Catalogue of the Boats
Cat was sick,
She said so she could miss my reading last night
Today morning, I replied here’s a recipe:
Two liters of water
One Emergen-C every four hours
Go to Yoga
Rest
Use a Neti Pot
What’s a Neti Pot, she asked
I said omg it will change your life
It’s a nose irrigator, thinking she is a rather delicate flower
I didn’t write that and the messaging came to an end
Even though I went as far as to suggest singing
I wanted to go on and get to the thick of it
I expected, after the banalities of the situation
Of our bodies today, a little ill, something would glow in the words
Like Cat would ask how did it go, the reading
And I’d tell her how exciting, a nightingale
Fluttered over my chest all night long
But as she didn’t respond to this sign, I too was silenced
Then I went out to the street, to Macy’s, to buy our wedding rings
Gonzalo and I got married last year
He was anxious about his status once Trump was in power
We didn’t get the rings back then, but now we are having the interview
And it’s gotta look real
Sitting down as the copy of our past couple, dinner last night was by far better
than the original
We ordered:
Five fried pork dumplings
One spicy ramen
One ramen, non-spicy
One Sapporo
One Soju
The waiter wrongly assumed the spicy one was for the man. We were too full for
dessert,
But expanding the time of our encounter, I said I need to write a poem about stuff, a catalogue, Tonight, and as we named the objects on our table, pondering what to put on the list, he Laughed. Whether it was the words or his green eyes, something glowed.
I took the train back uptown, to my studio, and meditated on this garden:
Ramos Otero’s roses;
Eliot’s lilacs and hyacinths;
Funny, I didn’t notice there were briers in Whitman!
And delaying on grass and the perfumes
I continued writing our Constitution, a little under the influence of it all:
“Our memories will grow in a garden,
Lulled by the presence of briers and lilacs,
Of hyacinths and grass.
Every morning we are to inscribe them
On the sand, right by the fountain of fresh waters.
We ought to memorialize those islands,
The destroyed ones,
As if surveying from a high tower
The camp where the troops prepare for battle,
Or as if we were counting the fleets,
We will take notice of each and every island, and write it down
For posterity to know, at least. Or,
Most likely,
Moved by desire that so often billows in our inside,
We will neglect the task even of memory.
And we will focus on getting right our smallest details,
Not feeling up to the task of gardening,
We will look at the roses,
As they continue to proliferate in our limbs.”
And now, it’s OK to inhabit these lonely regions,
(Isn’t it only a seventh floor, after all, I inhabit?)
I move my chair six inches to the right,
To use a different corner of the small desk,
Moved by necessity to write this epitaph:
“Muchos murieron en ese puerto,
Y no podemos honrarlos. Ni las listas.
Sería mentira decir que nuestros cuerpos,
Eléctricos, se expanden, para ser, en vida,
Su gran cementerio.”
I place this epitaph somewhere with intent:
On the door of the fridge?
As my I phone’s screen saver?
On my right arm as a tattoo?
And with this feeling of loss, I return to my body and to this poem.
And as I think about our country, I go back
To the image of a woman I love,
And I regain my perspective,
Focusing on the details, our two bodies,
So often they turn our gaze away
From the outside, indoors, microscopic:
Your hands, Josephine
Your fingers, Josephine,
Your arms, Josephine,
Your shoulders,
Your lips, Josephine,
Your kisses, Josephine,
Your eyes, Josephine,
Your hair,
Your sweat,
Josephine, for my flesh-glass,
Josephine, a folk tune about boats
Dangling in the dockyard, my gray hair,
Josephine,
And my kisses and my lips,
And my shoulders and my arms,
And my fingers and my hands,
Sweated, Josephine,
Poem and body sweated.