“NOR ANY KNOW I KNOW THE ART”
The question is how can you get the temporary
To last longer, finger food, ur-language scrawled
On an original wall, everyone read it, everyone
Jumped into the first fire, those who have
Forgotten how to say the rosary in the rose
Garden, or in the orto where the apples are
Applauding the oranges for being both fruit
And color, the day you opened the armoire and
Found the still-warm armadillos, something you
Wouldn’t admit to anyone, sloughing off
Unsuccessfully your aristocracy, crazy with moony
Lunatics, you said pass me the piece of resistance,
Flexed and flummoxed, like taking the copter
Away from the helicopter, or the costume jewelry
You wore with or without your bathing suit,
And you wouldn’t say it’s naïveté that made
You pause at the word Brontë, do you say it
Like Rilke said it, or the grey parrot Tom and
Claire carried back from Africa, with its foul
Language, and the noise of the body shop it
Lived near, you passed on the beaker of warm
Piss, summer humming along, dodging the poison
Sumac, whipped by nettles, artemisia by any
Other name is mugwort and mugwort by any
Other name is wormwood and you can’t
Remember that glass of absinthe circa 1982,
Like an ostrich looking for oysters in all the wrong
Places, getting rid of the riddle, the hatred,
The red hat, gushing with more gushing than
Has every been gushed before, if you know
What you mean, adorned with harmony and
Mimesis, it’s art that won’t allow you to forget.
*A line from poem 381, “I cannot dance opon my Toes,” The Poems of Emily Dickinson, Edited by R. W. Franklin“’TIS NEWS AS NULL AS NOTHING”
We know it would please us to stop with
The surceases, if they could ever really
Stop, such as the day we took away
The spittoons but left the jungle gym,
Healthy, wealthy et cetera, as if our life
Had the ability to be an excerpt from
A larger life, so be it, or someone we all
Used to know, and never to kowtow to,
Or, for that matter, besmirch, nor
Sitting in the park eating donuts, of all
Things, eatable every bit of the way,
But roadblocks will be roadblocks,
The screen doors slapping our faces
Unapologetically, we’re still unsure whether
We received the last telegram or whether
We sent it, no one knows why we typed
Petty larceny when we could have just as
Well typed grand, when fingers are the body’s
Filaments, and in all the beds narcissi are
Narcissussing, or which would we rather take,
The gravy boat or the gravy train, our bags
Stuffed with all the graven images we can carry,
When we said nothing enough times that it
Turned into something, although we are not
Now nor will ever be force-fed, because
We chose apricots and will always choose
Apricots, light hastening over their smooth
Skin, don’t give me that newsier than thou
Look, the foolish among us have already
By now run into oncoming traffic,
Burdening us with their sad tidings, equilibrium
No longer being the horror we once
Thought it was, when we only used
The obit pages to line the parrot’s cage,
Until the parrot itself finally put a stop to
It, stop it, it said, stop it, stop it, and we did.
The title is a line from poem 1049, “Myself can read the Telegram,” The Poems of Emily Dickinson, Edited by R. W. Franklin
Edward Mayes’s books of poetry include First Language, To Remain, Magnetism, Works and Days, Speed of Life, and Bodysong. His poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Gettysburg Review, Iowa Review, Massachusetts Review, New England Review, The New Yorker, Poetry, TriQuarterly, Virginia Quarterly Review, and Best American Poetry. His books have received the Juniper Prize, the Gesù Award, the Bay Area Book Reviewers Association Award, and the Associated Writing Programs Prize. He’s also received the Cecil Hemley Memorial Award and Gordon Barber Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry. He lives in North Carolina and Cortona, Italy, with his wife, writer Frances Mayes.
