and test it,
you dodge a sonnet and divest yourself
of distillation. Is common knowledge
borrowed knowledge? Would you say
it’s citeable? Let’s not talk
ill of the dead. Just the dying.
You wonder if my problem is listening
or remembering. If both, then it’s caring.
What do you want for your birthday?
To forget. I want a ribbon
so I can connect this spool to that
and type letters to the editor.
My leg dangles numb from my knee.
The body, my body, is what
I think about most. Even in my sleep
I think about thebodymybody.
How it disappoints in every way.
I consider hiring another
to replace this body but. Without
which aside from on top of
entranced by outward switch
a stretch to teach the body how
to stretch and strengthen. The tops of my feet
—those pathetic little bones—hurt.
I snipped a peeling blister from the ball
of my foot and forgot to wash. What
did I forget to wash and for how long
has it been forgotten?
Caffeine is no substitute for sleep
though sometimes it breathes like a meteor
shower that peaks an hour before dawn.
You woke for it but the moon was full
and your glasses downstairs in the cold,
you thought you saw clouds. Muldoon
in the paper, not even a week after
his visit. Proper names: Heaney,
Donne, Korelitz, McGuckian,
Carson, Davison. There are others
but they have been forgotten. Call them
e, f, g. Call them a triangle
and thank them for connecting. Open forms
close down. Next to the article
a Victoria’s Secret ad with a woman
—hair blond and long, legs long—
in a black sheer something in front of
a mirror. The curves of her ass,
with its crack, the cleft where it meets
her legs, highlight the material’s benefits,
but the image has been altered: a blank
space has replaced what should be
hair given the material and its sheerness.
The look on her face defies complaint,
but you complain anyway, do not buy
the product. If you scroll down: Muldoon
on some steps unaware of his partner on the page.
I listen for the sound of skin about to rip
but hear only a flutter as if the wind
were urging itself to involve. The lamp a globe.
Not a defense mechanism, this
movement between “you” and “I,”
but a deflective mechanism meant
to hold and to resist the self and its secrets.
You refuse to read poems as pixels,
I defuse the difference and call it
visual criticism. You decline
to laugh and I decide you are right
in your decline. “If he is a poet,
then I do not know what poetry is.”
That is his confession. I hold
this old vase, this artifact,
and place it in front of me and sit down
to write a poem—I have a meter,
a rhyme scheme, a first line (“The curves
in clay enhance this paltry past”),
the meaning of ekphrasis in me;
“last” will rhyme with “past,” the poem
will go to fourteen lines—and I realize
I know nothing about the vase,
its past or place, the way it took to here,
and feel almost afraid, or sick,
on its behalf. I write the poem
anyway. How it shines.
A missed appointment—not mine—
and me sick. Made to feel. Sick.
Unstarched and frigid on a day colder
than expected. Thus the forecast.
John and Heidi plan to start something,
need a name. Wagon. Trestle.
Scarf. Red umbrella. A word
neither pretentious nor taken.
A word, perhaps, that sticks
to this place without the provincial,
the cute, or the stupid. A missed
appointment and I am bad. I am stupid.
Not a walking calendar.
Not a sorry mess. My point
of reference lost, I waylay
a flier posted on the coffee shop
wall. Vaginal yet phallic,
like a slipper. Boredom always
a possibility but never
an option. Enhance the learning
experience by improving
the learning environment.
Wrap autumn around you and come
like it counts for once. Resist
winter and what withers with it.
Decline to weep for what is no longer
a what but a was. This chain of what was:
these mistakes allowed twice.
Once in their occurrence, twice
in their recalling. The country prepares
to attack, the country assumes.
The sign of a poem’s greatness is not
if I want to sit down and memorize it,
but if I want to kill who wrote it
so I can claim it. I am dying
just like everyone else
is dying: daily. Barely
into this poem and the daily
keeps seeping in. Politics
etcetera. And I began
from love and wanting to write from love.
The need for anger has a way.
To read the news is to see, to see,
to see. To hear the new is to read,
to read. Undead, I die slowly,
watch the hair flee my scalp
at every opportunity,
watch the skin lose. One benefit
of myopia is not being bothered
by such things too much, as I can see
very little once I walk into the house
and de-lens. Cleaning a low
priority, there is no dirt to clean.
The mole on my shoulder, the mole
on my back: malignant
or benign, I do not wear glasses
shirtless, I would not know.
This house is trying to kill me with its dust
and bad air. Too much yelling
everywhere. No room is safe
from the sounds of hate of spite,
resentment a stale smell
having been around so long.
The Royal smashed during the move
beyond fixing, I set to it
with a screwdriver to remove as much
of it from itself as I can. Arrive.
I arrange the screws to spell “pain”
and photograph the word with the typewriter’s
husk surrounded
by pieces of its former self then throw
it all into a box and drive it
to the Clarke County landfill
two miles past the Super Wal
Mart, where I stop on the way back
to buy light bulbs for the house
which goes through them faster than furnace filters
which I forgot to buy. The car
has new tires, new serpentine belt,
its floor covered with raisins
Cheerios barrettes pretzels
paper and if I were a crying man
I would cry I swear I would cry.
