Jerry McGuire

 

 

THE NICKNAMES

 

            “You lisp, and nickname God’s creatures . . .” (Hamlet)

 

            1. Careful

Sometimes the ones who name first name

badly, and so take back what they’ve given first

and name again, and those

are usually bad as well: Skip,

Butch, Sonny, Bud, Babe, Honey,

Dolly, Sugar, Sweets. Almost never

Bubbletoes, Maple Syrup, Bugbag,

Fuzzywit, Little Horny, Mousemouth, or

Foamy. They hug tight and it’s touching,

but hardly gripping, nothing’s fixed here.

 

So it's left to friends, or enemies,

or some babbling fool who loves you.

They make you Bubber, Dizzy, Mandrake,

Gummo, No-Doze, Hoppy, Specs, or Slowhand.

For one thing you do when you’re drunk

your children get to hear it publicly

as a pimply minister drones over your spent casing:

Now we take our leave of Twinky, never

to be forgotten, treasured husband of Marbles

and loving father to Cramps and Attila.

 

So why not nickname God’s creatures, unwatched

bobbers floating off with their bait? The sea

name Whaleroad, the shark Joe Razors, the humble

snail Sir Speedy and the swan Miss Feathers.

Why call a spade a spade at all? If

the heart bucks, let’s name it Trigger. If the sky

glowers, call it Grumpy or Big Funk.

It would be a swell world, we could name it Pop-up,

in a universe called Infield, and when it named us

back it would either call us Careful or Hey You.

 

            2. Speech Impediment

Long ago she’d given up on Virgo,

the Greater and Lesser Bears,

the Twins, the Hunter, all those favorites

of the old men. Now when she raises her head

she sees the Crack Baby, the Beaten Wife,

the Pimp and Whore, the Big Needle, and,

on his toilet-throne, the Drunken Husband.

Even the moon’s gone soft on her—she calls it

Glans Minoris, or Doc Flaccid. She says

 

What’s the harm of goofing on the sky?

It’s laughed at us forever. She also feels

the night sky’s better than the day:

at least the fucking horrors are in view.

She looks in her son’s eyes for light

and calls him High Noon. Her daughter

is Miss Janus, and her husband’s Babylon Bill.

 

Lately she feels she’s been winning little victories.

She has the television nailed, it’s Pig’s Cerebrum.

The bathroom is the Porcelain Gallows

and the sink is named the Sink.

The street she lives on is the Poison River,

her house God’s Dump, the telephone

the Road to Hellville. She thinks if she

can name herself, the rest will go away.

She keeps trying, but it’s tough. She tried

the Mirror’s Sphincter, Miss Evisceration,

and Princess Rubberbones, but nothing’s vanished yet.

 

 

Morton Feldman’s Rothko Chapel

 

Once at once              should      happen

                           at poker                        the             gazes

                      freezes                          unitary        there

              and right now              Jim’s jacks               Joe’s

      josh Jerry’s                  jive                Jenny’s

          joker     start                           to cry

 

out to one                   another solitary

                             stations of                                                 the bluff

                      the bluff                 bluff         bluff             bluff

               bluff                      and                                   that

       enough                 to make             a             solitude

there                                                            nothing

     

but               sound                    several

                            sigh          as            one                sighs

                     that moment             still                   monochrome

               mono   textured        mono                   timbred

         each                         bluff        each       sigh

surrounded till it’s     mono                      itself

 

a mono                  mono              mono

                           mono              tone      no                     more

                     song strung    among    the hours             but

             chant               chants       chants                 chantschants

      chants by        itself          by itself                neither

vertical nor   horizontal   by itself                 not

 

laid out       by itself      or          laid on          itself      but       laid

                                 in            itself            bluff       bluff      bluff       mono

                        mono         sigh              sigh         sigh        sigh

                   chants        chants           chants      as for      measure

        sustenance      grace for      grace         in

time                   begin                           again

 

 

 

BURRITO VALENTINE

 

for Paige DeShong

 

I cannot truly hold you to my heart—

that heated place where all

desires melt together—

Nor press my face upon your breast—

Something might stick,

pull apart in shreds

In fact to hold

or not to hold you

that is a question

that twists my stomach

like pretzels

To take you in my hand

or in my mouth, or leave

you there to sweat it out

while I ready knife and fork,

forks and knives—

to think you might

unwrap yourself, expose

your inner bean, your

hidden beef, to hear

you beg for your pathetic life in which

the only real event 

to speak of is this hungry

moment, all pretensions dropped,

I grab and put you right where you belong,

inside me, in among my own

untasty secrets—

this is a consuming

doubt that gnaws me deep.

I have you now.

I have a bowl of sauce.

I have you yet.

Just one quick feel,

before we start, of this

cool beer. Somehow,

we both begin to sweat.

