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She asks me, each time I
call, when I’ll visit her,
she asks me where I’m calling from, the number there,
she copies it next to the number from before,
the same exact number as the last call, she writes
in her date book, as when she lived by these date books,
dates, recitals, classes, calls all documented,
one for every year, she keeps these books at hand,
& she travels through the days, secure, & every year,
she leaves a book somewhere, & retraces her steps,
burns the world to find it, down to the last hotel,
returns to the airline customer service desk,
empties her purse on the counter, & starts again
to pencil in the family history, she keeps
the family tree, uprooted & replanted
in the wide margins of a date book, burial
places, bloodlines, marriages, to each its entry,
& she carries a crossword taken from the Times
of the previous week, folded four-square & tucked
into her book, to mark where she is, & when she
uses the phone, she has to hold the book open,
one-handed, to scratch in the new apocrypha,
hunched over the pages like Michelangelo’s
Sibyl, all her prophesies concerning the past,
she asks, when I call again, asks for the number,
& I sigh against the receiver, deliver
the ritual formula, repeat the number,
& remind her, I don’t want to remember
the last time I visited, she opens her purse,
lays out the photographs like ancient tarot cards,
rows of relatives arranged in yellowed gardens,
glaring with squinted eyes out of blurred afternoons,
oxidized pigments from an indistinct ceiling,
almost as mythic as the major arcana,
her fingers pausing over the creased pantheon,
waiting in open anticipation for her
to start the litany, to name the names, to call
the distant cousins close, when she stops herself,
lips parting already, marbled eyes already
turning to ask who these faces are, these strangers,
& she starts to ask why I, another stranger,
smile at her, & she smiles in return, the pictures
in her hand forgotten, autumn colors, ochre,
burnt orange, sunset, twilight, penny-ante postcards,
bookmarks, nothing more, & there’s no way to tell her
who they should be, or who I am, creased faces
I usher back into her purse before I leave,
her days, days at a glance, the leaves annotated
in her distinctive scrawl, her own hand washed away,
the pages clean again, her open date book blank,
she says she can’t remember where she had it last,
disconnected, she wades off into the river,
& I drop the receiver into its cradle.
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Super Sugar Crisps
scramble across kitchen floor,
as I pull from a newly opened box, my prize,
a secret decoder ring. The pieces snap together,
an alphabet on a ring that fits around my thumb,
but looks like it could tell the orbit of planets,
or unravel fingerprints under a microscope.
With my secret decoder ring, I decipher
the Volkswagen’s license plate, chalk
on the asphalt, the serial code on my bike.
I translate any word into its inner arithmetic.
I fill spiral notebooks with qabalistic equations.
My name, thirteen, nine, eleven, five, which
adds up to thirty-eight, can turn one notch
to the right, into fourteen, ten, twelve, & six,
& I disappear into my codified gematria.
Whatever I decode, I can code again.
I spin the dial, my schoolwork falls behind,
my cereal bowl encompasses the Milky Way,
life breaks into the seven basic food groups.
My vision blurs, & when it clears, I see the earth
itself, a decoder ring, spinning to riddle out
a number like infinity. I see my parents
as number-clusters, multiplying & dividing,
some assembly required, batteries not included.
I see check out lines at the Stop n’ Shop.
The future is written on the cover of TV guide.
The revolution will be colorized by TNN.
I tremble at all my decoder ring reveals to me.
The cultural cleansing of my people begins, before
I ever get the chance to answer the $64,000 question,
before Steve Allen ridicules Kerouac to his face,
before Noxema, before Spic n’ Span, before Pillsbury,
before Ed Sullivan goes off the air, before bed-time.
Women no longer wear spotless cotton gloves.
Men stop wearing hats that smell of Arthur Miller.
I see my comic books taken away for my own good,
my DC Giant Batman annual buried in the trash,
Green Lantern, my light & my protection, burnt out,
the complexions of future generations sacrificed
to Aveda ritual, age cream, botox, rhinoplasty,
as angels perform double-helix kama-sutra
configurations to tempt the Super Sugar Bear,
out of diddling with his own secret ring.
I wake up, having missed the best cartoons,
the cornerstone of any nutritious eschatology.
My head is stamped with the Bear's trademark.
Copyright in Exclesis. Free gift inside.
Act now while supply lasts.
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