The Hunger Moon: New and Selected Poems, 1980-2010

  She is awkwardly lovely, her face

  pure as a single trill perfectly

  prolonged on a violin, yet she

  knows the camera sees her

  and she arranges her body

  like a flower in a vase to be

  displayed, admired she hopes.

  She longs to be luminous

  and visible, to shine in the eyes

  of it must be a handsome man,

  who will carry her away—and he

  will into poverty and an abortion

  but not yet. Now she drapes

  her best, her only good dress

  inherited from her sister who dances

  on the stage, around her legs

  that she does not like

  and leans a little forward

  because she does like her breasts.

  How she wants love to bathe

  her in honeyed light lifting her

  up through smoky clouds clamped

  on the Pittsburgh slum. Blessed

  are we who cannot know

  what will come to us,

  our upturned faces following

  through the sky

  the sun of love.

  One reason I like opera

  In movies, you can tell the heroine

  because she is blonder and thinner

  than her sidekick. The villainess

  is darkest. If a woman is fat,

  she is a joke and will probably die.

  In movies, the blondest are the best

  and in bleaching lies not only purity

  but victory. If two people are both

  extra pretty, they will end up

  in the final clinch.

  Only the flawless in face and body

  win. That is why I treat

  movies as less interesting

  than comic books. The camera

  is stupid. It sucks surfaces.

  Let’s go to the opera instead.

  The heroine is fifty and weighs

  as much as a ’65 Chevy with fins.

  She could crack your jaw in her fist.

  She can hit high C lying down.

  The tenor the women scream for

  wolfs an eight course meal daily.

  He resembles a bull on hind legs.

  His thighs are the size of beer kegs.

  His chest is a redwood with hair.

  Their voices twine, golden serpents.

  Their voices rise like the best

  fireworks and hang and hang

  then drift slowly down descending

  in brilliant and still fiery sparks.

  The hippopotamus baritone (the villain)

  has a voice that could give you

  an orgasm right in your seat.

  His voice smokes with passion.

  He is hot as lava. He erupts nightly.

  The contralto is, however, svelte.

  She is supposed to be the soprano’s

  mother, but is ten years younger,

  beautiful and Black. Nobody cares.

  She sings you into her womb where you rock.

  What you see is work like digging a ditch,

  hard physical labor. What you hear

  is magic as tricky as knife throwing.

  What you see is strength like any

  great athlete’s; what you hear

  is skill rendered precisely as the best

  Swiss watchmaker. The body is

  resonance. The body is the cello case.

  The body just is. The voice loud

  as hunger remagnetizes your bones.

  My mother gives me her recipe

  Take some flour. Oh, I don’t know,

  like two–three cups, and you cut

  in the butter. Now some women

  they make it with shortening.

  but I say butter, even though

  that meant you had to have fish, see?

  You cut up some apples. Not those

  stupid sweet ones. Apples for the cake,

  they have to have some bite, you know?

  A little sour in the sweet, like love.

  You slice them into little moons.

  No, no! Like half or crescent

  moons. You aren’t listening.

  You mix sugar and cinnamon and cloves,

  some women use allspice. You coat

  every little moon. Did I say you add

  milk? Oh, just till it feels right.

  Use your hands. Milk in the cake part!

  Then you pat it into a pan, I like

  round ones, but who cares?

  I forgot to say you add baking powder.

  Did I forget a little lemon on the apples?

  Then you just bake it. Well, till it’s done

  of course. Did I remember you place

  the apples in rows? You can make

  a pattern, like a weave. It’s pretty

  that way. I like things pretty.

  It’s just a simple cake.

  Any fool can make it

  except your aunt. I

  gave her the recipe

  but she never

  got it right.

  The good old days at home sweet home

  On Monday my mother washed.

  It was the way of the world,

  all those lines of sheets flapping

  in the narrow yards of the neighborhood,

  the pulleys stretching out second

  and third floor windows.

  Down in the dank steamy basement,

  washtubs vast and grey, the wringer

  sliding between the washer

  and each tub. At least every

  year she or I caught

  a hand in it.

  Tuesday my mother ironed.

  One iron was the mangle.

  She sat at it feeding in towels,

  sheets, pillowcases.

  The hand ironing began

  with my father’s underwear.

  She ironed his shorts.

