Rita Costello
bodies
The way she crushed her cigarettes,
pushing them down and grinding
back and forth under her fingertip,
was said to be a sign. Of what,
I don't recall. But when I think of her,
she is always extinguishing
something. Maybe it was her anger, imagined
to be held between her fingers, breathed out
in clouds around her head. She was quiet,
but bubbling at the edges of her skin.
I remember her cross-legged on the sidewalk
smoking fast, looking up as Chad stood
on the edge, toes to gutter, the roof
about to spring from beneath him. She grinds
one out and lights another, watches his arms come up
while his body forms the cross. She grinds
and lights another. She is quiet,
as if each crushing
is the only call she can make
for him to climb down unharmed. But
her butts formed a graveyard of bent white bodies,
littered around her on the cement. Each one
bent twice, like Chad, bending at the waist
and at the knee, about to merge himself
noiselessly with the summer night.
Maybe it wasn't anger, but a token
of helplessness, or a crime she was making up for. Taking
control, taking the burning into her own fingertips
along with the decision of when to let go.
But it's true that she never let go, until everything
burned away to its end, and crushed
into uselessness, there was no reason left
to hold on.
hum
In hiding, after the war, he sorts potatoes. He is
good at this. Securing four years as a farm hand
through his proficiency at selecting. Good potatoes
to the right, hog feed to the left. He is a man
with an eye for such things. Quality.
s
Refusing the tattoo saved him. Convincing his superiors
that the integrity of his skin was more important
than a record of his blood group on his body. It was vanity,
and it saved him. When the Americans searched
under his arms for tattooed proof of SS involvement
there was none. He was clean and free to leave.
s
As a child, Beppo loved to meet the trains, taking
his father's horse and cart to collect supplies. Big metal
supplies for the manufacture of farm equipment. The cart's
clanging
return through town, noted continuously on every block:
lovers rolled over in bed, waking and whispering
to one another:
Mengele is coming. Mengele is coming.
s
He was the first in his family to actually work
on a farm. Toiling alongside the equipment
bearing his family's name, the name he had abandoned
for safety. He hummed his way through the hard times,
the times below his means, knowing he'd make his name
famous once again in the world of science.
s
He whistled and hummed when he met the trains,
herding their occupants right or left, and selecting
supplies for his own experiments. It is the music
survivors remember. The dapper young Angel of Death
serenely humming Mozart as he smiled and pointed the way.
s
"Hum," she screamed, "hum, hum, hum, hum."
And for only a moment the Malach Hamavet felt his chest
tighten, sure that the old woman meant him.
And she did mean him, but she did not mean his music.
"Hum," she screeched, still walking, after every
other sound had stopped. "Hum," she gasped in Hebrew,
meaning "Hot, hot, hot, hot, hot."
shadow trees
What a surprise it must have been to learn
that a shadow has substance, to learn that the absence
of light can last forever, both in the place where it exists
and elsewhere. All the trees of Hiroshima had long
burned away before I learned of their enigmatic
permanence; their dark-etched limbs, frozen intimations
of growth which cannot enact their purpose, even
defy it. My mother would have killed me if
she ever found me there, with my leg propped up beneath the needle.
Jennifer's right hand smoothed out the skin and held it
taut
between two fingers, while the other held the needle, a finely
pointed
sewing needle, wrapped tight with a coil of thread, dipped first
in a bottle-cap filled with india ink and then rapidly
piercing into my ankle the shadow of my first tree
at fifteen. I went back to New York; the old elementary
school where
I once knelt in the cold hallways, with the crown of my head
pressed tight into the circle formed by wall,
floor, knees.
Every random drill, for six years, meant another
sleepless night
for my mother, desperate to explain how unlikely a bomb could
be. But
she never said, there have been so few; although dates and times
might have calmed me, a history lesson of that sort advocates
shadows
rather than enlightenment. I imagined at once that the
shadows
should have burned white: a testament to lack and empty space,
but they didn't. Instead dark stains traced trees and people
into the landscape, instantly what was lost was perceived
again
as presence. And we have to claim our shadows
as illumination. Silhouetted trees bloomed randomly
across my body in college, my wrist, shoulders, neck, back;
black ink only, limbs without definition or leaves. It was
such a surprise to discover the power of shadows that I couldn't
stop pressing them into my skin.
a Sunday symphony for Papa’s study
I.
