Collages

Collage #1 A strange dream of my first love, in the room with someone I dislike my first love touches me on the arm and our eyes meet.

And then through slowly falling snow the funeral came with trees white and ground almost white, and no footsteps in the snow in fact no one, a field.

Collage #2 Our favorite walk was the back way to Roscoe, through overheads that were black as night and mushy leaves that moved from our feet all in a piece.

One night the air turned green and the tornado horn sounded from town. And Kansas was transfigured in a roaring clap. The roof shook, and all was green and yellow like sickly lime. Then the night darkened and steady rain fell.

Collage #3 Vera Cruz itself had litter on the beach and rotary fans that moved the swill, a meal of red snapper creeping up your arms.

The car drones. The drizzle unbelievably queer, even the mountains are invisible, only the present black-top alarming.

Almost to her groin the body goes in as the muscles compress, and slowly with relief that bad air comes out, the muscles loosen.

And on the road she demands the car be stopped and jumps out to pick wildflowers, her hands pressing the bundles to her chest.

Collage #4 Buy porno magazines and masturbate in the middle of the day.

Wait for the movies to open and see two, three at a time. Think about getting a job. See rows of listings that call for a key punch operator.

At Korvette’s. At Jewish Charities. Cobblestone parks near Chinatown, and dark labyrinths of offices.

And finally the Pacific, galumphing dolphins, arching in the sunlight.

Collage #5 Back again in New York, frenzied, the West End Bar where Barbara took too much cough syrup and fell (slow motion) to the floor.

The poem is of a bird in a tree with leaves shimmering like little fishes.

Collage #6 But no sense of danger. But life had broken free somehow like some dirty barge. Free to walk the rainy streets. Not the life anyone had envisioned.

On the plane. Imagined reunion with his parents, the food on the little plastic trays, potatoes in a cheese sauce.

His mother asks him if he wants fruit, he should eat fruit, and the words swim off the page.

Collage #7 A picture of an old Alaskan with mosquitoes covering his arm.

A hat with netting on it.

A conversation about our prospects, will we really make it, can America appreciate art?

This is the sweetest time, on the brink, when work is finally being done and no one knows it yet.

Collage #8 To tiptoe to the kitchen, the fan whirr in our bedroom, putting my books on the table.

We heard that girls come up here, undress, and roll around in the field.

More beer in the swamp of Moosic Mountain. The mist is a foot off the ground.

Throw the cans into it and wait for the clink.

Collage #9 The stoplight, hung from wires, swayed on Main Street.

But a brand new supermarket (Victory) with wide aisles and symmetrical packing has been built, the fruit pyramided and the green apples polished, a white porcelain scale hanging from clean chains.

Collage #10 The car parts all over the grass, the oiled gears on a piece of cloth and Emory sits on a rock and rubs off each one.

The wife, with baby, skinny and young-looking watches from the porch.

What right to say anything. Nothing…but these incredible annoyances.

Sky flat. Birds circling on gray.

Collage #11 Precious objects, my child sick with fever, her eyes liquid, crazy.

Shadow conversations in the evening. One man talks about cars, another claims he’ll quit if they treat him that way.

No philosophy can hold this. Life breaks us like sticks!

Collage #12 A whole life comes to this. A girlhood. A proposal. College where everyone laughed over coffee…and now this!

No plans. Lies I tell people who ask me what I’m doing, because I’m doing nothing.

He stayed with us for the winter. You could hear him moving through the rooms.

Collage #13 Writing poems and mailing the letter. The sunlight painful in Canarsie, the wind whistling like a cold bottle.

And then the dark stretches…blacker than black.

Fireflies. Woods. All of us quiet and tired.

Collage #14 Mexicans walking on the streets of El Paso, black-mustached, white shirts with rolled up sleeves, turning to look at women.

“The Earth belongs to none of us,” one old man said. “I would just like the people to be happy.”

Collage #15 I don’t care if I’m 40. In the hotel room my wife sat on my penis and swayed from side to side.

Open stretches of field. Blue, orange, and yellow flowers, dragonflies.

Collage #16 Hatred in my corner. Grayson sleeping, the little lamp throws shadows on the wall, I turn the pages of the dirty magazine, girls greased, playing with themselves, my hand under the covers so Grayson won’t see.

Night prowls down deserted streets.

Collage #17 Marching past the cemetery (no music) a cadence tapping of drumsticks on the rim, the sound of crunching feet.

Rocks. Rocks on shores. Big ones, smooth ones, the kind to press your fingers around.

“This is the last game we will ever have.” “This is the last ball I will ever catch.”