Unnatural by Stephen Dunn

I’m sure Nature has disapproved of mefor years, as if it had overheardone of my silent screeds against it,and my insistence that only the artificialhas a real shot at becoming morethan we started with, designed,revised, something completely itself.If it could speak, Nature might sayit contains lilies, the strange beautyof swamps, the architectural artof spiders, the many et ceterasthat make the world the world.Nothing man-made can compete, Nature might say. Oh Naturehas been known to go on and on.And if it wanted to push things further,it could cite our sleek perfectionof bombs and instruments of torture,our nature so human we hidebehind words that disguise and justify.But that’s as generous as I want to bein giving Nature its say. I’ve seen itrandomly play its violence card—natural, no-motive crimeswith hail and rain and vicious winds,taking out, say, trailer courts andplaying fields and homes for the elderly.So I want to be heard and overheard,this time for real, out loud, in factright in Nature’s face, to say I preferthe artifice in what’s called artificial,the often concealed skill involved,without which we’d have no accurateview of ourselves, or of lilies in a pond.

In Other Words

When it comes to the underworld
and the fragility of guesswork, 
what makes us think the dead 
want evidence of our caring? 
At the grave site, a litany of roses,
good wishes, and prayer.
And those who are pretending—
let’s remember at such moments
everyone is an amateur of feelings. 
Some of us will be the kind 
who say nothing, pivot, and walk away. 
Those who choose to speak 
will discover it takes other words
to say the words they mean.

Jealousy

When I see you, who were so wise and cool, 

Gazing with silly sickness on that fool 

You’ve given your love to, your adoring hands 

Touch his so intimately that each understands, 

I know, most hidden things; and when I know 

Your holiest dreams yield to the stupid bow 

Of his red lips, and that the empty grace 

Of those strong legs and arms, that rosy face, 

Has beaten your heart to such a flame of love, 

That you have given him every touch and move, 

Wrinkle and secret of you, all your life, 

—Oh! then I know I’m waiting, lover-wife, 

For the great time when love is at a close, 

And all its fruit’s to watch the thickening nose 

And sweaty neck and dulling face and eye, 

That are yours, and you, most surely, till you die! 

Day after day you’ll sit with him and note 

The greasier tie, the dingy wrinkling coat; 

As prettiness turns to pomp, and strength to fat, 

And love, love, love to habit! 

                                                     And after that, 

When all that’s fine in man is at an end, 

And you, that loved young life and clean, must tend 

A foul sick fumbling dribbling body and old, 

When his rare lips hang flabby and can’t hold 

Slobber, and you’re enduring that worst thing, 

Senility’s queasy furtive love-making, 

And searching those dear eyes for human meaning, 

Propping the bald and helpless head, and cleaning 

A scrap that life’s flung by, and love’s forgotten,— 

Then you’ll be tired; and passion dead and rotten; 

And he’ll be dirty, dirty! 

                                                 O lithe and free 

And lightfoot, that the poor heart cries to see, 

That’s how I’ll see your man and you!— 

                                                                         But you 

—Oh, when that time comes, you’ll be dirty too!

I Don't Have A Pill For That

It scares me to watch

a woman hobble along

the sidewalk, hunched adagio

leaning on —

there’s so much fear

I could draw you a diagram

of the great reduction

all of us will soon

be way-back-when.

The wedding is over.

Summer is over.

Life please explain.

This book is nearly halfway read.

I don’t have a pill for that,

the doctor said.

I Knew There Was Something Wrong

I knew something was wrong 

the day I tried to pick up a 

small piece of sunlight 

and it slithered through my fingers, 

not wanting to take shape. 

Everything else stayed the same—

the chairs and the carpet 

and all the corners 

where the waiting continued.

Haha

Note to self

"If you aren't learning, you have not been paying attention.

If you have nothing to say, it is because your heart is closed.

Milk Shake by Mary Ruefle

I am never lonely and never bored. Except when I bore myself, which is my definition of loneliness—to bore oneself. It makes a body lonesome, that. Today I am very bored and very lonely. I can think of nothing better to do than grind salt and pepper into my milk shake, which I have been doing since I was thirteen, which was so long ago the very word thirteen has an old-fashioned ring to it, one might as well say Ottoman Empire. Traditionally, thirteen is an unlucky number. Little did I know at thirteen that I was on the road, by a single action, to loneliness and boredom. My friend Vicki and I were sitting at the lunch counter in Woolworth’s, waiting for the milk shakes we had ordered—hers chocolate, mine vanilla—when she got up to go to the ladies’ room. The chocolate shake came while she was gone and as a joke I sprinkled salt and pepper on it, because I was, though I didn’t know it, young and callous and cruel. Vicki came back, she took the paper off her straw, she stuck her straw in her milk shake, she sucked through the straw for what seemed an eternity, and then she swallowed, which seemed like forever. This is the best milk shake I have ever had. That’s what she said, though she didn’t say it as much as she sighed it. The best shake I’ve ever had. In such sudden and unexpected ways does boredom begin. I tried her milk shake, I told her what I had done, the vanilla shake came, and we salt-and-peppered that one, too, and afterward we were bored, so we went shopping—we were in Woolworth’s after all—though by shopping we meant shoplifting, as any lonely bored thirteen-year-old knows. Vicki stole a tub of the latest invention, lip gloss, which was petroleum jelly dyed pink, and I stole a yellow lace mantilla to wear to Mass on Easter Sunday, though I never wore it to Mass; I wore it to confession the Saturday before, confessing to the priest that I had stolen the very thing I was wearing on my head. Why not? I had nothing else to confess. Playing a mean trick on my best friend, even one that turned out all right, didn’t seem worth the bother. What bothered me was that the priest seemed bored by my confession; I had thought to shock him, but it was he who shocked me, as I had so little experience of adult boredom. He gave me three Hail Marys and closed the screen. What was happening? I had shocked myself by stealing the mantilla and then confessing it, but bored the priest, whose boredom now shocked me, though it would bore me later, years later, when lip gloss was as common as clover, when the idea of Catholic women covering their heads was antiquated, when priests were suspected of being callous and cruel and the combination of salt and sugar was a raging trend, served in all the swank joints and upscale places. But, as I said, I am never lonely and never bored, and if today is an exception, it is the age-old exception of every day, for every day turns into tomorrow, and tomorrow turns into today, and today into yesterday, and I confess there is very little any of us can do to change it.

