Floaters Read online

  listen to the silence of the builders, and the birds, and the silence again.

  III.

  Love Song of the Kraken

  Aubade With Concussion

  Poverty is black ice.

  —NAOMI AYALA

  You leave me sleeping in the dark. You kiss me and I stir,

  fingers in your hair, eyes open, unseeing. You leave me asleep

  every morning, commuting to the school in the city at sunrise.

  The landlord’s driveway, a muddy creek, ices over hard after

  the freezing rain clatters all night. Your feet fly up, your head

  slamming the ground, an eclipse of the sun flooding your eyes.

  You sleep under the car. No one knows how long you sleep.

  You awake with a hundred ice picks stabbing your eardrums.

  You awake, coat and hair soaked, and somehow drive to school.

  You remember to turn left at the Smith & Wesson factory.

  The other teachers lead you by the elbow to Mercy Hospital,

  where you pause when the nurse asks your name, where you claim

  your pain level is a four, and they slide you into the white coffin

  of an MRI machine. You hold your breath. They film your brain.

  Concussion: the word we use for the boxer plunging face-first

  to the canvas after the uppercut blindsided him, not the teacher

  commuting to school at sunrise in a Subaru Crosstrek. Yet, you would

  drive, ears hammering as they hammer in the purgatory of the MRI.

  A week before, Isabela came to you in the classroom and said:

  Miss, I cannot sleep. Three days, I cannot sleep. Her boyfriend called

  at 2 AM, and she did not pick up. At 3 AM, a single shot to the head

  put him to sleep, and he will sleep forever, his body hidden beneath

  a car in a parking lot on Maple Street, the cops, the television cameras,

  the neighbors all gathering at the yellow-tape carnival of his corpse.

  You said to Isabela: Take this journal. Write it down. You don’t have

  to show me. You don’t have to show anyone. On the cover of the journal

  you bought at the drugstore was the word: Dream. Isabela sat there

  in your classroom, at your desk, pencil waving in furious circles.

  By lunchtime, as her friends slapped each other, Isabela slept,

  head on the desk, face pressed against the pages of the journal.

  This is why I watch you sleep at 3 AM, when the sleeping pills fail

  to quell the strike meeting in my brain. This is why I say to you,

  when you kiss me in my sleep: Don’t go. Don’t go. You have to go.

  I Would Steal a Car for You

  Papo stole a car so he wouldn’t be late for school, the first bell

  and the last chapter of the book you taught in English class.

  He wanted to know how the story would end. His story ended

  in handcuffs and jail, his gold star attendance record ruined.

  I would steal a car for you, even though the keys no longer

  dangle from the ignition as they did the year I was born.

  I’ve never stolen a car, though I confess to vandalism,

  ripping the hood ornament off a Mercedes to improvise

  a belt buckle. My pants fell down anyway, leaving me

  with skinned knees, a mouth spraying obscenities

  and a story to tell. My pants still fall down today,

  and you laugh till your face turns birthday-balloon pink,

  so I do it again, a rodeo clown rehearsing the rescue

  of the cowboy from the horns of a charging bull.

  I may be sixty-two, but I wish I could steal a car for you.

  You would spin the wheel and parallel park, graceful

  as an ice skater gliding backwards in a figure eight.

  I would have a story to tell, not a story where I play

  all the parts with all the voices, only to learn that

  you’ve heard the story a dozen times before. I would

  steal a car to hear your stories, the tale of the boy

  who stole a car so he would not be late for school.

  I’ve heard the story many times before, but tell me

  again about the first time we sat together and you knew

  what all the crooners of all the ballads on all the car

  radios in history could never find the words to sing:

  I felt my blood flinch, you say. Tell me again how

  you offered up a bag of raw almonds in your hand

  and my fingers dipped into the bag. Tell me again

  and again how we slow-danced in the parking lot

  to the crooning of a Cuban ballad singer on the car radio.

  That We Will Sing

  I call you a saint, washing dishes at the soup kitchen, tutoring men

  who cannot write their own names, teaching poetry to the addicts,

  and I imagine Saint Sebastian, female and voluptuous this time,

  no arrows this time, white robe slipping to her waist, writhing

  in ecstasy at the touch of an invisible hand, green eyes cast

  heavenward, though we know there is no God in Paterson.

  Yet, in poetry class today, you gave the addicts a poem and they sang

  the poem back to you, Lift Every Voice and Sing, and so they did,

  even the man with one arm, and so their voices became human again,

  not the baying of wolves to be shot on sight by police after sundown,

  but church voices, school voices, voices before the needle flooded

  their bodies and drowned all the songs, all the poems they knew.

  I imagine Víctor Jara, rousing the crowd in Santiago de Chile to sing

  the last verse of his peasant’s prayer, levántate y mírate las manos,

  rise up and look at your hands, how the crowd sang the song from

  memory back to the singer, even the words he sang as if he could

  foresee the coup, the officer’s revolver in his ear, ahora y en la hora

  de nuestra muerte, now and in the hour of our death, amén.

