Business

I don’t have the stomach for writing poems anymore.

In the past 8 years,

my total income from poetry is $5.

Adjusted for inflation,

it’s closer to $5.50.

This puts me in an advantageous tax bracket.

I’ve also received numerous contributor’s copies

as payment

from journals that have published my work.

My accountant managed to get these written off

as gifts—the transfer of property

without expecting to receive

something of at least equal value

in return—

and they are tax deductible.

The other day I was charged $35,

an overdraft fee,

and in the morning I went to the bank.

The fee could have been forgiven,

the banker explained,

if it weren’t for your account’s tenureship.

Tenureship here meant

I hadn’t had an account for very long.

I told him, I won’t make $35 dollars for 56 years,

I’m a poet.

But the deduction had already posted,

and, sadly, at that juncture

an override was deemed

impossible.

Impossible.

Some people simply don’t believe in miracles.

A few days later a taxi driver told me

money is always coming and going,

coming and going.

And it is.

He picked me up at the airport

and immediately missed my turn.

My office is less than ten minutes from the airport

and I watched it glide by

as we merged onto

the highway.

I said,

you should have turned back there

and he told me about

Afghani vehicle preference—

how strong engines trump fuel efficiency

over there, because of the mountains.

I said I liked Indian food.

“That tikka masala. What a dish."

I was late for work and

he charged me $50 dollars

on what should have cost $15.

I gave him a $12 tip.

I don’t have the stomach for writing poems anymore.

I can’t afford it.

But every now and again

I find myself doing it anyway.

.

Opposite Person

For the past two years I’ve lived in rural Honduras. I have an internet connection. I read the U.S news—too much of it, perhaps. I watch my teams, the Bulls and the Saints. I’m not off the grid, not like my uncle was when he did Peace Corps in Ethiopia in the 60’s. I’ve come back for the holidays, seen family, and besides the odd sensation that I’m driving by rows and rows of hotels, I’ve been saved from culture shock. But there have been these feelings.

The other day a Babe Ruth picture nearly brought me to tears. A far cry from the Yankee Bambino that drank beer between innings and waddled out of the dugout only to hit 410-foot home runs, this picture shows a different Babe. He sits in the stands, a quiet, concerned spectator wearing a three-piece suit. One leg rests over the other and his hands are folded in quiet respect on one knee. The seats directly around Babe are empty. Several rows behind him, a man reads a newspaper. In the next seat is a woman wearing a big, floppy, black hat. She’s laughing at something the man next to her has said. Nearby, a man with a scorecard and a beatific smile puffs on a cigar. It is easy to feel the weather in pictures like this—indeed, to feel the actual day. But it is gone and Babe is squinting over his shoulder. He is perhaps three years past his prime, not invisible, but clearly not bigger than the game. The game—perhaps he is realizing— will go on without him.

Another unexpected feeling grabbed me during an NBA postgame show. There was a white host and a black host. The white guy was a lifetime suburbanite, a college graduate with a degree in communications. The black guy was a retired professional ball player, one who grew up in a rough neighborhood in Chicago; one who made it, who perhaps saw friends and family killed, beaten by police. The topic during the postgame show, however, was basketball. The white guy asked the questions, the black guy answered them. One deferred to the other. They even joked around some. It was soothing. It seemed a nod to history, harmony. Black and white: America’s two hosts.

Then it happened again. I was watching Michael Jordan’s first NBA game online, a winning effort against the Washington Bullets. The video quality was poor, and the commercials had not been edited out. Surprisingly, the commercials were the most interesting part. Alka Seltzer. No matter what shape your stomach is in, when it gets out of shape, take Alka Seltzer. Better than any other antacid. Better than anything you can get without a prescription. Anything. Alka Seltzer. It’s the best. There was something refreshing about the language. It was bold, direct. There was another commercial, this one appearing to have been financed by the Arizona Department of Tourism. When hay fever pollen invades your sinuses, brings runny nose and watery eyes, take Dristan. Dristan is like sending your sinuses to Arizona. Yes. Dristan is like sending your sinuses to Arizona. When pollen causes hay fever misery, don’t wish you could be in sunny, dry Arizona. Just remember: Dristan is like sending your sinuses to Arizona.