[estinto]
Sunday mornings I wasn’t allowed in;
as if that room magically disappeared
until noontime. No one said anything
about it; still, no one stepped inside
but him. There were indications it was just
out of sight, but still there: we could hear
the violins creep up softly and then suddenly
fill his study so full they had to spill, like crickets
infesting the front hall. That’s where I hid most mornings
just around the corner, cross-legged on the hallway floor, where
the oboes and cellos took the long way to sneak past him,
pulsing
through the floor instead of taking the open doorway.
[intermezzo berceuse
(to “Mockingbird”)]
I must have learned the rules
before the age of
three
No one had to tell
a single one to me
We lived there in the house
until that time
With my father’s parents
and his sister Vi
After that
Sundays were the
only day
Hardly enough time
to learn the rules
that way
And if those rules were ever broke
Papa’d chase me off like a billy goat
II.
I imitated him in the afternoons, carefully
fingering through his carefully cared-for records. The S’s
were always the thickest, with Schubert, Strauss, Saint-
Saëns, and the progression of time: Artie Shaw,
and the inimical, or maybe analogous, disco:
Saturday Night Fever and Studio 54. It was
the seventies, and he wasn’t as old as he seemed to me then.
When I think of it, it’s amazing he let me touch
them at all. All of his delicate vinyl left open
to the threat of little fingers and needles. He was outside,
playing tennis against the garage door, racket-garagedoor-
ground-racket-garagedoor-ground, it was routine; but he knew
what I was up to. His turntable had its own legs and a padlock
on its sliding top; the lock left open Sunday afternoons.
And he could hear me through the open windows. He knew
no matter where he was—the driveway, basement, bedroom—if
I forgot to take off my shoes before stepping
onto the new white carpet, which was still new and white
all the years it belonged to him. The carpet before this
was green and stained with the coffee I dumped in his lap
the one and only night he tried to neglect my bedtime story.
I hadn’t earned my entry through good behavior, but he let me
enter anyway; and when eventually he bought a new stereo
he gave me the turntable with legs and the padlock, both
long gone, but I still have the two little keys.
III.
At dinner time,
the turntable was locked again,
the room disappeared again,
this time without any trace of a string
section.
He chose a wine
from the basement, usually red,
and ate from a tray-
table in the family room
to the monophonous strains of Meet the Press.
[tremolo]
He was odd, odd
even for a scientist; science
wherein Truth lies in repeatability. Repetition
is proof and respect. In science, repetition is music; in music
repetition is beauty. Beautiful.
No one liked him, no one
not even, or least of all even,
his wife. He said his wife
ate too much (and his daughter ate
too little & drank too much) and she feared too much too
little
things, like water, such a little thing;
no matter she nearly drowned in childhood, no matter.
He bought her boat trips as gifts; bought
himself pornography for the basement. He knew how to talk to
himself,
but the rest of the world didn’t exist; it was only the rest of
the world.
Call them, call them habits perhaps, like
driving, driving like a madman, down the QE2,
unaware, not at all aware, of the fear he caused
in passengers and passersby alike. Yes,
repetition, repetition ought to keep the world at bay.
He had
his study and
the Buffalo Philharmonic.
He had
swimming, and
tennis in the driveway.
He had
his wine and
pictures in the basement.
He had
his job and
so, enough money to buy his records.
He had a check to mail each month to his sister Peg.
He had science to hold back the walls so he could breathe.
[agitato]
Until I was three, he came home
from work each day, every day, night and day
he came home—from Hooker Chemical
before and after, straight through and all during Love Canal
Hooker Chemical’s chemical engineer—he picked me up
right up, he lifted me up from my chair or the floor,
picked me up and asked me “How’s my girl?”
night and day, every day, the same words, he’d say
“How’s my girl”—and I would get so angry explaining
over and over, the same thing, up and down and sideways
explaining I wasn’t his at all. I was my mother’s
not his, or his son’s (his son, my father) I was not his,
I was my mother’s daughter. And I would feel guilt for it now, I
would
feel guilt if a word of it penetrated, if even a moment was more
than a habit, I would.
[dolce]
Is it too late then to say
he was good? He was good.
When his father jumped ship
he was twelve. Barely twelve,
he took care of his mother
and siblings. His siblings
he supported through college,
and his sister, his sister he still
sent a check on the first
of the month. Every month
of his life was a fight:
first on the streets, the NYC streets,
for a job and for food and then
he fought in two wars, World War II
and Korea; and all through college
he fought; and he fought
with his wife then his kids.
And it all, all of it, came down
to the basement wall;
the basement wall should have
supported him.
He let me sit
on his lap at night
in the green armchair
while he read the Wall Street Journal and we ate
roasted peanuts and buttered saltines from green plastic dishes,
and he really did love his music. He was good, if it’s not too
late to say so.
