Volume 16 ~ Spring 2004 ~ ISSN 1543-6063

RACHEL ZUCKER

THE MOON HAS A REPUTATION
FOR BEING FICKLE

I read the instructions twice and pee on my hand by mistake.
I wait.
I try again and then, in the 2 minutes 15 seconds it takes to get the first response
I watch Ponch deliver a baby in a trailer the CHiPs pulled over for speeding.
The woman's screaming.
Ponch pours water from a canteen over his hands and kneels between her legs.
Thirty-five seconds later he emerges from the trailer, pulls on black leather
riding gloves, there's no blood, and
one pink bar
on the plastic view screen.



BEING MARKED OR OBVIOUS
(18 WEEKS)

Others know or think something of me my recent activities
the supermarket bagger smiles, shakes her head
security guard says congratulations I walk by
I've never seen these people pass little nods
and phrases my way they know or think they know
something of my recent future are we a club?
not secret a kind of coven        try to smile back
but there's no one you are an image on a tape in a VCR
but are not, you have kidneys a liver bladder I'd like to
meet you at some scenic overlook look around
we'd know we saw the same moment on the edge
of something sometimes there's a guardrail or a guard
or just the view keeping you back, solitude, I wish you
were here although you are      I am the fish around
the hand around the fist of DNA       my body pools,
it tides, outside the terrible sounds of cars and children
after school then a silent long space and voices closing
in again, around—I carefully house what I cannot see



FIVE DAYS ON FIRE ISLAND OR 
MARRIAGE OPENS A PANEL 
ON A LACQUERED BOX

It [marriage] is no use and no use describing.
Yours is nothing like this.
Even my husband's marriage is nothing like this.

Try to rhyme two words after the fact by rubbing them together—
spark, spark, nothing... in this damp clime it seems
rhyming's out of season.

Along the boardwalk our naked soles grab and reject,
splinter. Skin and wood and heavy walking;
what did you expect?

I mean to say nothing of where we're going,
the breeze off the ocean, our neglected sandals.

What brought us is misleading
just as all comparisons yield meaning.

Marriage, varnished wood, bare feet on weathered slats.

Not philosophy so much as a confession:
one thing sticks to another but explains nothing.

Poems © Rachel Zucker 2004. All rights reserved.

Duncan Hannah
www.jamesgrahamandsons.com

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