Copyright © 2013 by Jillian Weise
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Publications by BOA Editions, Ltd.—a not-for-profit corporation under section 501 (c) (3) of the United States Internal Revenue Code—are made possible with funds from a variety of sources, including public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency; the Literature Program of the National Endowment for the Arts; the County of Monroe, NY; the Lannan Foundation for support of the Lannan Translations Selection Series; the Mary S. Mulligan Charitable Trust; the Rochester Area Community Foundation; the Arts & Cultural Council for Greater Rochester; the Steeple-Jack Fund; the Ames-Amzalak Memorial Trust in memory of Henry Ames, Semon Amzalak and Dan Amzalak; and contributions from many individuals nationwide. See Colophon on page 74 for special individual acknowledgments.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Weise, Jillian Marie.
[Poems. Selections]
The book of goodbyes : poems / by Jillian Weise. — First edition.
pages ; cm
ISBN 978-1-938160-14-1 (pbk) – ISBN 978-1-938160-15-8 (ebook)
I. Title.
PS3623.E432474C65 2013
813'.6—dc23
2013013139
BOA Editions, Ltd.
250 North Goodman Street, Suite 306
Rochester, NY 14607
www.boaeditions.org
A. Poulin, Jr., Founder (1938–1996)
for Josh Bell, immanentizing the eschaton
CONTENTS
One
Up Late and Likewise
The Ugly Law
Decent Recipe for Tilapia
I’ve Been Waiting All Night
Café Loop
How to Treat Flowers
Affairs
Poem for His Girl
Intermission
Tiny and Courageous Finches
Go On High Ship
Marcel Addresses Kate (As He Would If He Could)
Two
Why I No Longer Skype
Portrait of Big Logos
Once I thought I was going to die in the desert without knowing who I was
Semi Semi Dash
Poem for His Ex
Goodbyes
For Big Logos, in Hopes He Will Write Poems Again
Be Not Far From Me
Curtain Call
Elegy for Zahra Baker
Notes
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Colophon
ONE
UP LATE AND LIKEWISE
It never stopped raining when I was with him
and we were wet and there were parties.
He was from another decade. It was honest.
With some you can never tell but with him
I could. My decade let the POWs come home.
What did your decade do? The thing about him is
he keeps being the thing. You could never
count on him. I did. It never stopped raining
and I could, it was honest, tell.
Would you like to be in the same decade with me?
Would you like to be caught dead with me?
THE UGLY LAW
Any person who is diseased, maimed, mutilated or
can I continue reading this? Will it affect my psyche
so that the next time Big Logos comes over
I will not be there in the room? Instead I will be
wandering a Chicago street in my dress with my
parasol as a cane, on the verge of arrest, where arrest
could mean “stopping” or “to keep the mind fixed
on a subject,” where the subject is the diseased,
maimed, mutilated self of 19th c. Chicago, the self
in any way deformed so as to be unsightly
and will I tell him to stop looking, tell him I’m tired
and I’m about to be arrested for walking in public
and I can’t possibly climax when I am an improper
person who is not allowed in or on the streets,
highways, thoroughfares or will he say we’re alone,
no one is watching, there is your bedside table
and there your mirror and who am I kidding?
I won’t tell him anything. There is no room
in bed for this. It does no good to bring things up
from the 19th c. or from last week when the things
have to do with—how do I say it—what is the word
I usually use? Last week I said it like this:
“Big Logos, a moth came out from hiding
as soon as I had taken my leg off and the moth
said, ‘Ha little cripple. Now you can’t get me
with the broom.’” Then I laughed so he would
know it’s okay to laugh. I do it like a joke.
I do it like it’s nothing. Why the cover-up?
Why are the laws stacked with it and I never
in high school heard of it? The maimed shall not
therein or thereon expose himself or herself
to public view under penalty of staring,
pointing, whispers, aphorisms such as “We are all disabled”
or “What a pretty face you have” or “God gives
and God takes away” or one dollar for each offense.