Misunderstandings by Tony Hoagland

I thought insulin was what they put in sleeping bags.

I probably should not have called my class in feminist literature Books by
    Girls.

When I compared humanity to a flower growing in the shadow of a
     munitions factory,

                                                  it may be that I was not being fair to flowers.

I thought someone was watching and keeping score.

I believed the desire for revenge was a fossil fuel that you could drive a
     lifetime on.

I thought suffering had something to be said for it.

I said, "Love me better or go to hell."
I said, "I will forgive when I am good and ready."
I said, "Rumours of my happiness have been greatly exaggerated."

I still don't understand why what I give and what I get back in return
                                                       never seem to weigh then same.

My favorite days were grey- troubled, moody, and infinite.

Each time I plunged into cold water, I was happy
in a way that can never be destroyed.

I went a million miles, I don't know why-maybe some kind of quest,
     maybe to hide.

All those years I kept trying and failing and trying
                                                       to find my one special talent in this life-

Why did it take me so long to figure out
                                                            that my special talent was trying?
                                           

               

You, If No One Else by Tino Villanueva

Listen, you

who transformed your anguish 

into healthy awareness,

put your voice

where your memory is.

You who swallowed

the afternoon dust,

defend everything you understand

with words.

You, if no one else,

will condemn with your tongue

the erosion each disappointment brings.

You, who saw the images

of disgust growing,

will understand how time

devours the destitute;

you, who gave yourself

your own commandments,

know better than anyone

why you turned your back

on your town's toughest limits.

Don't hush,

don't throw away

the most persistent truth,

as our hard-headed brethren

sometimes do.

Remember well

what your life was like: cloudiness,

and slick mud

after a drizzle;

flimsy windows the wind

kept rattling

in winter, and that

unheated slab dwelling

where coldness crawled

up in your clothes.

Tell how you were able to come

to this point, to unbar

History's doors

to see your early years,

your people, the others.

Name the way 

rebellion's calm spirit has served you,

and how you came

to unlearn the lessons

of that teacher,

your land's omnipotent defiler.

"Drink the light."

"Sometimes the smallest thing can be enough to glue you back to life."

Wait.
Performance without rehearsal.
Body without alterations.
Head without premeditation.

I know nothing of the role I play.
I only know it’s mine. I can’t exchange it.

I have to guess on the spot
just what this play’s all about.

Ill-prepared for the privilege of living,
I can barely keep up with the pace that the action demands.
I improvise, although I loathe improvisation.
I trip at every step over my own ignorance.
I can’t conceal my hayseed manners.
My instincts are for happy histrionics.
Stage fright makes excuses for me, which humiliate me more.
Extenuating circumstances strike me as cruel.

Words and impulses you can’t take back,
stars you’ll never get counted,
your character like a raincoat you button on the run —
the pitiful results of all this unexpectedness.

If only I could just rehearse one Wednesday in advance,
or repeat a single Thursday that has passed!
But here comes Friday with a script I haven’t seen.
Is it fair, I ask
(my voice a little hoarse,
since I couldn’t even clear my throat offstage).

You’d be wrong to think that it’s just a slapdash quiz
taken in makeshift accommodations. Oh no.
I’m standing on the set and I see how strong it is.
The props are surprisingly precise.
The machine rotating the stage has been around even longer.
The farthest galaxies have been turned on.
Oh no, there’s no question, this must be the premiere.
And whatever I do
will become forever what I’ve done.

Redeux: Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is

you must lose things,

feel the future dissolve in a moment

like salt in a weakened broth.

What you held in your hand,

what you counted and carefully saved,

all this must go so you know

how desolate the landscape can be

between the regions of kindness.

How you ride and ride

thinking the bus will never stop,

the passengers eating maize and chicken

will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness

you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho

lies dead by the side of the road.

You must see how this could be you,

how he too was someone

who journeyed through the night with plans

and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,

you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. 

You must wake up with sorrow.

You must speak to it till your voice

catches the thread of all sorrows

and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,

only kindness that ties your shoes

and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,

only kindness that raises its head

from the crowd of the world to say

It is I you have been looking for,

and then goes with you everywhere

like a shadow or a friend.