  She ironed his socks.

  She ironed his undershirts.

  Then came the shirts

  a half hour to each, the starch

  boiling on the stove.

  I forget blueing. I forget

  the props that held up the line

  clattering down. I forget

  chasing the pigeons that shat

  on her billowing housedresses.

  I forget clothespins in the teeth.

  Tuesday my mother ironed my

  father’s underwear. Wednesday

  she mended, darned socks on

  a wooden egg. Shined shoes.

  Thursday she scrubbed floors.

  Put down newspapers to keep

  them clean. Friday she

  vacuumed, dusted, polished,

  scraped, waxed, pummeled.

  How did you become a feminist

  interviewers always ask

  as if to say, when did this

  rare virus attack your brain?

  It could have been Sunday

  when she washed the windows,

  Thursday when she burned

  the trash, bought groceries

  hauling the heavy bags home.

  It could have been any day

  she did again and again what

  time and dust obliterated

  at once until stroke broke

  her open. I think it was Tuesday

  when she ironed my father’s shorts.

  The day my mother died

  I seldom have premonitions of death.

  That day opened like any

  ordinary can of tomatoes.

  The alarm drilled into my ear.

  The cats stirred and one leapt off.

  The scent of coffee slipped into my head

  like a lover into my arms and I sighed,

  drew the curtains and examined

  the face of the day.

  I remember no dreams of loss.

  No dark angel rustled ominous win
gs

  or whispered gravely.

  I was caught by surprise

  like the trout that takes the fly

  and I gasped in the fatal air.

  You were gone suddenly as a sound

  fading in the coil of the ear

  no trace, no print, no ash

  just the emptiness of stilled air.

  My hunger feeds on itself.

  My hands are stretched out

  to grasp and find only their

  own weight bearing them down

  toward the dark cold earth.

  Love has certain limited powers

  The dead walk with us briefly,

  suddenly just behind on the narrow

  path like a part in the hairy grass.

  We feel them between our shoulder

  blades and we can speak, but if

  we turn, like Eurydice they’re gone.

  The dead lie with us briefly

  swimming through the warm salty

  pool of darkness flat as flounders,

  floating like feathers on the shafts

  of silver moonlight. Their hair

  brushes our face and is gone.

  The dead speak to us through

  the scent of red musk roses,

  through steam rising from green tea,

  through the spring rain scratching

  on the pane. If I try to recapture

  your voice, silence grates

  in my ears, the mocking rush

  of silence. But months later

  I stand at the stove stirring a pot

  of soup and you say, Too much salt,

  and you say, You have my hair,

  and, Pain wears out like anything else.

  Little lights

  Tonight I light the first candle

  on the chanukiyah by the window

  and then a second in the bathtub,

  the yahrzeit candle for your death.

  I am always sad the first night

  of a holiday when we should rejoice.

  This night nineteen years ago

  the light of your mind snuffed out.

  The Chanukkah candles burn quickly

  two hours and they gutter out

  their short time burnt up.

  We did not know how old you were—

  you’d always fudged your age,

  you had no birth certificate—

  I don’t know if you knew

  your birth date and place, for real.

  Grandma always gave a different

  answer and then shrugged. Your

  mother is younger than me and

  older than you, what else matters?

  Yes, there’s Moses and David,

  Babylon and the Talmud,

  Maimonides, and then we appear

  out of a cloud of smoke and haze

  of old blood there among the Jew-

  haters clutching a few bundles.

  My people poor, without names,

  histories vanished into the hard soil

  but we had stories with pedigrees:

  my female ancestors told them,

  Lilith, the golem, Rabbi Nachman,

  the Maccabees, all simultaneous

  all swarming around my bed

  all caught in my hair as you

  washed it with tar soap, relating

  fables, family gossip, bubele

  maisehs, precious handed down

  the true family jewels, my dowry.

  Those little flames you lit in my

  mind burn on paper for you,

  your true yahrzeit, all year

  every year of my aging life.

  Gifts that keep on giving

  You know when you unwrap them:

  fruitcake is notorious. There were only

  51 of them baked in 1917 by the

  personal chef of Rasputin. The mad monk

  ate one. That was what finally killed him

  But there are many more bouncers:

  bowls green and purple spotted like lepers.