 

 

MEXICAN MASK

 

They finally killed the redeyed greenfaced goldtoothed devil

with a chicken-bomb, first stuffing

the fat hen with enough threepenny nails

to board an outhouse, then stopping her hole

with a nitro suppository. The devil

never suspected that this wobbly creature,

her beak giving nothing away by way

of smile or frown, could rupture the wall

between our world and his and stop his constant fucking with us.

Dim as a pigeon but without a peep, she seemed to be dancing,

shaking a tailfeather in his general direction.

As she went to pieces the sky cried out,

its pretty blue face now pocked with liver and egg,

and the devil, just an empty space now,

kept on smiling out of his fargone eyes

 

 

 

LI PO IN STUYVESANT FALLS, NEW YORK, 1986

 

     "Will we ever see, ever even think of each other again?

     This night, this moment: impossible to feel it all." (Li Po)

 

Cold and clear, the nights now a net of stars hung in blue-black water

through which the huge, ancient fish are moving.

My father is dying. He knows this, but doesn't understand it yet. The leaves

of the five hundred soft- and hardwoods on the hill

have had their strange and wonderful days, red and silver, orange and gold.

The only ones left now are crisp, pale brown,

and shuffle the wind all night in their frightening game of cards.

What is happening now is small and quiet, yet sharp as the edges of that wind:

too sharp to deny, too persistent to turn off.

I've come to stand alone, still as these old vines, still as the stars, and listen,

in this frozen instant hearing a car purr two dirt roads over,

while the creek down the hill precisely ripples to itself,

the birds have all gone quiet, and now, a mile away, two farmhouses down,

one disconsolate dog tied on his run howls at these stars

that mean so much to both of us, and another across the creek

replies as if she were his dark ink soaked through this darker page,

bled clean to the other side where it is read

by an eye, the great reverse of ours, which knows how to read these things.

I wish, now that those howls have come and gone,

that I could howl myself, make myself their brother and their blood.

But I stand here only my father's son, listening in his garden

to the careful recitation of the night, my hand full of his little blue moon grapes,

nearly frozen and slightly sour. I steal one handful,

one mouthful of cold juice from the crop from which he'll make

his last batch of slightly sweet, slightly sour wine.

 

Christmas night, 1997

for Joe and Gail Andriano

 

HISTORY

1

There were in the first days three moons, who were sisters. One sister was blind. She saw by being perfectly quiet and letting others describe everything to her. Another sister was deaf. She heard with her fingers, which were the winds that she ran over the surface of the world. The third sister was dumb. She spoke by opening her eye so wide, everything poured out of her like light. One day the sisters argued over their lover, the sun. But as two of them did not speak, and one did not hear, they never new it. And that is how our fathers learned to live.

2

One day in the first days two of our fathers met by a pond, where both had come to find something to eat. They decided that they would eat frogs. They talked together and smoked, because they had never eaten a frog and did not see one. While they waited, some deer came to the pond and had a drink. One said to the other, Is that a frog? and the other said, No, that is a deer. So they paid no attention, because they wanted to eat frogs. Later, a bear came, very close by, and snatched a fish and ate it. Is this one a frog? asked one of our fathers, and the other said, No, this one is a bear. So the two still waited to see if some frogs might come. A pair of mink came, slid into the water, and came out with crawfish in their mouths. The two kept talking. No, said one, these are minks, and those are crawfish. Finally, the sun set and they made a fire. Then a frog came along, as big as a buffalo, and said to our fathers, Why are you sitting here beside my pond? Don't you have a fire in your own homes? The two of them, thinking the frog would eat them, said that they had come to see the Great Frog and to bring him a gift. What is this gift? asked the frog, because he thought he might take it. Oh, they said, we put it in the pond already. It is a tub of honey with nuts and berries in it. Hearing this, the frog jumped in the pond and dove down looking for his present. But because it was not there, he never came out of the pond again, and the water shrunk him until now all frogs are small. Meanwhile, our two fathers saw that they were very lucky, so they did a dance around the fire until it burned out. They went to sleep, and when they woke up, they saw that waiting and talking and smoking together had made them exactly the same. Well, they said, all right, then. Let us do the same today. And that is how our fathers came to live together in one place.

3

Squirrel, Fox, Eagle, Coyote, and Rat called a meeting in the first days to talk about Man. Squirrel said, He is a fool. He can't climb at all. Instead of saving his acorns in a tree, he eats them all at once, then goes hungry all winter. I think we should leave him to his own kind and never talk to him. Fox spoke up then. I agree, he said, and then he ate Squirrel up on the spot. Yes, said Fox, Man is a fool. He is afraid of the dark, so he's a terrible hunter. Big as he is, he is slow of foot, weak of eye, and dull of brain. He's dangerous in close quarters, but we can easily avoid him, and that is what we should do. Just then Eagle dove from his perch, killed Fox, and ate him on the spot. You are so right, he said, Man is a fool. He makes fires, weapons, and tools, yet has no imagination. When he tells stories he scares himself and does not understand them. He is not noble, because he cannot think himself noble. Noble! exclaimed Coyote, and bit Eagle's head off and ate him on the spot. You are so right! Even worse, he changes his mind. When Partridge sits sleeping on a rock he thinks, How beautiful Partridge looks, sleeping there, and Partridge wakes and flies away, while Man's children go hungry. He goes to fish and stares at the moon while the fish eat his bait. And then he looked at Rat and thought he would eat him, too. But when he pounced Rat jumped back, and Coyote fell in a pit where Rat had been standing. Coyote looked up, and Rat and Man were standing there. That's right, they said together, and they both urinated on Coyote. But if Rats and Men work together, we will kill all the other animals. And that is what our fathers have learned to do.

