Made in Detroit (9 page)

Suppose hell were a room

where the lovers you broke

up with, the spouses you left,

the friends you discarded

all were waiting to question

you, with no time limit ever

but the explanations could last

halfway into eternity. Who

wouldn’t sooner leap into

a fire? There is no excuse

for the end of love or for

the fact that it never started

its engine into that lovely

roar but just coughed again

and again until you gave up

and got out and went off.

Some friendships are just not

sturdy enough to bear the daily

wear and weight. How to say,

but simply you bored me.

Then all the people you did

not help, the ones you hung

up on, letters unanswered,

loans denied, calls not returned

that endless line will be snaking

through the horizon, waiting

to demand what you would

not give, life’s unpaid bills.

Our minds cannot hold the dead.

They seep away. Their voices,

gone to silence no matter how

hard I try to cup them in my ear.

Their faces come apart, cubist

explosions of dark eyes, blue,

grey green, her nose, his flyaway

hair, the crumpled skin of hands.

Did she really say that? Or was

it April instead of October? What

year did measles hit? The color

of her red dress with fishscale sequins.

Did the glass break when he slammed

the door? He told that joke forty

times at least. Then suddenly he

laughs in my hair and I know him.

How we come apart in death,

not only our bodies decomposing

but our lives, stuck in random

pieces in the brains of others

who loved or hated us, who carry

us in memory or in their genes, who

slowly must let us drift like autumn

leaves down to the final ground.

We lie inert half open and spent

like flowers just past peak, loosened

but gloriously scented. When

a couple loves intensely, we

are even closer after sex than

during. More content. We still

touch but lightly in a kind of lull

that is totally complete.

We never ask, how was that

for you, because we know.

Practice makes whatever

of perfection we can have.

No longer joined at genitals

but in a larger longer joining

two meandering hard flowing

rivers melding into one.

We lie at peace on the sunporch

the woods all around us, wrens

tittering, a dragonfly just over

us on the translucent roof,

two cats snoozing one on each

red cushion and Xena watching

those wrens through the screen.

Everybody is safe. Today. Now.

The wonder of it, building a home

in one another after so many false

starts, collapses, fires set

intentionally or by default,

paper houses the cold winds

blew into shreds.

Our foundation was tentative

enough, part-time. We began

with a rickety lean-to propped

against the walls of previous

matings. Then brick of trust

by brick we laid

this structure in which we

dwell, decade upon decade,

adding a room here, a bay

window to let the sun come

in, a new roof to keep out

the wind and snow.

Repairing is work that never

lets up, always some leak or stained

wall, loose floorboard, burnt

out plug. But we’ll never leave

this house except feet first

on a final stretcher.

I could use some time in a marinade

myself. Perhaps Madeira on winter

evenings. A nice refreshing Chablis.

Champagne would be ritzy but ticklish.

A nice dry martini bath on hot days

would soften me up nicely.

Some days I feel leathery

as a snapping turtle. Some days

I am dry as burnt pie dough.

Some days the winds of trouble

have left me scorched and crumbly.

Sometimes I’m just a bald tire.

Yes, prepare me a marinade, dear.

Soak me in it overnight. Tomorrow

you’ll find me far easier to digest.

Strange, these soft lumps on my front.

Like men with their pricks, women

whose breasts are large tend to be

somewhat obsessed with you.

We are always having to watch out

for you, pick out bras with the care

men spend selecting a new car.

Can’t lie on my stomach for long.

Watch you don’t get bumped too

hard. Notice blouses won’t button

when otherwise they fit just fine.

Men stare at them when addressing

me as if my nipples were talking.

Some of us are selfconscious,

wearing muumuus and sweat

shirts or layer over layer. Others

seek clothes that show you off.

My identity contains a streak

of you. But sometimes I feel

as if I walk around behind you

like a person behind a parade

float, just tagging along.

All the words I never spoke in time

in the flashing moments when they

could have, might have but didn’t—

they follow me like vultures circling

so that I know something rotten

lies in the field. The apologies

never delivered age in the dead

letter office of the brain, yellowing.

But the promises’ broken bits

have worked their way into

the mattress and poke my sleep,

words I should never have said.

Gossip, curses, whispers behind

closed doors, in bed; words

hurled in argument, justification,

the stinging gnats of lies:

sticky words, overpoweringly

fragrant like lilies in a closed room,

rancid, spiky. Such are words made

flesh, made bread, made dagger.

Missing can be seen as a hole

in the heart, that imaginary

valentine where we store

our emotions.