One dollar in 1881 is like $20 today. I wanted to compare it
to something like dinner at Ruby Tuesday or a bra
on sale at Victoria’s Secret, as if by comparing
the amount to something I have bought, I would buy
the penalty out. Then the penalty and all its horror
would be gone instead of arrested, kept in mind,
dwelled on when Big Logos comes over or forget him
when I am in the supermarket or forget the supermarket
when I am in front of twenty-four legs in a classroom
or forget the classroom when I am on the couch
watching TV: how will I not think of the woman
in Chicago trying to hide her limp, her thoughts
on her limp, trying not to bring it up, draw attention to it,
or what will happen if she is caught by the constable?
On the conviction of any person for a violation
of this section, if it shall seem proper and just,
the fine provided for may be suspended for 130 years
until a person enters “cripple” in the search engine
on Project Muse because a person has no cripple friends
and has started to think cripples don’t exist
and never did and finds the law. Why have I posted
the ordinance on the mirror and why have I traded
the lube in the bedside table for a twenty dollar bill?
What’s that supposed to do? Help the history slide in?
Help me remember? Such a person will be detained
at the police station, where he shall be well
in the company of criminals, concrete and moths
and a small window to the forbidden street cared for,
until he can be committed to the county poor house.
I am not poor. I am not even unsightly. What a pret
ty face
I have I’ve been told. Big Logos, will you attest
to my sightliness? Is this all in the past? Why are you
sleeping with me, anyway? Aren’t you afraid?
DECENT RECIPE FOR TILAPIA
Tell your back home friends it means nothing
and you will drop him as soon as you have
friends in the city. If you had more friends,
you would not sleep with him. If not him,
who would share your Tilapia? No beloved meal
begins, “Alone before a plate of fish . . .”
Find your market. “Are you single?” the man
behind the counter asks. What to think?
For meals, you are inside a couple.
From inside the couple, you have someone
to call while standing in line. “Does your
girlfriend know?” you must never ask.
Instead, “So many fish and which?”
The laws of attraction are this: There are
no laws of attraction. A person likes
a person. Both parties like each other
and in each other enjoy being liked.
Baste the fish in lemon and butter.
They say it takes time to meet people.
Do you agree? Sleep with your friend.
Disagree? Cut him off. Put it in the oven.
I’VE BEEN WAITING ALL NIGHT
I reckon you were asleep with your girl
before the phone rang. Make something up.
I’ve been waiting all night to tell you
about the couple in post-War France,
the woman fresh in her grave
and the man who didn’t like his mistress dead,
no sir, and so exhumed her, to the dismay
of his wife, who had him arrested
for the stink he made.
She was reburied, returned to the dead.
After jail, he dug her up to fuck again.
Attached suction cups and crafted
a wig from a broom. You can go now.
I’m more in the mood than you’re used to.
CAFÉ LOOP
She’s had it easy, you know. I knew her
from FSU, back before she was disabled.
I mean she was disabled but she didn’t
write like it. Did she talk like it?
Do you know what it is exactly?
She used to wear these long dresses
to cover it up. She had a poem
in The Atlantic. Yes, I’ll take water.
Me too. With a slice of lemon.
It must be nice to have The Atlantic.
Oh, she’s had it easy all right.
She should come out and state
the disability. She actually is very
dishonest. I met her once at AWP.
Tiny thing. Limps a little. I mean not
really noticeable. What will you have?
I can’t decide. How can she write
like she’s writing for the whole group?
I mean really. It’s kind of disgusting.
It’s kind of offensive. It’s kind of
a commodification of the subaltern
identity. Should we have wine?
Let’s have something light. It makes
you wonder how she lives with herself.
I wouldn’t mind. I would commodify
and run. She’s had it easy.
I can’t stand political poetry.
She never writes about it critically.
If it really concerns her, she should
just write an article or something.