 

THE BLIND MIME, SCENE 13

 

The circus must be in town, for tonight there's a strong animal smell in the air, and strange sounds, like crying and laughing, and also the sense that tonight the village's sons will run away, and all the daughters after them. We look around and see that yes, the house tonight is full of clowns, their pale faces covering up the strain, their bright noses flashing it, their big, tired feet obstructing all the aisles like flung matchsticks. At first it seems a shame to us that he can't see them, their ragmops of bad hair, their snaggletoothed false smiles, their ostentatious awful clothes, but then we see he's tricked us once again—somehow he knows! and now there is this silent scene of recognition as all around the room a mesh of quiet hearts falls into one dark rhythm. They all turn to face him, and he them, like lonesome wolves around the leader of their pack, resting on their cushioned haunches, all their noses arced to the same degree, all souls rising as one: the clowns all howl, they howl as painted men and women might, and the mime, their leader, not allowed to voice his pain among the general sadness, has never looked so sad.

 

THE DIFFICULTIES: A VALENTINE

 

     From the end of the earth will I cry unto thee, when my heart is overwhelmed. Peter Abelard

 

. . . were more and less at once, can help it. . . . broken, then pulled together as a dawning. . . . all them handle up the line, buckets over-topping, the green flames aghast, appall the windows, many gleeful faces beaming more than. . . . I make the messages, cowered slightly where the night ended in ruin. . . . what does the philosopher want today, said the clerk. . . . looked, said nothing, revealed nothing, took it in her hand, roughly pulled then eased back and glided it here, there, as if there were holy places to be met with only in this grasp, while he wondered: is this all it takes? is this what it means? this is what we were made for? . . . many mirrors darkling. . . . got early up, sawed the ends off, polished before breakfast, before the rest could see them, aimed at his head where he slept, went "poof! poof!" . . . you the answer, then, and does that pain you so? . . . helped him into bed, his cold toes white, already dead: but thought only on her all the while, when she'd call. . . . and hurried to the window when they heard the shot; the day was not dreary, either, even made them laugh a little. . . . You're a greening, she said, the sky warps around you when you get the sniffles, but held him, too, in her arms long after the need was made quiet. . . . And her mother laid there, the blood drained out of her, the wax bringing her face back into the shape it bore during the years before the hard carryings and birthings, the kettle whistled, the cat went flying, a truck smutted by with a sour muffler, the phone rang, the temperature dropped another tenth of a degree, a helicopter on the embattled periphery sputtered for a second, dropped a couple of yards in the air, then recovered itself and went on nicely about its terrible affairs. . . . in the park, held his gutted prey, watching them as they tried to keep their eyes on the ball. . . . for the third time, then took a deep breath of water and smiled. . . . wagging, as if for the first time, a puppy, the child's tiny hand—what can that brittle smallness signify to this stolid ancient Labrador?—the light that passed between them, the screech of these alien species' sudden collapses into one another's worlds, more than simple friendship, more than illumination, more than infinite possibility, more than love . . . 

 

SUICIDE VALENTINE

 

if ants, if bees

then all be aggregate

in complex now and never

ever any other

all one all one all

 

deployed, already mapped

the center nowhere, everywhere

a movement of parts, all formic

all particulars multiplied

by three, by six, by two feelers

 

if ants, if bees

the heart does not

assign itself, the route

a code, even

the eye compounded

 

and death from hunger does not

appall, the travesties of sex

do not amuse, will that tongue taste

if loosed would scandalize

and hurt, if torn would sing

 

if ants if bees

the more not merrier

the less not more, everything

exact, even

the dancing strict

 

some fat thing at the center

being fed, her days alike alike

devour excrete and spill of progeny

each spill identical symmetrical or else—

what this new and wicked I?

 

and she the star

ever over where the edges spill 

the green the silver

intricate inflamed

and turning always still

turned incensed palpable

altogether here once and ever

slow empties down pauses is full

smiles its mouth a picture as to reassure

the next as new as one as to seem April

blow cold then cool then warm in wonder

 

DREAM GIRL

 

The things that mattered to the little girl

were angels, fuzzy creatures, anyone on crutches

or hurt in her heart, the big boys on the corner,