Back from Costa Rica
In the blur of day atop duty,
back where roads are as reliable as C-Span,
a minute's Monteverde delight is as hard to
scope as a skittish Tico quetzal.
But you, my stand-fresh papaya, will—
even here in the fickle northern reaches—
be my lasting exotic hunger,
body-surfing on the waves of heart's murmur,
blasting beneath my lusts' reef.
Even if I can't wake to humid heat
and watch the fan overhead inscribe my dawn's early grin,
then argue with a hostile, transplanted
Hungarian slave to the Edenic inn he grew
from the sandy slopes of Manuel Antonio,
and turn to you and kiss your eyes
and taste your eggs rancheros—
even so, I spot your diving, soaring joy and patience with this,
life's great, grotesque, teeming and unstoppable canopy.
Reunion
How can I tell you
that you were right about so many things,
but that being right doesn't mean anything for us now?
How can I tell you
that in the jaundiced light of a dinner candle,
you still have that Renaissance look
I would dream about when I was not with you?
How can I tell you,
when I know it is not fair,
that the hurt I did you
means less to me than the hurt
that was later done me
by the woman I came to love after you?
How can I tell you
what you already know—
that you riddle people savagely
with your trigger-happy quickness?
How can I tell you
that I'd love to kiss you,
but then would leave you
in a coffee shop
by Flatbush station
as I did before—
How can I tell you
that you were right about so many things,
but that being right doesn't mean anything for us now?
How can I tell you
that in the jaundiced light of a dinner candle,
you still have that Renaissance look
I would dream about when I was not with you?
How can I tell you,
when I know it is not fair,
that the hurt I did you
means less to me than the hurt
that was later done me
by the woman I came to love after you?
How can I tell you
what you already know—
that you riddle people savagely
with your trigger-happy quickness?
How can I tell you
that I'd love to kiss you,
but then would leave you
in a coffee shop
by Flatbush station
as I did before—
because you'd bludgeoned me
with your doubts and your unhappy aloofness,
and because I see in your shape-shifting eyes
that you'd do it again?
with your doubts and your unhappy aloofness,
and because I see in your shape-shifting eyes
that you'd do it again?
Two-Part Inventions
When we banished our love, what did we do?
It was necessary erasure,
a practical sadism toward our collective memory,
our bitterness itself a brave ode to what we thought
would be our bloodless, insensate futures apart.
But somewhere did we compile the rest?
The way you grinned and said "fuck you"
when you lost a tennis point;
your sweated shorts, bra, undies and tank
outlined in the steam on the tiles of the bathroom floor
as you showered after a run;
your happy fists and sighs and arched back
in synaptic triumph above me the first time we made love.
For you, now, it's all
like an ungainly extra place setting
at the table of your reconstructed life,
for a guest who will not show, libido's Elijah,
irrelevant in the freedom you've found
in the Promised Land of a new man.
But for me, what we had
is a tempered chronicle of minute pacts,
embroidered ecstacies by which I measure
the stitching of my dreams,
an archive of potential, a tomb of impetuosity.
You've given me no incentive to forget,
only pain to postmark reminiscence.
Remember, in New York, our balcony table
at America on 18th Street?
The tendriled seaweed wrap of sushi in that
baking, paint-chipped submarine of a Japanese place
after you'd moved to L.A.?
Syrup soda drinks amid the
smutty, cartooned walls of the Onyx cafe?
Remember arm-wrestling,
how you cried
when once I criticized the way you kissed,
and how I cried because you wouldn't stop crying?
Remember listening to Sade and the Doors and Brahms
and drawing each other?
Remember playing different hands—
side by side at the tinny upright—
of "Two-Part Inventions"?
Memory taunts memory.
You were there too.
I'll testify. I'll rat. I'll boast.
What we were, and that I still love it,
will be the old neighborhood you shudder to visit.
There will come a time of mourning for you, too.
And when you mourn, you'll mine
that sweet and buried savage smile
that, in me, you left behind.
When we banished our love, what did we do?
It was necessary erasure,
a practical sadism toward our collective memory,
our bitterness itself a brave ode to what we thought
would be our bloodless, insensate futures apart.
But somewhere did we compile the rest?
The way you grinned and said "fuck you"
when you lost a tennis point;
your sweated shorts, bra, undies and tank
outlined in the steam on the tiles of the bathroom floor
as you showered after a run;
your happy fists and sighs and arched back
in synaptic triumph above me the first time we made love.
For you, now, it's all
like an ungainly extra place setting
at the table of your reconstructed life,
for a guest who will not show, libido's Elijah,
irrelevant in the freedom you've found
in the Promised Land of a new man.
But for me, what we had
is a tempered chronicle of minute pacts,
embroidered ecstacies by which I measure
the stitching of my dreams,
an archive of potential, a tomb of impetuosity.
You've given me no incentive to forget,
only pain to postmark reminiscence.
Remember, in New York, our balcony table
at America on 18th Street?
The tendriled seaweed wrap of sushi in that
baking, paint-chipped submarine of a Japanese place
after you'd moved to L.A.?
Syrup soda drinks amid the
smutty, cartooned walls of the Onyx cafe?
Remember arm-wrestling,
how you cried
when once I criticized the way you kissed,
and how I cried because you wouldn't stop crying?
Remember listening to Sade and the Doors and Brahms
and drawing each other?
Remember playing different hands—
side by side at the tinny upright—
of "Two-Part Inventions"?
Memory taunts memory.
You were there too.
I'll testify. I'll rat. I'll boast.
What we were, and that I still love it,
will be the old neighborhood you shudder to visit.
There will come a time of mourning for you, too.
And when you mourn, you'll mine
that sweet and buried savage smile
that, in me, you left behind.
Kalorama
A truck leaves a sheen of oil on the wet pavement,
and it glows, undermining the day's monotone.
Multi-colored, it is the paisley spectral veneer
of a mother of pearl brooch.
On the 18th Street strip,
Ethiopian and Italian and Thai and French
and Salvadoran and Vietnamese and Cuban
waft across to Café Riche, where the pea-coated
scholars bite biscotti, browse through
threadbare hardcovers on the sill by the
cold rain-striped window, waiting for lattés.
On Biltmore, the mailwoman and the UPS man
sift package, slick, and statement
at condos, studying the coded shrines of
opened letter box cages and rows of buzzer buttons.
The file tape of old tenants never fully peels—
flat letters to raised letters,
the brail of lost traces and untoward forwardings,
supers their scribes.
On Columbia, the blasters spray salsa
from stands with stuffed animals, flowers, and ties.
By Blockbuster and Safeway, testosterone pupils huddle
and gawk at Bugle Boy babes and scared old women, bent,
pushing their carts through the loud, heavy air.
Lycra runners cross Ellington Bridge
and in Rock Creek take in deep
the exhaust of commuters dodging darters from the entry ramps.
Or they snake through the circles,
jogging in place
to the Peruvian pipe bands at the Don't Walks,
peeking at a marquee: Best Foreign Film.
Linzertorte at Kramerbooks.
De Beauvoir milk instead of cream?
Meeting some people.
Martini at Tomate.
Got quarter 'thing t'eat?
- Alexander C. Kafka
