Aspects of Dagwood
Dagwood dealing poker in Ed Feeley's garage; an unshaded
bulb blares over his pin-cushion head. At the table,
simple men puffing black stogies, quaffing frothy mugs.
The one with red hair, buck teeth takes the pot with three aces,
a king, & a queen, all the same suit. A fearful voice.
--Here comes Blondie mad as a goose, Dagwood.
Dagwood at the office snoozing at his desk, an unsigned
contract floating to the floor, pretty as a dream.
His comic cellblock switches from lemon to plum to tangerine,
serving to foster an atmosphere of insecurity,
fitfully punctuated by the business end of the boot.
--Dagwood! You do-nothing dimwit! You're fired! Get out!
Dagwood at Herb Woodley's hiding from the wife.
Dagwood at the pool hall making a three bank shot.
Dagwood at the bowling alley knocking down all the pins.
Dagwood at the doorstep bickering with a salesman's
onslaught of hard sell punches. Dagwood,
bruised & beaten, atwitter over his new gizmo.
Insomniac Dagwood with a fat sandwich of cold cuts.
Dagwood squawking in the tub when the ladies' club
drops by. Dagwood dangling from the bathroom window,
drippy wet towel draped around his bottom,
red Z's masking his face like a bland whodunit. Bells.
--Mr. Dithers wants you, Dagwood.
Dagwood whooshing out the door. Dagwood late for the bus.
Dagwood sporting the familiar bow tie & slouch hat.
Dagwood in polka-dot boxers, hiking his trousers,
pecking Blondie on the cheek, slurping down coffee
as he runs out, slamming pow! into the postman. Letters
flutter around them like fragments of Dagwood's recycled pulp.
[first appeared in Poetry NOW]
*
The Summer Before Last Summer
Taking the fishing trip I never had as a boy,
I’m standing on the boat’s port side because,
well, I like standing, the handle of my rod
propped against my gut. I’m a man.
It’s what men do. When I feel my line go taut,
I begin to reel it in. I’m not very good at this,
& it’s a struggle. Nothing like Santiago’s
great fish, I’ll confess, but there’s definitely
something on the other end. Maybe a hubcap,
maybe a fish. Like a pediatrician,
I have little patience, which
I expect to snap, that is, if my hands don’t cramp.
I draw the line in, take up the slack
until, with just a gentle jerk, I’m left
holding a pole, limp & weightless.
My arms can’t describe my loss. I stop, eyes fixed
on white fins cutting across the surface.
I think sharks, but upon closer inspection,
I see it’s my old man, young again behind
the wheel of his ’60 Plymouth, off on a binge,
driving home the long way, the wrong way.
[first appeared in Manthology: Poems of the Male Experience]
*
Degrees of Hell at Hattiesburg
pour from a spigot like bad luck. You
drive naked outskirts hard for the freeway
out of a town whose one & only side’s
as wrong as your last right. The dashboard light
blinks low fuel—to say nothing of your ego—
so you stop at a tumbledown station
for a fill-up. Map unfurled, you ask directions.
The towheaded attendant stares past you,
his thoughts drifting like fumes. I don’t think I’d go
anywhere, he muses, & in a way,
you’re grateful. Up ahead flutter the lights
of a very greasy spoon. You decide
on coffee & apple pie with directions on the side.
The oddly pretty waitress’s mission
in life’s simply to treat folks polite.
Yeah, right. I don’t see it on the menu,
she cracks, painted nail scrolling for “free whey.”
You plunk money on the table & go
blindly down a dead-end street. Years ago,
she might have fallen for you, tossing aside
pencil, pad & apron, running away
with your licentious imagination.
Now, obese & gray as a cloud, you
wait for the blankity-blank signal light
to turn gangrene. You feel a twinge of delight
cutting carelessly through the escargot
of traffic for a parking space, but you
leave the bar thirsty. You’re driving. Besides,
they’re closed for quote-unquote renovation.
Well, that’s how they turn you away anyway.
You’re too gullible. As for the thruway,
take a left at the dogleg after the last light.
A snickering cop gives you a citation
for something termed your failure. Your Yugo
runs hot through bleak countryside,
so you pull off. Your engine dies. You
wave for the moron yelling at you to go
around. Headlights flash. The blonde by his side
frames the gesticulation meant for you.