It was unequivocal, unashamed solicitation, not yet the post-commercial world where people try and make themselves appear to be everything—anything—but what they are. It was so...American.

Then a familiar face: Ronald McDonald. He wore a cheap, red wig and ran around hugging kids. It was simple, low-budget. Just a man in a suit, selling burgers. You could see the wrinkles under the face paint. He seemed genuinely happy, which was a relief. What scares people about clowns is their humanness, not the makeup— the emotions being concealed, the falsity. These days Ronald is largely absent. If anything he's a cartoon, or sometimes a life-sized, cardboard cutout waving goodbye by the door. Because McDonald's isn't trying to sell me hamburgers anymore; they're trying to sell me a lifestyle in which I would eat hamburgers. The commercials are measured, calculatedly slick and relatable, but always a little off, something like Arnold Friend in “Where are You Going, Where Have You Been?”

Babe, Alka-Seltzer, Ronald. What it boiled down to was an unexpected sort of patriotism. Unexpected because I've always disliked authority, always sided with the underdogs, and patriotism has always seemed a far too obvious choice. Plus, in the United States, it seems irrevocably tied to an anti-intellectual, conservative worldview, which is not in line with my upbringing. In the 8th grade I refused to say the Pledge of Allegiance because I didn’t, and don’t, believe in God. Mr. Thompson, a bald and humorless math instructor who— for other reasons, I think—hated me, insisted that I read it. I confidently refused and I was happy, actually excited, when he sent me to the office. Surely they would side with me—with the Constitution—and force Mr. Thompson to abide my little rebellion. They did, and only now that I’m a teacher do I understand how truly vexing I must have been for poor Mr. Thompson. Only now that I’ve lived outside the country, where getting a quality education is a privilege and not a right, do I realize that it’s the America that would have told me to “shut up and read the damn Pledge” that I’m beginning to miss.

With all I've said in my life about being a liberal, what have I actually done? Sure I've complained, but I’ve never even voted. I was out of the country for the last presidential election, and out of my home state for the one before that, but surely if I cared I could have cast a ballot absentee. I don't appear to be any more prejudiced than your average person, but I sometimes I wonder: what if I’m much, much more? Perhaps I'm an Opposite Person.

Opposite People have fears that are so overwhelming that they're forced to display the opposite. There are countless models: the ladies man that's afraid of intimacy, the libertarian that's actually uncomfortable with people being free, the hippie: a person who cares so crushingly about what people think of their appearance that they forgo it altogether, and replace it with a sort of form. The greatest of all Opposite People, I think, are patriots: a group of individuals that are almost uniformly dissatisfied with their own countries. They say things like, “I’m damn proud to be an American,” yet don't acknowledge the authority of the federal government. They benefit inordinately from government relief, but often, on ideological grounds, refuse to pay taxes. A small, but outspoken minority of patriots (American and otherwise) consider the current, democratically-elected president a communist. More treasonous statements are uttered by self-defined patriots, I would guess, than any other one group. Why does this happen? Is it the love of something that’s no longer there, something that was never really more than an idea, that turns people screwy? Do we attack outward expressions of what we fear we really are? Perhaps it’s something about balance, the equalizing of some pressure that ensures we never do exactly what it is we want to do.

Maybe it’s wise to embrace the things you’ve spent your life opposing. Temperance prevents us from becoming monsters, but maybe it also prevents us from realizing the small truths that exist on our dark sides. Some people take drugs to experience their opposite sides. I did my fair share of that, but I had to stop. For me, drugs turned out to be just like the commercials. So now, I entertain the possibility that they’re right, all my opposites, and since then, the world has seemed much more sane. Because what if trickle-down economics is actually the best way? Why don’t I pull myself up by my bootstraps? What if we are liberaling ourselves into the ground? Here I am traveling, but why? What else could I be, in the end, but an American?

Did you hear?

Did you hear?

Today they canceled science and history

and math

and filled the slots with silly time.