  Vases of inept majolica in the shape

  of wheezing frogs or overweight lilies.

  Sweaters sized for Notre Dame’s hunchback.

  Hourglasses of no use humans

  can devise. Gloves to fit three-toed sloths.

  Mufflers of screaming plaid acrylic.

  Necklaces and pins that transform

  any outfit to a thrift shop reject.

  Boxes of candy so stale and sticky

  the bonbons pull teeth faster than

  your dentist. Weird sauces bought

  at warehouse sales no one will ever

  taste unless suicidal or blind.

  Immortal as vampires, these gifts

  circulate from birthdays to Christmas,

  from weddings to anniversaries.

  Even if you send them to the dump,

  they resurface, bobbing up on the third

  day like the corpses they call floaters.

  After all living have turned to dust

  and ashes, in the ruins of cities

  alien archeologists will judge our

  civilization by these monstrous relics.

  The yellow light

  When I see—obsolete, forgotten—

  a yellow porchlight, I am transported

  to muggy Michigan evenings.

  The air is thick with July.

  We are playing pinochle.

  Every face card is a relative.

  Now we are playing Hearts

  but I am the Queen of Spades.

  Mosquitoes hum over the weedy

  lake. An owl groans in the pines.

  Moths hurl themselves against

  the screens, a dry brown rain.

  Yellow makes every card black.

  The eyes of my uncles are avid.

  They are playing for pennies

  and blood. One shows off

  a new Buick, one a new wife.

  The women are whispering

  about bellies and beds.

  It always smells like fried perch.

  I am afraid I will never grow up.

  I think the owl is calling me

  over the black water to hide

  in the pines and turn, turn

  into something strange and dark

  with wings and talons and words

  of a more powerful language

  than uncles and aunts know,

  than uncles and aunts understand.

  The new era, c. 1946

  It was right after the war of my childhood

  World War II, and the parks were wide open.

  The lights were all turned on, house

  lights, streetlights, neon like green

  and purple blood pumping the city’s heart.

  I had grown up in brownout, blackout,

  my father the air raid warden going

  house to house to check that no pencil

  of light stabbed out between blackout curtains.

  Now it was summer and Detroit was celebrating.

  Fireworks burst open their incandescent petals

  flaring in arcs down into my wide eyes.

  A band was playing “Stars and Stripes Forever.”

  Then the lights came on brighter and starker

  than day and sprayers began to mist the field.

  It was the new miracle DDT in which we danced

  its faint perfumy smell like privet along the sidewalks.

  It was comfort in mist, for there would be no more

  mosquitoes forever, and we would always be safe.

  Out in Nevada soldiers were bathing in fallout.

  People downwind of the tests were drinking

  heavy water out of their faucets. Cancer

  was the rising sign in the neon painted night.

  Little birds fell out of the trees but no one

  noticed. We had so many birds then.

  In Europe American cigarettes were money.

  Here all
the kids smoked on street corners.

  I used to light kitchen matches with my thumbnail.

  My parents threw out their Depression ware

  and bought Melmac plastic dishes.

  They believed in plastic and the promise

  that when they got old, they would go

  to Florida and live like the middle class.

  My brother settled in California with a new

  wife and his old discontent. New car,

  new refrigerator, Mama and Daddy have new hats.

  Crouch and cover. Ashes, all fall down.

  Winter promises

  Tomatoes rosy as perfect babies’ buttocks,

  eggplants glossy as waxed fenders,

  purple neon flawless glistening

  peppers, pole beans fecund and fast

  growing as Jack’s Viagra-sped stalk,

  big as truck tire zinnias that mildew

  will never wilt, roses weighing down

  a bush never touched by black spot,

  brave little fruit trees shouldering up

  their spotless ornaments of glass fruit:

  I lie on the couch under a blanket

  of seed catalogs ordering far

  too much. Sleet slides down

  the windows, a wind edged

  with ice knifes through every crack.

  Lie to me, sweet garden-mongers:

  I want to believe every promise,

  to trust in five pound tomatoes

  and dahlias brighter than the sun

  that was eaten by frost last week.

  The gardener’s litany

  We plant, it is true.

  I start the tiny seedlings

  in peat pots, water, feed.

  But the garden is alive

  in the night with its own

  adventures. Slugs steal

  out, snails carry their