[first appeared in New York Quarterly]
*
Being & Being Dead
Perhaps the most
noticeable difference
is the lack of mobility. Not
only do overt motions
like lighting a cigarette
as you punch up work
or wife on your cell
phone to complain you’re
running late, doing eighty
easy down the interstate
while rummaging
your stash for an apropos
CD or waving your hand
frantically at the screeching,
horn-blaring, diesel-
belching semi all at once
become impossible, but
also small,
internal movements—such
as those letting you discern
the tocsin of shattering
glass before doped-up,
burglarizing bunglers duct
tape your mouth & tie
you with anonymous blood-
stained nylons to your chair,
terrified—are done. In this
way particularly,
death distinguishes itself
from sleep. For instance,
the little girl, covers pulled
over her head, dreaming
she’s a cloud while the red
house around her burns, never
wakes to the soot-smirched
face under the firefighter’s
mask, who, lost
in a suicidal brown
study of smoke climbing
stairs that dramatically
drop into the paradoxes
of an Escher woodcut,
can’t, coughing, reach her
or her deadhead daddy,
his mortal clump of ashes
smoldering in the embers
of his big ass recliner,
brew in one hand, righteous
doobie in the other, forever
nodding, watching
the eternal loop of This
Is Your Life reruns. You can’t
be somewhat or temporarily
dead. Imagine your worst
nightmare, bugged eyed, flush
cheeked, smelly, mushy
flesh shrouded in a ratty, sadly
revealing mini when her
beastly heart suddenly revives,
wanting you to take her
to a movie & maybe
out clubbing later. Dead
is dead as an empty
barrel, minus the barrel
making its ringed impression
on your forehead, your
taunting, cursing ex’s wacky
new flame fingering
your demise. You aren’t
conscious of being dead, looking
back at the daffodils strewn
over your grave as you
ascend the celestial
escalator. For
having an awareness of being
dead is, ironically if not
gratefully, not dead,
but, you know, the other thing,
alive.
[first appeared in 88: A Journal of Contemporary American Poetry]
*
Whitman Sampler
The last great poet has died,
having joined the immortals
for a softball game in the sky.
He lofts a deep fly to center,
his soul a can of corn.
That rummy Edgar Allan Poe
tags at third & foots the line,
testing the unknown arm of
aloof academician
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
I can watch them play all day
if I gaze into the sun
& stand on one leg just so.
And when the sun goes down,
I close my eyes & listen.
What slow summer evenings
I’ve heard the muse calling
Emily Dickinson—sliding,
cleats high, across the plate
in a cloud of dust—safe at home.
[first appeared in The Cape Rock]
*
Spirit of the Dead Watching
Scraping caked, peeling paint
under the eaves, I’m just
shy of the ladder’s top, my disfigured
shadow stretched across the clapboards.
It’s about eleven I guess
by the sundial I’ve become.
Through a gap in the curtain,
I catch a glimpse of whoever
she is, in bed, curled up in a sheet.
Whatever she’s dreaming, I’m
dreaming too. For one can dream
propped against the sky
of being somebody—
like Gauguin, for instance.
Ah, Tahiti! I offer
the dim reflection in the pane.
A tropic breeze brushes lush fields
of vanilla beans & sugarcane
aromatically rising to the blue
bedroom where I hover. Lazily,
the sleeper kicks the thin linen off & rolls
over, her repose
the quintessential
expression of the truth
stripped of artifice. In a gust,
I brace myself against the ladder.
White paint chips fall
to tarp-covered shrubs,
waving as if I should follow.
[first appeared in Free Lunch]
*
Degrees of Hell at Hattiesburg
pour from a spigot like bad luck. You
drive naked outskirts hard for the freeway
out of a town whose one & only side’s
as wrong as your last right. The dashboard light
blinks low fuel—to say nothing of your ego—
so you stop at a tumbledown station
for a fill-up. Map unfurled, you ask directions.
The towheaded attendant stares past you,
his thoughts drifting like fumes. I don’t think I’d go
anywhere, he muses, & in a way,
you’re grateful. Up ahead flutter the lights
of a very greasy spoon. You decide
on coffee & apple pie with directions on the side.
The oddly pretty waitress’s mission
in life’s simply to treat folks polite.
Yeah, right. I don’t see it on the menu,
she cracks, painted nail scrolling for “free whey.”
