Enter Smiling Carolyn Bessette

after “Another Day” by Stephen Dunn

1.

Girl as pioneer: she fits the bill perfectly, she is fresher

than the unbidden moon, which has followed her to this

collection of roundness, a hyper-elegant orchard devoid

of laughter or insight or real fruit. She nightmares, fitful,

throws a fit, is nightmarish. Carolyn charms, sells,

and rescinds the charm—she has held your emotions hostage,

torture named desire, the succubus that invades sanctuary.

When the moon rises in the early evening, she is there to bite.

2.

In Wyoming, or some other great midwestern state

where Caro never studied being social or shouted in a park,

some untamed mare snorts canyon dust, while elsewhere

near Camelot another dust is prepared by a tall palamino.

She experiences no crises of faith, because faith is found

only in dressing rooms, ballrooms, any crowded room

where she might revise the persona—ars simulacro—

and hook another easy-catch trout peeking from the river.

She tinkers, dawdles, strays, commands. No man keeps her.

3.

After the aircraft accident, she lived in the conditional—

would have, should have. Charm is a sort of magic,

devil-sent to punish the soft pioneer, for allowing herself to be

kept, tethered by a man, hooked the way she had hooked

unapologetically. Her grounding was caused by spatial

disorientation, bitten moon charming the pilot and drowning

the succubus, who was tied to the plane seat to watch

Icarus her husband fly too close to the devastating moon.

the final frontier

when we passed through the mountains of utah,

strange, looming, repressive, dark,

so dark even the lights of the highway

and the yawning, dizzying swallowing

of galaxies too visible, too accessible—

even these million lights could not touch

the gaping pressurized darkness

of that unfamiliar landscape,

so dark it absorbed the light of his voice,

so dark I could not be reassured

when we passed through the mountains of utah,

full of invisible beasts, brutes, fiends and foes,

crudely built, unidentified by science,

like a new, harsh planet where the natives

aren’t friendly, I was sure they were mean—

I mean malicious; I mean inferior; I mean

starving—just the shadow of that potential

was enough to convince me of their reality,

their cruelty, their intentions toward me

and their superior tracking abilities.

when we passed through the mountains of utah,

rocks stacked by some old,

unseen hand, rocks stacked unnaturally,

at least for what I knew, too geometric,

too jagged, too intentional,

and far too tall, like little elevators to space,

shapes on shapes, rectangles that touch and negate—

when we passed through the mountains of utah,

I had a panic attack that lasted thirteen minutes.

a memory:

I did not kiss you when you came to pick me up, nor once during the drive. I had kissed you when we finally parked, as I was preparing to pull my things from the backseat. I kissed you like I loved you.

your sweat drips onto my face. there is no space between us. your room is hot, the sun is high, your roommate is gone. we have made love once already. 

this time it is slow: it is too humid and we are too lazy to do much but move against each other. the sex, as always, is good. your head is on my shoulder and I cup it with a loving hand.

you lean up. blink. your eyebrows are so high that your forehead looks crumpled and foreign. your face is red. shuddering, you manage a smile and it looks like you love me.

we are making love, and alone I will come to this memory for months afterwards. we make a thousand thousand new ones but this first instance, full of love, is precious.

gentle, concerned, strong,

never careful, no hesitation--

the main event, as promised.

my body on yours was not new,

but only barely; weeks of touch,

of kiss, of reassessing and

turning friend into lover.

you pressed me into the bed--

smiled, wicked and sharp--

and said, "we should try

everything, just to see

what you like best," and I knew

that I was totally fucked.

LOVE RECRUDESCENT

The Bull (revised)

The body that holds me: four walls,

more, ambitiously conceived

like the monster it was created to hold;

corpse to house the bastard of a cursed wife.

Sins of the stepfather ensured a body

large and wrong, born as a vessel

to hold his guilt. Stupid beast,

with horns for gouging and hands

for grasping like the most helpless of babes.

No mother’s milk, only meat hoarding marrow

like gold in loose soil, and to that end,

I crack the bones and explore the bounty:

Paths unnavigable but by a ball of twine,

impossible, lonely halls carrying blood.

I walk between the ribs of my cage,

and await a hero who seeks my taurine head,

my human heart. Do not be cowed, hero—

I am branded brute, but I am less than a man.

The fisher king speaks:

Five million breaths each year

and though they are hungry, ragged,

I keep nothing from the barren land;

it knows my body starves.

Impotent and desperate, I fish.

My daughter and the king's man I tricked,

knowing their physical union

would bring he who'd heal the land.

In scheming this, I full earned my sore.

Grandfather'd and maimed, I fish.

The wound, not voluntary, never healed,

and could not be borne easy;

but patience is bought with water,

and held like communion in grails.

Wounded but rich, I fish.

I deduct and adequate the verse.
I subordinate my thoughts to language.
I fasten the stars and sing loose gravel,
ties to bind my frenzy like embraces
cleverly knotted by the Nemeans
and strangled bare by sanish hero.
I drip like lyme stolen from caves
and nostalgic for the touch of water:
dry, dry, dry in physique but, god,
wet in the mind and in memory.
I ripen and embrangle the notion.
I obsess the achene. Juiced, I parch.

Fungible

First without asking he took my hand
and though it was strange to see him
as a man, the motion was not accidental—
nor the lack of question unintentional.
Whip—the thing that imposed itself,
that first night-wing’d kernel of thought:
“This hand is too hot,” and it dropped
from dull phalangeal pressure
to the cavities in my throat. I swallow.

My whole body burns from blush
and the encumbrance at my side
runs red with fever, torture which relies
on trembling in sticky digits to remind me
that I have already attempted escape.
Instinct! Sentences extend and I hang
like accessory fruit or flattered reptiles;
a dull retort, barbed by keen-edged smile
as to slice. In terror, I gentle the words.

I find absolution in the purplish stain
under his ear, as though power were
couched in my teeth. When he touches
my sterile ribs, does it leave a bruise?
Or is the flaw deeper, fingerprints cleaved
permanently into skin, the whorl of identity
bone-deep and scarring? I slant my eyes,
as though in movement they might find you.

The Nature of Promise

What bold sun does to afternoon:

Evaporates slim golden flanks

In spillways where sun’s rays are hewn

By silver waves and concrete banks;

What moon does to the morning sky,

Hanging unseen behind sun’s rays:

It watches mountains crumble, shy,

And in repose it sinks away;

Fat bluegill dart behind the reeds

Like fingers parting folds of skirt,

Never departing, full of greed,

But, in their lust, they are alert;

Like bream and sun and hiding moon,

My body will hold fast to you.