  Afterwards, the addicts in a circle of folding chairs rose for you,

  speaking of God in Paterson to their teacher the heretic, reaching

  for your hands as if they could take the spirit in your skin back

  to the shelter where they sleep tonight, touching you the way

  I touch you sometimes, not in lust but in astonishment, telling

  myself I did not imagine you, that you are here, that we will sing.

  Love Song of the Kraken

  Listen to the love song of the kraken.

  Conquerors sailing the world mistake my body for an island.

  They navigate into hurricanes and blame me when the ships vanish.

  They hurl harpoons at my bulbous head as I slumber in the water.

  They say I crave the crunch of oars and planks, peg legs and bone.

  They say I am a monster. They say I am a squid. They say I am a myth.

  When I fade into the sea after the shipwreck, no one calls my name.

  Oh, listen to the love song of the kraken.

  You snarl at the gawkers who stare at us strolling on the boardwalk.

  You drowse in the embrace of my tentacles as I dangle off the couch.

  You listen when I tell the epic kraken tales going back a thousand years.

  You kiss the trail of the harpoons, and scrub the barnacles off my head.

  You call my name when the sea takes me. You sunbathe on my island.

  Yes, listen to the love song of the kraken.

  Show me the armada of your enemies. Show me the admiral

  in his admiral’s pointy hat, leering at you from his spyglass.

  Show me his babbling shipmates. Show me the sailor trembling

  to light the fuse and fire the cannon. I will whip my tentacl
es

  around their ships, hauling them to the murky bottom of the sea.

  Let the insomniacs sedate themselves by listening to the whine

  of whale song. Tonight, listen to the love song of the kraken.

  Love Song of the Galápagos Tortoise

  I am Lonesome George, the last Galápagos tortoise of Pinta Island.

  I see Darwin’s hairy face on T-shirts and hats, backpacks and mugs.

  I see the statues. I can read the history books if someone turns the pages.

  I remember Darwin. I was there the day he landed in the ship named

  for a dog with floppy ears. He tried to lift me up and strained his groin.

  He climbed on my saddleback shell and tried to ride me, giggling like

  a boy on a birthday pony. He slipped off and rolled over in the surf,

  spitting sand. He watched me plod around in search of cactus to crunch,

  timing me with a pocket watch. He yelled in my ear to see if I was deaf,

  and I hissed in his face. He invited my tortoise brothers and sisters

  to board the Beagle. The crew hauled them up the gangplank as guests

  of honor. Darwin noted in his journal: Young tortoises make excellent soup.

  Like the pirates and the whalers, the naturalists licked their spoons,

  soup in their beards, toasting the voyage with glasses of our urine.

  I am Lonesome George. I crane my leathery neck and hiss at everyone.

  I tuck my head inside my shell. You call and call my name till I peek out.

  I am a creature of the tropics who curses the icebergs of December.

  You dress me up in cardigan sweaters and wool scarves for winter.

  I groan about my gut, intimidating the curious with a drumroll of flatulence.

  You feed me the cactus of Pinta Island and pizza from the Jersey Shore.

  I am afraid of the toaster and dream of Darwin’s beard caught in its coils.

  You are afraid of nothing, as you make waffles jump from the glowing machine.

  I plod down the road as cars honk behind me, seafarers hungry for soup.

  You let me steer the car, even though the world is blurry and you yell

  in my ear when the other cars cruise like pirate ships through stop signs.

  I will hiss at the next TV reporter who calls me Lonesome George. This world

  teems with pirates, whalers and naturalists on parade, waving their spoons

  in the air, craving the delicacy of buttery tortoise flesh, but now I crane

  my neck to croak the love song of the Galápagos tortoise for you, and you

  swear I am your Frank Sinatra, I am your Sam Cooke, I sing better than Darwin.

  Love is a Luminous Insect at the Window

  for Lauren Marie Espada

  JUNE 13, 2019

  The word love: there it is again, indestructible as an insect,

  fly faster than the swatter, mosquito darting through the net.

  How the word love chirps in every song, crickets keeping

  a city boy up all night. I wish I could fry and eat them.

  How the word love buzzes in sonnet after sonnet. I am

  the beekeeper who wakes from a nightmare of beehives.

  To quote Durán, the Panamanian brawler who waved a glove

  and walked away in the middle of a fight: No más. No more.

  Then I see you, watching the violinist, his eyes shut, the Russian

  composer’s concerto in his head, white horsehair fraying on the bow,

  and your face is bright with tears, and there it is again, the word love,

  not a fly or a mosquito, not a cricket or a bee, but the Luna moth

  we saw one night, luminous green wings knocking at the screen

  on the window as if to say I have a week to live, let me in, and I do.

  Insulting the Prince

  Monaco is a cake of many layers with a little prince on top.