You plunk money on the table & go
blindly down a dead-end street. Years ago,
she might have fallen for you, tossing aside
pencil, pad & apron, running away
with your licentious imagination.
Now, obese & gray as a cloud, you
wait for the blankity-blank signal light
to turn gangrene. You feel a twinge of delight
cutting carelessly through the escargot
of traffic for a parking space, but you
leave the bar thirsty. You’re driving. Besides,
they’re closed for quote-unquote renovation.
Well, that’s how they turn you away anyway.
You’re too gullible. As for the thruway,
take a left at the dogleg after the last light.
A snickering cop gives you a citation
for something termed your failure. Your Yugo
runs hot through bleak countryside,
so you pull off. Your engine dies. You
wave for the moron yelling at you to go
around. Headlights flash. The blonde by his side
frames the gesticulation meant for you.
[first appeared in New York Quarterly]
*
Being & Being Dead
Perhaps the most
noticeable difference
is the lack of mobility. Not
only do overt motions
like lighting a cigarette
as you punch up work
or wife on your cell
phone to complain you’re
running late, doing eighty
easy down the interstate
while rummaging
your stash for an apropos
CD or waving your hand
frantically at the screeching,
horn-blaring, diesel-
belching semi all at once
become impossible, but
also small,
internal movements—such
as those letting you discern
the tocsin of shattering
glass before doped-up,
burglarizing bunglers duct
tape your mouth & tie
you with anonymous blood-
stained nylons to your chair,
terrified—are done. In this
way particularly,
death distinguishes itself
from sleep. For instance,
the little girl, covers pulled
over her head, dreaming
she’s a cloud while the red
house around her burns, never
wakes to the soot-smirched
face under the firefighter’s
mask, who, lost
in a suicidal brown
study of smoke climbing
stairs that dramatically
drop into the paradoxes
of an Escher woodcut,
can’t, coughing, reach her
or her deadhead daddy,
his mortal clump of ashes
smoldering in the embers
of his big ass recliner,
brew in one hand, righteous
doobie in the other, forever
nodding, watching
the eternal loop of This
Is Your Life reruns. You can’t
be somewhat or temporarily
dead. Imagine your worst
nightmare, bugged eyed, flush
cheeked, smelly, mushy
flesh shrouded in a ratty, sadly
revealing mini when her
beastly heart suddenly revives,
wanting you to take her
to a movie & maybe
out clubbing later. Dead
is dead as an empty
barrel, minus the barrel
making its ringed impression
on your forehead, your
taunting, cursing ex’s wacky
new flame fingering
your demise. You aren’t
conscious of being dead, looking
back at the daffodils strewn
over your grave as you
ascend the celestial
escalator. For
having an awareness of being
dead is, ironically if not
gratefully, not dead,
but, you know, the other thing,
alive.
[first appeared in 88: A Journal of Contemporary American Poetry]
*
Whitman Sampler
The last great poet has died,
having joined the immortals
for a softball game in the sky.
He lofts a deep fly to center,
his soul a can of corn.
That rummy Edgar Allan Poe
tags at third & foots the line,
testing the unknown arm of
aloof academician
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
I can watch them play all day
if I gaze into the sun
& stand on one leg just so.
And when the sun goes down,
I close my eyes & listen.
What slow summer evenings
I’ve heard the muse calling
Emily Dickinson—sliding,
cleats high, across the plate
in a cloud of dust—safe at home.
[first appeared in The Cape Rock]
*
Spirit of the Dead Watching
Scraping caked, peeling paint
under the eaves, I’m just
shy of the ladder’s top, my disfigured
shadow stretched across the clapboards.
It’s about eleven I guess
by the sundial I’ve become.
Through a gap in the curtain,
I catch a glimpse of whoever
she is, in bed, curled up in a sheet.
Whatever she’s dreaming, I’m
dreaming too. For one can dream
propped against the sky
of being somebody—
like Gauguin, for instance.
Ah, Tahiti! I offer
the dim reflection in the pane.
A tropic breeze brushes lush fields
of vanilla beans & sugarcane
aromatically rising to the blue
bedroom where I hover. Lazily,
the sleeper kicks the thin linen off & rolls
over, her repose
the quintessential
expression of the truth
stripped of artifice. In a gust,
I brace myself against the ladder.
White paint chips fall
to tarp-covered shrubs,
waving as if I should follow.
[first appeared in Free Lunch]
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