Break Up with Him (A How-to Manual)

 Score limbs and torso with a paring knife,

then peel just like a mango.  If the skin

resists, to pry it up place a dull blade

beneath one edge and rock it back and forth.

With the meat flayed, it’s easier to run

a slender blade between the muscles, then

to sever tendons and cut fat from flesh. 

Now break the major joints with a steel hatchet,

crack bones as you would a lobster, crush

the skull with a small sledge and blend bone dust

with flesh.  Wear plastic gloves, a heavy apron.

Then wait for turkey buzzards to wing in,

approach the flesh on clumsy chicken legs,

stretch their necks, watching you with burnished eyes.

A Bowl of Bean Soup

“You don’t know anything,” he hears her snap

through the screen door, out on the patio,

smoking.  She says, “Why can’t he let me go?”

He holds a bowl of bean soup on his lap.

Back when his brother called, he’d said, “You talk,”

“I don’t know how to tell him,” and gave up

the phone and sat down with his soup.  He shuts

his eyes and forces a few sips, then stops.

His stomach is too tight.  Great soup, no meat,

three kinds of bean, white corn and carrots, but

he can’t go on.  To live you have to eat. 

Why do you have to live?  The beans are hot

and something tight inside begins to give.

One spoon.  Another.  This is how you live.

After She Sat Down on the Couch and Told Him the Marriage Was Done, He Had to Leave on a Business Trip

He drove away from her.  He drove until

the city flattened in the mirror, crops

diminished in the chocolate fields, until

the sky turned zinc.  He sped past the rest stops

and drove until the mountains tilted him

into null air. He saw a pile of tires

burning.  A tufted owl dived straight at him,

then veered away. He almost crashed.  Too tired

to drive, he drove into exhaustion.  Death

was on the road and he aimed straight for it:

a zero time, a cobwebbed love, decay,

a world of dust and chalk, pathetic yet

where else to live? So he drove into it

and drove away from her, drove her away. 

The Bed Is Wide

The bed is wide.  He turns and stretches out

a hand and touches no one, nothing there,

no soft horizon breathing dark, no hair

meandering through sheets into his mouth,

no breast, no dip above the hip, no skin.

The bed is infinite, it spreads into

a future full of nightsweat nights when through

the dark no hand is reaching out for him.

What comfort in this comforter, this stark

cold sack?  The bed is wide and empty and

it has blank sheets to cover up the dead.

Its ghosts afflict the journey through the dark.

The bed is wide.  He stretches out his hand.

He’ll never reach the edges of this bed.

He Murders His Darlings

He thought of William Faulkner who once said

“Murder your darlings,” meaning be dead cold

when you rewrite.  To live himself he killed

his children who had never lived. The dead

were one small boy awakening to life,

with Asian eyes, his father’s nose and dark

intense black curly hair, a girl so smart,

alert and happy she could make you laugh

with just a glance.  He murdered them inside

his mind, and burned the house they hadn’t bought,

and quit the job he didn’t get, took off

the ring of white and yellow gold that lied

to him about his wife and children.  Now,

alone, he should be able to live.  How?

Moving Day

He piles her boxes in the courtyard under

a tarp, the bookshelves, microwave, spare phone,

and though his friends make clear they wonder

why he would help her move, he says, “It’s fine.

I want to save her money, help her out.”

And he does—helps her move out, feeling weight

tear at his muscles.  Now he is without

her things.  They are inside the truck, her freight,

then on the freeway, then in her new flat,

then gone.  He’s glad to ache in shoulder blades

and arms.  It means that though she’s left him flat,

left him behind like old footprints, he’s made

a choice as well, to move her, remove her,

a choice to move past, not be moved by her.

Worn

He’s cleaning out the trunk in which his clothes

are stored for summer, bathing suits, surf shorts,

swimming goggles, neatly folded beach shirts,

all laundered, put in plastic, and then closed

away—and finds a black and silky bra,

some short shorts with a tiny waist, a sleek

black top, all empty of her, as is he,

although she ghosts through him all night and gnaws

his dreams.  They were so close he thought he wore

her like a skin, as she wore him till they

wore out.  When doubt crawled in, she stored away

her love and latched the trunk and left.  It seems

he catches just a whiff of her somewhere

in the blouse.  No, it’s clean.  Too clean, too clean.

Waiting for a Bus in Oakland

That time of day when all things thicken, street-

corner honeyed with late afternoon glaze,

everything pastel and hushed, discreet.

And now a woman asks him for some change,

he gives her some, but wants to ask “Does any-

thing really ever change?”  Just an old joke

he can’t quite say while searching through his pennies.

Of course it does.  One day the world is broken.

Then hot hurt cools to watercolor on

a day when palm trees shiver and dissolve

and sunlight blows through their high frazzled fronds.

A newspaper takes flight and then revolves.

A helicopter chops the sky.  Stand up. 

It’s time.  Begin to live.  Here comes the bus.