The Poetry Marathon

She strips next to a doll-sized mannequin
for an unimpressed audience, all studying
the choreography, and will she or won’t she –
the women don’t blush;
they’re studying from Godard’s notes
and the men are as involved as
the proximity of the stage
will allow.

The film pops up on Youtube
someone in Mo’s house is scrolling
and in-between hauling out her kit
for cultural passersby and
switching to FOX,
there’re dishes in the sink.

Summer legs march past my living room window,
nonchalance with leashed dogs,
inattentive to beast while studying phones.
Interrupted only by my envy,
I nestle with consternation of
an extended deadline
and wishing my recorded voice
didn’t annoy the hell out of me.
The washer and the ceiling fan
and the waning morningsong
lull me into thinking
this day might be mine to kill more efficiently.
I cross self-tanner for my own limbs
off the list
and wait for the spin cycle
to motivate me to stand.
Ron stopped wearing his Hawaiian shirts
to work, but the straw hat
I can see on the backseat.
Nothing’s out of reach.
Yet.
We can still scratch our futures
like a lottery ticket one of us bought
at the grocery store
with the eggs and coffee.

Your morning and mine spent bedside
Your worry and mine shared
while I try to wake up
and your internal alarm pushed you out of bed
like an invading army of ghosts.
Your breakfast and mine,
cigarette on the porch as you
ruminate on where your check went
and mine the greasy croissant
you bought with the
ten you didn’t know you had.

I’m looking at a half-consumed container of hummus, wondering, Do I have more of this? Should I get more of this? Is this a two-seven-ounce-hummus weekend? Possibly. Still, I don’t see myself putting my shoes back on and going back out in the world tonight for my hummus fix. On my pantry shelf are multiple cans of chickpeas. Right under that shelf is the food processor. I bought the jars with the idea of making hummus. At home. And maybe going full-on super-Bear. Make the falafel and rice, too. Don’t get me going down the rabbit hole for tzatziki recipes! Make Uncle Jimmy want to invest in me and have to regretfully turn him down – “no, I can’t take your money. I’m just making this for the poetry marathon weekend…”

Yet the cans are untouched sit while I’m paying others to create my hummus experience for me.

The marathon always entails stocking for what I think I’ll want while giving up sleep for poetry. Seldom, though, do I think of making things while I’m also acquiring things. I was patting myself on the back for finding my favorite ice cream on sale last night, but when do I do likewise for already have more than one can of chickpeas? I was already prepared, but just not taking advantage of my own preparedness. Whether I make the hummus tonight, I don’t know, but I hope, at the Sat/Sun 2 a.m. mark, I remember fortification, of the stomach and of the soul, is closer at reach.

Sun is up and I am not soon to be up with it
as much as I welcome its arrival, indeed, herald it.
I look out the window, amazed at my amazement.

Between two and five, the danger hours, naps offered
an illusory sense of rest; getting off the sofa
to turn off my alarm only intensified my sense of isolation.

Ron having gone to bed hours ago, is already up. I laughed
to myself to hear his rustling, and smiled to see his face.
Creature of habit, he’s never used any alarm but his own body.

I had already filled the coffeemaker’s vessel and while Ron
washes his face, I scoop coffee into the basket; ironic I won’t
be staying up long enough to share a, well, more than a half-cup.

Ron’s making me breakfast, which he’ll place in the microwave for later.
I smell the coffee, still listening to Dylan, and look forward
to visiting our windowless bedroom where forbidden is the sun.

I was to interview Martin Amis, who was in town
for a reading of the book, which had gained some bad blood.

In England, A.S. Byatt was leading a one-woman battalion
claiming Amis’ sizeable advance was so to pay alimony.

I was so blissed out to interview Amis, that I went out and celebrated
my pending interview by getting a spring cold.

It was deemed that since I had no fever, I could keep Amis
as though I’d let my fellow contributors nab him.

So, I hoofed it over to the Plaza hotel where he was staying,
excited and a little high on cold meds.

When Amis interviewed Capote, he mentioned asking Capote
to sign In Cold Blood ; my editor was dubious my asking likewise.

I arrived early, sans my copy of The Information, a decision
I still kick myself for today, and ordered a cup of tea.

While I waited for the tea, who should walk in but Amis,
glancing around and seeing me with pen and recorder came over.

After introductions, Amis drew out a piece of paper to show me;
on a cocktail napkin, someone had solicited his time.

Amis was genuinely confused and seemed to be seeking confirmation
that this was an odd overture; I agreed that it was.

As fascinating as was the conversation, I never was able to drop
my recorder and retrieve that cup of tea before it turned cold.

Don’t tell me the 30s are the Golden Age of Hollywood
when the real magic was when the 60s auteurs came of age.

Those 30s musicals were glamorous escapades designed
to make the poor forget they were poor; they paid
five cents a ticket to pretend they were Fred and Ginger

In the 60s, directors threw out the norms and the pretenses of
old Hollywood and they electrified the screen with fresh ideas.

Bogdanovich, Scorsese, Coppola, Freidken, Peckinpah, and others
took their knowledge and influences to places no one predicted.

Before the studios knew what was happening, someone must have agreed
“Don’t tell me the ’30s are the Golden Age of Hollywood.”

In the 60s, directors threw out the norms and the pretenses of
what old Hollywood thought was a story and made indelible changes.
Some drew influence from their predecessors in their own lauded films.

Others drew a line in the sand and refused to commit
anything to celluloid that wasn’t part of their personal battle.

I never knew the name of the girl
walking down the street with Dylan
on the cover of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan

I assumed a model was hired by the record company
to link arms with the downward-looking Dylan
and be photographed traipsing down the cold New York streets.

They neither of them wear gloves,
but it must be cold since she’s layered
and Dylan’s jacket was thin because “image was all.”

They lived together in Greenwich Park for three years,
then Dylan went on a tour and began dating Joan Baez
around the time Suze wanted to travel and study art.

Don’t Think Twice, a song in which Dylan sings
“You kind of wasted my precious time,” is on the album
and it’s also about Suze, which seems awfully hard to comprehend.

Yet, there she is on the cover, smiling
as she walks down the street with Dylan
on the cover of The Freewheelin Bob Dylan.

They used to knock on doors in pairs, young believers
selling The Watchtower.
I forget which – oh, no, it was the Jehovah’s Witnesses.
And they always wore ties.

We lived in an apartment in Belton and a man
in the unit next door had some
semblance of religiousness, or, at least
that’s what he made clear to my mother when
she had to ask him for a jump one morning
when her car didn’t start.

I think I was waiting for the Kinks song
to start so I could hit play because I had
a cassette recorder, but there was a knock.
My sister got to the door before me,
but there was the religious man.

As we both stood there, he admitted
his sin, that he’d made up reasons
to be outside to look at us
before we caught the bus to school.

Then he asked for our forgiveness,
and I guess we nodded our assent to such.
Not much later, we moved and never saw the religious man –
that one, anyway – ever again.

Three mayors ago, I lived in a fifth floor apartment
that overlooked a park, and the whistles of the trains running
through
the West Bottoms competed with the arrivals at the downtown airport.

All my boyfriends and my mother, too, wondered how I lived.
All I knew was I was living in the city
and living by the Whitman code.

Sure, Jones and Kresge’s were gone,
and I don’t remember getting ice cream home from midtown without it being melted,
but I had red lights in the dark outside, a mattress on the floor, and
couscous over the kitchen sink.