It was declared
that serious persons must commit

one gaff

or fall

or laugh

or write the word booger

one-hundred times.

It’s just that sort of day,

ovely,

dovel
lovely is what it is.

Did you see the news?

They found a WWII submarine

off the coast of Carolina.

A relic of a serious time--

but wouldn’t you believe it,

the crew was fine!

They were drunk actually

and the spectacled scientists felt silly
from their tentacled craft
as the submariner and his men
sauntered all over
the ocean floor.

I'm sure you've felt it before.

People always saying

there's something coming;

they feel the slow strings

quickening, 
tightening.

But assholes always get it wrong, don't they?

Didn’t you hear?

Today they canceled science and history

and math
and filled the slots with silly time.

Write the word booger one-hundred times

laugh

or make a gaff 

or if deep down 
you're serious like me

try to fall

in love.

Third World Explanation

I can only explain the Third World like this: it’s like sleepaway summer camp. You sleep next to a fan. If you get sick, an adult who is not your parent takes you to the doctor. The roads are bumpy and unpaved. The cars are all old pickups that need paint jobs. Conditions alternate between dust and mud. The furniture is old and worn, even in places like insurance agencies or restaurants, and the padding will be popping out of the leather or there will be scratches or little drips of paint on it if it's wood. It's still comfortable, and functional, but it would never fly in the States. Someone would have said, “It’s time we got rid of that thing,” and that would be the end of that. New fuckin’ table. At summer camp everything and everyone looks a little grimy. But you get used to it, so much that when you leave the first thing you notice are the colors. There's such contrast between the white shirts and the red sweaters. Your eyes are adjusting. Then your mom says you need to take a shower before you go out to eat. You realize you're dirty as hell. Most people in the Third World are spared this rude realization because their camp session lasts forever.

We never had packs of wild dogs at summer camp though. One night around 2 a.m. I watched a street battle, a swirl of ribcages and muscle, in the cobblestone intersection below my balcony. I had a great view but I can’t say I enjoyed it much. When it was over, the one pack was charging up the hill, looking like a cavalry regiment after a successful raid, and the other gave a half-spirited pursuit before trickling back down the hill. One of their number, a thin and beautiful creature that looked like a wolf, was sitting like a sphinx in the middle of the road. His back leg stuck out oddly behind it and it from where I stood it looked like a ripped pillow. He made no noise but beat his tail and looked at the other dogs plaintively. They gathered around him and licked his face and whined after they’d smelled the oddly-bent leg. I returned an hour later to smoke a cigarette and the dog was alone and looking alert, listening to the sounds of the empty street. It was a starry clear night and he looked like a castaway. I don’t know what happened to him and I can’t think of a better outcome than not knowing. Maybe it’s the way dogs grin even when they’re hurt or dying that makes their plights such a concern to people. Of course many people don’t care, and anyhow it's not an actual grin. 

It's No Joke Being Broke

A few months ago I came to spend a few days in Tela, a city on the north coast of Honduras, before flying out of nearby San Pedro Sula. I’d paid half of all the money I had for one night in a hotel, and I was getting screwed. I sat in my room covered in sweat with a remote control to a dead TV. The fan wouldn’t spin, wouldn’t oscillate, and my lips were bleeding from eating unripe mangoes. The skin of an unripe mango is full of urushiol, the same kind of oil that makes poison ivy poisonous.

I went to take a shower. The towel was on the rack by the sink and had the words Hotel La Hacienda written on it in black permanent marker. There was no curtain or shower-head, just a tube sticking out of the wall. I turned the nozzle, half expecting no water to come out, and none did. I smelled smoke, a sort of burning plastic smell, and turned to see that the fan was on fire. I’d left it on and the internal gears were grinding themselves away.

In the morning my stomach was rumbling like crazy. I went down to the restaurant, which was on the second floor, to get the free breakfast. It was early and the room was dark and out the large rectangular window on the far side of the room I could see the main square and beyond it the grayish-blue line of the ocean. I felt better. The woman came out and I told her I wanted coffee. She pointed to the food on the counter. There was cereal and oatmeal. I emptied a bag of oatmeal into a plastic bowl and added some hot water. They were decent but not at all the way I remembered them. Halfway through the bowl I saw that I was eating maggots, little larvae squirming in the bowl. I finished the coffee and headed to the beach.