Crack this poem open and you will see
me seated with headphones on and glasses
off, a shirt I bought thirteen years
ago, pants not so old but without
a button, socks the newest thing
on me, my body losing
its occasional fleshiness
growing lean because I again
distrust food and what it does
because I am learning to move
and cause pain by moving because
I am sitting here wanting to keep
going, to reach, knowing I will keep
going. Has there been a you today?
How many have dropped into
the poem today? My one chance
is to surround myself in the poem with those
I love, and what began with love
today began with an appointment
(not mine) I missed, and this has led
to what I would prefer to leave
behind. Tomorrow I will leave
it there unless the air remains
remains. The air so unclear here,
I still finger my eye to try
to coax a tear knowing I know
I cannot even will a good cry.
Instead I handle the garbage to the curb,
separate the recyclables,
break down a large box
to lay flat and see gone.
I will not push a fist through glass
tonight though I think I could strike it
so fast the glass would break only
where my hand was because if I move
too slow, I slice my wrist. Forgive
me, me, but I must resist a scar
so easy to read. All reading is in the best
way mis-reading. The angle of approach
is only part of it. Without
speed the glass will eat the skin
without focus the skin will inhale
the glass without speed and focus
there is no snap at the end to carry
the skin into and out of the glass
before the meat of the hand the knuckles
the wrist are cut so clean you feel
the air as pain. Air descends
to announce the violation of skin.
Who needs a lungfull of that in a limb?
This is where we stand now. On the verge
of acting in our own worst interests.
Sorry to have missed the point.
Two days off and everything
is off. Today I drove to the edge
of Georgia. Lake Hartwell’s red shore
from a bridge. Now I’m a Southern poet!
The sun in my rearview so loud
I had to hold up a hand.
It set hard, and the moon—moon
shadow you’re “hipping and hopping” on.
Until beset upon by clouds.
No more moon. The further north
I drove the more southern I felt.
No, not Southern. Georgian.
Georgia poet! Driving with “Merriment,”
“Up,” “Left To His Own Devices,”
“Reveal,” and for the last hundred miles,
“In the Aeroplane Over the Sea.”
People say Athens does not count
as the South. I count myself out.
Pre-Thanksgiving and already
we give our thanks. Every time
I look your way I give my thanks.
The unelected president
decides to burn a DVD
and shoves the disc into the toaster.
The ad is banned, poor England.
Your humour sacked by the war on terror!
Fuckwits yawn over
their very old wines and poke
holes. So many holes the light
cannot find a way through.
If I wrote religious tracts,
the meter would not sway so much
as it moves. Four punches per line
does not always equal four
feet though it could, it could.
An East Brunswick afternoon,
leftover noodles and veggies
reheated in the microwave,
we drove to, were talking about.
Belfast, of course, is no Dublin.
Now let’s talk about me
for a change. The holly by the window
blocks your view of the oak beyond it,
freakish in how it grows despite
the brown air and brown water
that feed it. Please do not eat the snow,
no matter how white. Bones are not
to be taken for granted; remove one
and see what I mean. What I mean
is every part of me is a part
of something and should remain
a part of something. To forget
and let a part of something slip.
What if the part you lose is what
makes you sensitive to others’
suffering? This is where
we stand now. Between the lines
yet straight, in need of sexuality
whatever its bent. Reason
enough to lay off and let people come
where they want to come. I know
I’ve said nothing profound yet,
so clearly something else is at work.
A different agenda. An attempt
to hold my thoughts all at once
in a single column and maintain
the look and feel of order however
order arranges itself. Distance
less essential to this than to what
was written before thirty. An attempt
at stepping to the side of anger and whatever
else moved me to write
before. And I know the metatextual
holds less interest now than. To make
poetry a fiction. Dissolved
the speck of paper on my tongue
and called what I saw a vision.
Nourished by the lackadaisical
for too long, I converted to high-
strung. Ashamed to answer “me”
when the father of my daughter’s friend
asked (rhet.) “Who wants to be
an orthodontist when they grow up?”
I felt a little better when he turned
the talk to how much they make.
I just thought it would be nice to force
wayward teeth to grow straight.
Five women in the kitchen, all the doors
open for the smoke. The neck is burning.
I have not seen the gizzard. I ate one
once. You asleep in your party dress
behind me on the bed, Luna still
in the laptop. You awoke at six,
cried when we told you to hush,
screamed until I wanted to punch
myself in the mouth to make you stop.
Baby EE is asleep, you’ll wake
the baby you’ll wake the baby you’ll.
If I could write off the time I donate
to charity, would I donate my time
to charity? Could a poem
be called a charity? A child?
Something there does not equate.
This is where we stand now. On both sides
of a common bed. The bags of food
empty but you collect more toys
every time you see a relation,
your third birthday almost two weeks
old and the presents still trickle in.
If I call this poem a journal
does that settle anything? make
anything less or more clear?
If I choose blueberry cream cheese
over strawberry, does that amount
to treason? How many murders
in the name of some god? If I misspell
Mahommed, who will issue the fatwa?
You can have my head, Allah. My spine.