  —FRANCIS COMBES

  We are wandering itinerant bards. Somehow, we wandered into Monaco,

  and I gripped your hand, queasy in the back seat of the English teacher’s

  car as she spun the wheel, lost in her fantasies of winning the Grand Prix,

  zipping past the tour buses, the yachts bristling in the harbor, the changing

  of the guard at the palace, the crowds jostling for a glimpse of the monarch

  in his white uniform. At lunch, you saw the official portrait of the prince

  and his princess on the wall, his head bulging and hairless as an alien

  from a science fiction movie, her grimace confirming the rumor that

  she tried to flee the wedding, only to be captured by police at the airport.

  It’s like a bad prom picture, you said, and a shush arose from the teachers

  at the table, the sound I never hear when I press a seashell to my ear.

  Insulting the prince is against the law, they told us, and indeed

  The Prince’s persona is inviolable, says the constitution in Monaco.

  At that moment, I remembered why I love your mouth, the kisses

  but the curses too, the dialogue you memorized from the movies

  at your father’s video store in New Jersey, the lawbreaking words

  that soared and tumbled like Olympic divers into the soup at lunch,

  warned by the lifeguards of language, rattling the soup bowls again.

  The Assassination of the Landlord’s Purple Vintage 1976 Monte Carlo

  The landlord says we have to go. On the night the thermostat read seventeen

  below zero, and there was no heat on the first floor, the Massachusetts State

  Sanitary Code appeared in the landlord’s in-box like a spirit tapping bony

  knuckles on his window, and a letter appeared in the landlord’s in-box

  like a spirit scratching the words no rent in the frost on his window,

  and the landlord’s mouth foamed as if he’d swallowed detergent,

  and the foam froze on his beard, and the landlord’s plumber laid

  twenty-four feet of baseboard on the first floor, and now we have to go.

  The landlord keeps his purple vintage 1976 Monte Carlo parked at the edge

  of the driveway, purple inside and out, paint job and upholstery purple,

  the color of emperors. The mad emperor Caligula assassinated his cousin,

  jealous of his purple cloak, and the mad emperor’s mouth foamed

  as if he’d swallowed detergent, and the foam froze on his beard.

  The neighbors report a moose sighting today. The moose charges from

  the woods, mad as an emperor jealous of a purple cloak, sees the purple

  vintage 1976 Monte Carlo as another moose, and rams Caligula’s chariot

  with his bristling antlers, kicking the car the way a teenager high on detergent

  T-boned my leased Toyota Corolla two weeks ago, and so the moose claims

  his territory, this land without a gas station or a movie theater or a pizza joint

  or a doctor’s office, and gallops back into the woods, snorting foam.

  Now come the hunters tracking the moose, crossbows bristling since crossbow

  season is upon us, their vision blurred by a night of Red Bull and detergent,

  and see the purple vintage 1976 Monte Carlo as a moose, firing volley

  after volley of arrows into the windshield, and the talisman of the air freshener

  hanging from the rearview mirror does not keep the glass from exploding,

  and the jumper cables coiled in the back seat do not rise magically like electric

  eels, and the hunters explode in a cry of huzzah, waving their crossbows

  as if their arrows thumped the hump of Richard the hunchback king.

  The purple vintage 1976 Monte Carlo is a dead moose, tow truck dragging

  away the carcass to a round of applause in my brain. The landlord will snort


  and foam, demanding to know why there is nothing left but his mutilated

  vanity plate stamped with the year 1976, and I will speak to him in Brooklynese,

  palms turned upward in the universal gesture of the uncooperative witness.

  He will keep my security deposit, his territory without a gas station

  or a movie theater or a pizza joint or a doctor’s office. I say huzzah.

  IV.

  Morir Soñando

  Remake of Me the Sickle for Thy Grain

  for Arturo Giovannitti

  Lawrence, Massachusetts, 1912

  Remake of me the sickle for thy grain; remake of me the oven for thy bread.

  The poet of the Bread and Roses strike, in his cravat and velvet vest,

  messenger from the Industrial Workers of the World to the laborers

  in the mills, spoke to them in Dante’s tongue till they poured into

  the streets as water pours from a shattered earthenware jug.

  Remake of me the sickle for thy grain; remake of me the oven for thy bread.

  Incitement to riot, accessory to murder, said the law after blood matted

  the hair of a picketing girl shot by a cop. In the jailhouse where accused

  witches once meditated on the same gallows, the poet carved in fountain pen

  a poem in the voice of the iron bars that caged him at the feet of the judge:

  Remake of me the sickle for thy grain; remake of me the oven for thy bread.

  He rose from the cage in the courtroom, still wearing his cravat and vest,

  speaking to the gallery in Shakespeare’s tongue, till the reporters who

  knew the creak of the gallows heard themselves sniffling in the distance,

  and the sleeves of the jurors hid their eyes as the foreman said: not guilty.

  Remake of me the sickle for thy grain; remake of me the oven for thy bread.

  Whenever he would speak, the crowd became the chorus in his opera;

  Helen Keller, socialist, typed in Braille the words to introduce his book;

  he saw his own face smile stiffly back at him on one-cent postcards;