There was a bridge over a small river that emptied into a lagoon. Water from the lagoon flowed across the flat sand and met the onrushing water from the ocean and the currents made fantastic patterns. Palm trees lined the beach in neat rows and every so often there was a large blue garbage can next to one of them. A large ship loomed close to shore. It revved its engine and black smoke came out of it. I thought it was searching for something or practicing staying in one place because it did not leave an area within four bright orange buoys. The beach was empty but I still buried my wallet in the sand before getting in the water. There was nothing in my stomach but coffee and a few maggots. In the water I bobbed like an empty pop can. The ocean felt like forgotten tea.

Fish Girl

There was a fish on the sidewalk. 

“Hey!  Hey!  I like your sunglasses,” she said.

 She was flopping alongside of me.   

“You snuck up on me there.”

The sun slid a rainbow up to her pouting lips. 

“What’s your name?”

A heave:  “Mary.”

Mary was covered in flies.

“Where are you going Mary?”

“This way.” 

“Well come on then.”

“Where are you from?” I asked.

 “Tennessee.  Thirty miles south of Chattanooga.”           

“So that’s eastern Tennessee.” 

She stopped and looked very impressed.

“Baby,” she said.

I thought I saw a smile, the rainbows around her gills switching poles.

 “Well, I live right up here by Morocco Street. Do you know where that is?”

“I do. I’m staying there with some friends.”

“What a coincidence. What are you doing in town?”

“I just got a job at Babes’ Cabaret.”

“So you’re going to be a stripper?”

“I start tomorrow night. You should be my # 1.”

“OK,” I said. “Take me home with you?”

“Sure thing,” she said. “Just pick me up.”

I put my hand around her

and she felt like old sandwich meat.

"Hm, maybe if I..."

Then I caught my finger on a spine.
"Ouch!"

"Sorry." 

I tried my hand like a spatula

and one of her scales peeled off into my hand.

She was stuck to the pavement.

I didn’t want to go home with her anymore.

“Just wondering," she asked,
"do you have water or anything at your house?”

I looked down the street for the bus.

“Uhm. What they don’t have a fish bowl where you live? Or at least a cup of water?”

“No, they just say they love me.”

“Well that’s something. Hey, you want some beer?”  

I had a half a can of beer

and I tilted it toward the button eye

 and the sinewy mouth, which snapped open.

“That was good,” she said. “Hey, wait! Where are you going?”

“Five blocks this way, and two that way.”

“Oh, bye,” she said and waved her fin

sadly like a fan.

I put my hands on my hips
and turned toward the street.

The light was baking the shade,

just beating it up.

I saw legs moving from the bottoms of trellised porches.

The cats were starting to move.

“Good luck Mary,” I said. 

Cabbies

Two white gulls appear from the perfect blue and startle the water. It is 8:00 a.m., the start of a new day. The cab drivers’ voices rise and fall in time. They come to this parking lot every morning. There is a Dunkin Donuts, which opens early, and Value Pricing, an Arab store that sells dates, olives, and tea. On a good day there are twenty of them, with ten drinking tea and smoking cigarettes, watching the sun rise over the canal from foldout chairs around an ornate rug that’s stored in Horiya’s trunk. Four other men sit cross-legged on stools. The older men wear well-ironed gray trousers and pastel shirts that puff nicely near the waist. One has a tweed jacket neatly folded over one knee. They have striking mustaches and black hair that’s combed over dignified patches bare scalp. The others recline in their cars and close their eyes and do not talk except out their windows. They come to see men that look like their grandfathers talk to men that look like their fathers, letting the language drift in the open window...

“He received the...ah... Peace Prize in 1964 to make the world a better place. Then there was 1967, and ah...”

“—Whole new ball game?”

“Right,” the first one says. “Exactly.”