I heard she’s not that smart. My friend
was in class with her and he said
actually she’s not that smart.
I believe it. I mean the kind of language
she uses, so simple, elementary.
My friend said she actually believes
her poems have speakers. Oh, that’s rich.
I’m sorry but if the book is called
amputee and you’re an amputee
then you are the speaker.
So New Criticism. Really I don’t like
her work at all. I find it lacking.
HOW TO TREAT FLOWERS
Take the flowers directly home. Make no sloppy small talk with women biting into oranges on park benches. Do not leave the flowers in the car, not even if you are the kind of guy who has a sun visor and dark-tinted windows. You must never leave the flowers in the car.
*
If the flowers are carnations—why? Wasn’t she worth roses? Wasn’t there a summer bouquet with a few sprigs of baby’s breath, one or two roses and maybe a lily? You cheapskate. Why are you such a cheapskate?
*
Leave the flowers on the kitchen table, in their clear plastic wrap, beside the blender. She will cut the plastic wrap with her favorite pair of white-handled scissors.
*
You buy the flowers. She cuts the stems, runs water warm, sprinkles sugar in the water, because somewhere, if you heard her correctly, somewhere before you (you forgot there was a before you) another man told her to put the flowers in sugar water.
*
None of this will happen in time. C. S. Lewis swears all of time is written on an 8 × 11 piece of paper and the paper is God. You don’t believe in God, but . . . If time is written on an 8 × 11 piece of paper, all of time, if that’s true, then you are simultaneously buying flowers, taking the woman from the park bench in your mouth and making love to your girlfriend while she watches a stranger pee into your commode. It is, after all, your commode. Where is your rage?
*
I notice you, noticing you, nostalgic for the time before you, which is her time not yours, which you would like for yours, which you would like to pocket along with the change from the ten dollar bill, since the flowers were only five, since you bought carnations, roses were ten, and though you had the ten dollar bill, you wanted something (Spinoza and others agree: “Desire is the essence of man”), a beverage, which requires going into the bar, asking the woman with the orange if she will join you in the bar. Isn’t she hot in this heat? She must be.
*
We are getting stale. I call us stale. I can feel us getting stale and it sickens me.
More.
You sicken me.
More.
I took the flowers and I cut the stems off the flowers. I cut the stems off the flowers because you wanted me to do it. You urged me to cut the stems off the flowers and I do not regret one bit of it. Not even in the morning.
*
The problem with flowers and buying them is implicit in the exchange of, yes, that ten dollar bill. Times you have bartered flowers for sex? Times you have tried to barter flowers for sex? People in the world who believe in time? Time it will take for the woman biting into the orange to look up and notice your flowers?
*
Spinoza says, “One and the same thing can at the same time be good, bad and indifferent.” The same thing, at the same time, look up, oranges are the essence of man, biting into them is the essence of man, look up, look up. Aren’t you hot? In this heat, you must be.
AFFAIRS
Affairs are amply appreciated by contemporary critics under the name of discontinuity. Affairs come into their own when we translate the whole question from structure to behavior. Affairs disappear altogether. Many affairs remain unabsorbed. The concept of the affair gives another dimension to the impact of epiphanies. Affairs in general may be analyzed according to whatever distinctions one uses in analyzing. Affairs are associated with shortness. Final affairs are an obstacle to artistic comprehension caused by the seemingly premature placing of the end. Such affairs exist in every perception that one’s tentative comprehension is not complete. Such affairs depend on the convention that “every thing counts.” Affairs challenge us at a more fundamental level. Affairs are never completely resolved. Final affairs are the most extreme.
POE
M FOR HIS GIRL
I’ll tell you which panties
look good on you
psychedelic plaid
with ruffles on the waist
patriotic polka dot
the whale print is very
what’s his name again?
Those would look good on you
those too, those also
I could see you
wearing those in his truck
out past the Esso station
to the field party