You can bend me over, Christ. I stand
here waiting to be ravaged by belief
I myself do not hold. I believe in what
I see and then don’t always believe.
The Fates are as likely a source of life
as any god with balls and a prick.
If I insist on doubt, who will set me
on the path to faith if not the god(s)
I’ve pissed off with doubt? This gets old,
I agree. I agree that “veer” should be applied
only to birds under attack
by other birds. Three days later
a finch shits on Megan’s poem.
She tries not to take it personally.
Donn asks what the white is
in chicken shit, and I answer piss.
Chicken shit, he says. Ah,
a joke! not a question. Duh.
I will myself beyond the body
in front of me, and my foot goes.
Pat me on the head and call me drizzle.
An hour caulking the windows
outside your playroom. Drafty
and with nothing between the carpet
and the cement floor, between floor
and ground, the room always cold.
The convection heater helps,
the foam on the inside of the frames.
The caulk is gray and applied with fingers,
not a gun. The heat seems to hold.
However you pronounce it, nuclear
war is not a round of golf
or a coke binge. Let go of your cock
long enough, fella, and you might
learn something. Like people do not
have to die by the thousand for you
to keep your retirement plan.
Why isn’t there a video game
where one can assassinate
the fucker? We all live in the mind.
This is not a recording, nor
is it real. Tuck the hamster is typing
this; he is a far cry from Nip
his predecessor, who won the battle
and lost the war. I need a pet
to shave my beard and trim the hair
that sprouts from my nose. To rub my ass
and pry the dirt that sticks at the back
of my navel. Rock and roll fucks
with every theory of the avant-garde,
sorry. Can the avant-garde
advance on a G4 PowerBook?
It will play a DVD
it will burn a CD and strip
the sheen of difficulty from every
endeavor. It pumps Cobain’s
anger and pain into both ears
and pushes Tuck off the keyboard
so a man can step up and weep
for what was/what is/what will, now,
never be. Binge, binge. Purge.
It’s the Friday after Jesus’
day and I’m in New York
which makes this a New York poem.
Yes, it really is that simple.
I’m allergic to newspaper,
to money when it’s new. I’m afraid
of coins and the grime they leave.
Everyone speaks in code.
I hate parties so I go to the party,
finally meet Joe, who saves
the encounter with a joke I like.
Matthew’s been drinking all day
with C., who fits tartly on his lap.
Joe tells Jen that art cannot “convey”
a spanking. Jen, an artist, will not
agree. The issue is less art
than spanking. It’s all about spanking.
This is where we stand now. On the brink
of expatriation. Brought
to a drool, Americans outspent
themselves this Christmas.
Caught by accident in a crowd,
I am not free from the lines
for the rink the tree Radio City
Music Hall for half an hour.
Tim buys me lunch before he goes
to the opera, he tells me he sees
two dozen a year. I’ve been
to two in thirty years. Or three.
Timothy has gone to see friends
but Lynn is home to let me
and my luggage in. We meet Brett
for coffee at The Fall. A hooker
on the subway slides over
to make room for me. I force
myself not to touch my wallet
to be sure it’s there and hate
myself for thinking about it
at all, here, and now. Which is where
we stand now. On the edge of a new year
that, so far, is a bad year.
Ignore what is here and consider
the dinosaurs, how much is known now
compared to when you last cared.
Let me be the first to say: this mess
is far from perfect, or “perfect,” which
is not where we stand now but where
we just were standing, toward the back
of the crowd chatting, knowing the three
on the stage were uptight about noise
from the crowd, “SHUT THE FUCK UP”
filtering from the center of the floor
lest Yo La Tengo despise Athens
for good. When they replayed a song
—“I don’t think you heard [read:
appreciated] that one”—we left.
A club is not a congregation,
a group cannot assume silence
without earning it or making it
moot through music. Beyond
the woodpile between our yard and theirs,
the dead tree creaks and rocks
with the wind until its limits
force it to stop and it stops
and returns to its initial position
but then moves past it again
and though leaning into the wind
the tree pushes into it until
the wind pushes it back on its own
rocking, not a procedure
but a process dependent on several
things for its significance: the tree,
the wind, the yard, and me. It falls
and flattens the grass below. So much
penetralia with which to contend.
So many flavors. Dust mites
die when the heating system dries
the interior. At the allergist’s
I reacted to every prick of the skin.
This is where we stand now. In a welt
on the arm that burns it itches so hot.
A piñata spilled, pick out
the choicest pieces and chew, as on
a series of fragments arranged alphabetically.
I crank the a/c
despite the bill. Close the blinds
to spite the sun. Clog the drain
to spite the drain. Unsung whereever
drywall reflects a house’s
attempts to settle back down.
This is where we stand now,
with twenty-four minutes to write
the next, the battery slowing
to nil. So drunk I lost sight
of what I was seeing, a shift
from vertical to less than straight,
the daily task presses what’s left
of my brain after it sheds its weight
gathered from a day of so much speech
the lips have chapped. Today no one
wept though pollen seemed to reach
inside the building—sniffly afternoon.
Sixteen minutes, with only two lines,
I realize I do not realize.