There’s a rumble in the distance that scares away the gulls. (What does Horiya, whose father’s business was destroyed three times by airstrikes, hear in the summer when the sky is dark and booming with rain?)

“I could drive cab for 30 years with no raise,” a young driver says. “Already I speak better English than Jerome, and he is the boss.”

“He speaks black,” another says. “‘Yo Yo.’ Right?”

 “It’s an outrage.”

An older man with the folded tweed jacket raises his hand. “Outrage?” he says. “You not realize how bad it could be.” “Look where we are. The air is good. You are not questioned by the guards. You may go anywhere you like. It is a blessing.” His palm is flat, held from a bent elbow, like a frozen snake ready to strike.

 “Yes, but we still must work,” – the other old man adds– “very hard.” The last two words carry the full weight of his breath, as if it were too early for them to be spoken, and they remind the men to be a little afraid. Two men roll up Horiya’s rug and carry it to his trunk. They finish their coffee, crush half-smoked cigarettes on the pavement, start their engines and drive away. Then the parking lot is empty. They hear it on their radios. The first plane hits at 8:14. The second at 8:22. If you hadn’t been there an hour before, you’d never know they were there. 

Never Write Poems About Dreams

In college someone told me,

Never write poems about dreams.

It's an excess,

a willful muddling of meaning,

a lack of conviction disguised as attitude.

I can see the logic in this,

but god damn.

I'm not particularly worried

about how I write a fucking poem,

I told the guy,

who was my college professor.

He had a fedora, a witty t-shirt,

thick-rimmed glasses, a mustache,

and he was wearing a scarf in New Orleans.

That's a lack of conviction.

Candidate

I was at a gas station in Honduras

drinking coffee and reading

when I met the candidate.

There were three employees dressed in bright red vests.

One put the coffee in a Styrofoam cup.

Another fetched sugar packets

and a little red straw.

The last took a pile of napkins from the dispenser

and placed them neatly under the sugar packets.

I knew by his stature,

his perfect mustache, and cowboy hat

that he was someone important;

a wealthy rancher

or a member of the cartel.

He sat next to me and asked where I was from

and I told him, and he said he had family in Waukegan

and I told him what I knew of the place.

He said he'd lived in New Orleans

and then California,

where he’d picked artichokes with Cesar Chavez.

Knew him personally.

I nodded and noticed his face by my right elbow

on a stack of laminated flyers.

Mario Padilla, candidate for congress

running for the newly-formed leftist party, Libre.

Next to Mario is Libre's presidential candidate:

an attractive, dark woman

with thick black eyebrows named Xiomara Castro,

wife to former president Manuel Zelaya

who was ousted in a coup in 2009.

I told him I was a leftist too and then had nothing else to say,

so I motioned to the chaos of the street where the construction

of a four-lane road was underway.

“I heard it’s all for politics,” I said, baiting him. “They want it done by election time.”

“You see that?” he asked,

pointing to a boy sweeping dust from the street. “The poverty. It breaks my heart.”

Maybe a week later I heard an interesting story:

I was told Mario Padilla stole the gas station we'd been sitting in.

More precisely President Zelaya

had seized all the gas station in town

and given them to party supporters, like Mario.

Perhaps it's for good reason that people say

Libre is more of the same.

They had a shot at winning, but that was seven months ago.

In the mean time,

the new road was completed,

the Che Guevara memorial was demolished early on election day,

and Libre lost the election,

though their red flags hang from the tree stumps

and gutters in the poorer neighborhoods

where everyone with nothing to lose

somehow lost again.

The new president is conservative.

He promised: A Soldier on Every Corner

and now with the machine guns

there’s no fear of being robbed of your wallet,

there's just fear,

which is robbery of hope.

What it comes down to in Honduras is security

and that’s the way it is now: secure.

People with money like conservative politicians

because they buttress inequality,

giving you the choice between warm shit

or cold shit,

corruption or martial law,

poverty or crime.

Sooner or later we’ll say enough is enough.

There is hope, I know it,

because inequality is not a natural state;

it takes energy.

Imagine a hand shaking a snow globe

or sand agitated in water.

Gravity takes over

sooner or later.