And no one noticed really
when the strings failed
to rise up against the woodwinds
because the symphony had ended.
IV.
So no one really noticed
when he became obsessed with the cellar wall
caving in, closing in
on him, collapsing
the foundation of his house, like a glockenspiel
breaking free from its frame, surely
his life would disappear
in the sinkhole, his records
would all crack and sliver
and slide down under
the earth. He measured
the wall repeatedly, sure
that it was moving
inward from the top, the snakes
were already entering the cellar
through the cracked cement, broken strings
from the double bass still determined
to be a part of the orchestra, though
the snakes, at least, had been doing that for twenty years.
No one noticed really that month he was gone, his wife
knew he was in the hospital, his job knew he was sick
and would return. No one else looked for him, but
the nurses who brought him pills and the aides who brought food;
the first
he accepted, but the latter left congealing on the tray.
The basement wall went unmeasured.
He went without music or wine for weeks.
He went home when they said it was time to go home.
He went to his room upstairs and stayed there for another three
weeks.
His study stayed empty and quiet, stacks of mail growing from
the top of the desk.
His wife slept elsewhere, but brought him food.
His wall continued its collapse
and he let it
continue as if music had never mattered.
[morendo]
No one knew he was dead, though
we were in the house half the time.
It was a Sunday night, but he hadn’t come down
for Meet the Press in two months anyway.
No one noticed the mail that had overtaken
the desk was all torn cleanly in two
and balanced atop the wastebasket. No one noticed
his shoes placed squarely in the center
of his white carpet and the greasy tools
for the cellar wall pressed down into the weave beside
them.
No one noticed the stereo was on in the study, the record
over, the needle having deserted the groove.
Progress: the road and the river
This interstate winds like a river through the hills, and I want
to name it
as such. Perhaps a name near its source, the Passaic, the
Maumee; the I-75
should be the Ohio Highway even as it flows through Atlanta.
I will name them all North to South, East to West like an Arabic
book
of winding highways. The story progressing across this country
in a geographic language, sounds that will echo with discovery.
If roads are the last stage in our manifest destiny they deserve
more than a singular letter and a string of random numbers.
Data: lifetimes
We resist the numbers, no matter our secret love
of days and years, of placing time in meaning with a figure.
We measure our lives like a line between two points
on the circles of history. Born, point; died, point;
lived in the time of civil war or plague, point. Our meaning exists
only between constant numbers; the heft of weight lifted
in an arc: heavier at the points of lifting and setting; symbols
of permanence carved into marble or stone.
Space: timing the land
Everything begins from below: the shape of fingers
forced up from their natural alignment, from
convex to con-
cave, dancing in the crook of another’s hand.
Each generation removed from the farm sees lines
straighter than windrows. Forgets gradually that every spring
fields get planted. And every fall is a harvest
of past. Time is lived and relived in a corn stalk,
while the rest of us move higher as land runs out.
There is only one thing you cannot purchase in New York City or
Tokyo,
because it doesn't exist.
Sound: railways and water
Time is the sound of trains and a mouth harp
lost in a bluegrass festival. Rhythms beaten into the land
and a system of travel. The wheel-rhythm music:
linear patterns a circle plays out on the tracks.
That inconsistent melody played over top, that
is the life music, rolling through. The river,
pushed through the flatlands by something
behind it, sings across stones. Even water holds history
in the way that it moves. The story of a mountain,
sung through the plains of Kansas.
Data: reading the sky
We name time with the planets and stars. Where were the stars
and the moon when you were born? Where was your mother? You know
this. Ask your mother the hour; she will remember you down to the
minute.
And every moment spent searching the midnight skies
for answers
brings us closer to another blinding, our very eyes
erased in the glare of sun. What stories the moon tells
when we listen, its light a thousand years closer than any
other,
the nighttime reflection of morning. The cycles that shape
the moment. Here, everything clears, and all the world makes
sense.
Kepler might have worshipped circles forever if it weren't
for the line of Brahe's data tempering the universe into ellipses.
This is the workable world, with lengths and curves that push
forward.
Progress: the architecture of trees
She steps West with the rhythm that the Earth turns,
doubling time in a primal pattern of circles.
Bass and drum beat roll their similar tongues
into a common language. She walks
left foot, right foot, hands slapping years
into her hips and thighs. In Georgia, time is a tree.
Branches that knot and twist, before separating
and growing into one another again. Time grows
from a red dirt and comes back into clay.
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Last updated: May 1, 2001.