Absence of someone loved

can be a presence, a lack

that whispers, that raises

hair on your neck

with fear of no return.

Final absence is a black

hole sucking your whole

life into it unless

you thrust it from you

again and again and

again, supper with the plate

solemn as a moon;

two a.m. waking to empty-

ness louder than a shout;

a voice you hear, but

no one is speaking, ever.

Nobody rules. They all

take turns. I can never

tell who will chase who

playing war over the couch

and chairs, round and

round again until suddenly

they stop as if a whistle

blew in their heads.

Five of them, aged fifteen

to two. Who will curl

together making one cushion

of patchwork fur? Who

will painstakingly lick

a friend, washing and

cuddling. Who will growl

at their friend of last hour?

The one rule is where each

sleeps at night, their spot

in the bed and with whom?

It is written in bone.

What traces have I left

on all the bodies I have held?

Do they remember my mouth?

Let them forget.

Some come like cats howling

in the night for sex withheld.

Some have gone from my mind.

Their scent has drifted off.

Some I remember with anger

but that too runs down the drain.

Maybe the sink is still dirty.

Maybe the water is clean.

I dream of none of them.

I dream of my mother and cats.

I dream of danger and hunger.

I dream my dying.

What prints do we leave

on old lovers? Do they wash

off or wear down? Sometimes

they turn up expecting

that I will be that girl they

bedded, maybe they still

see her smooth and willing.

They find only me

like an old oak rooted deep,

like a cat who has learned

where to find her food

and where she will only starve.

What we weave, day into night into day

now and again, I’m sure looks lumpy

rough burlap from the outside, but

in its house like an oriole’s nest

hanging from our sugar maple, we curl

and coil and feed and doze together.

We exchange dreams in the thick

night. We pass tasks between us.

We polish each other’s noses

like doorknobs. We crawl into

each other turning round and round

like a cat making a place to sleep.

A long marriage is a quiet epic

full of battles won and lost and ended

by treaties and half forgotten,

of full-throated songs and whispered

treatises, of wispy and rocky promises,

of friendships that dried up like old

apples stored too long and friendships

with cycles of famine and plenty. Cycles

of discovery exploring new islands, cycles

of retreat back into the couple exploring

each other’s strange core and familiar

skin, making it new again and again.

I gripped you like a speckled serpent

sinewy, twisting in my tiring arms,

finally breaking free to bite me.

I thought us more alike than we

ever were. In part we invented

each other in a clouded mirror.

We talked, oh long into the night

but did we ever listen? What

did we hear but our wishes?

I gave and you graciously

accepted and then I resented.

When is my turn that never came?

The turning came: the scorpion end

with the poison sting in its tail.

The polychrome egg of our friend-

ship broke open and the rot within

dyed the air mustard yellow. How

long ago that embryo must’ve died.

Unless illness sticks a knife in you

between the ribs like a mugger

from behind, you never imagine

your death until your friends

begin to die. There you are

in a field suddenly stripped bare

with a north wind sandpapering

your skin and when you look

around, where have all the flowers

and bushes and prancing hares

gone? Where are the quick

foxes, the wandering butterflies?

Even your dog at heel has passed

under the soil and rain pours

through him. Then you feel the skull

pressing through your cheeks

as if eager to expose itself

like a flasher in the park.

All the friends, the lovers,

the cats and dogs with whom

you shared rooms and beds—

their memories bloom like ghost

flowers brighter, more vivid

than the remaining weeds that grow.

My old cat Malkah howls at night

waking me. Sometimes I’m

kind, get up and bring her

to bed, pet and cuddle.

Sometimes I’m pissed off

chase her from the bedroom

shut the door tight. I wonder

what she is wanting in darkness

when we are all in bed, when

even the other cats sleep.

She is frail, gets two kinds

of medicine daily.

I am not so frisky myself—

arthritis in my knees

from a treadmill accident

in a run-down gym.

I think her howling scares

me because I hear in it

the vault of loneliness old

age threatens to us all.

That I could face not so much

death but years of getting up

in a silent house, pottering

around talking to myself

because there is no one

to care any longer what

I say and so my words

dry up and turn to dust.

Pumpkin I call you, sweet

and spicy pie. Mango

juicy. Scotch bonnet hot.

Dark chocolate. Espresso.

Fresh squeezed orange

juice thick with pulp.

You come through for

me time after time and

again. Reliable as Old

Faithful. Solid as granite.

You always give me

the gift of laughter.