Somehow I thought he’d want to do
different things from what they used to do
together here. But no, a show,
a big Broadway musical show,
is his choice for tonight. Yes,
there are tickets. I was half-hoping not.
And wishing in vain that it was May, not December,
and we were buying for three.
That last spring night we had clear hope
we watched Guys and Dolls in her hospital room.
Though we’d missed the beginning, and her favorite song,
we watched till the end.
She nodded off,
as she always did at home before the tube,
head on his shoulder,
but nodded back in,
to say, surprised, in her everyday voice,
“It’s good,” letting us believe
she was on the mend.
After that, she had just three days more,
and only one in which
she could say a word.…
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– Patrick Goble
Author’s Note: “Behemoth” is a synthesis of the different styles of music I have studied over the years; as such, it borrows from many genres but belongs exclusively to no single one. I’ve never really cared much for the tendency to rigidly categorize music by [sub]genre—doing so leads less to diversity than it does to rigid compositions and performances that are written according to a template. Music is structured, and music is rule-based. Probably more than any other art form, music is mathematically driven. Of course, the visual arts are governed by ratios and the rules of visual perception (particularly in the case of naturalistic art), but I would argue that mathematics runs thicker through the veins of music than it does any other art form.…
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When I was a kid, my brother and I used to call each other horrible names. Our parents forbade us saying “nigger,” so we substituted “jigaboo,” “colored,” “creole,” and “high yellow,” though not in their presence.
Still, words have ways of slipping out, just like if someone tells you never to laugh during a church service, and of course, just as soon as Dr. Winefordner begins preaching, you can’t hold back. So one day while playing puppets with my brother, my puppet, a silver donkey wearing a green hat, called his puppet, a brown horse wearing a red ribbon, a “nigger.” Our mother was in another part of the house and so didn’t hear my puppet, Frances. That was good.
What wasn’t good, however, was that our maid, Dissie, was dusting our room at the moment of the offense.…
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Obama hits on the Swedish Prime Minister. She’s got that ofay blonde hair and her legs go on forever. They’re not really longer than Michelle’s, but Big O’s gotten caught up in the celebration of Mandela’s death. He’s let his hair down and slid into his African self, as if he’d taken a few good draughts of nitrous oxide or absinthe drinks loaded with wormwood, as if he’d torn pieces of Ethiopian spiced goat meat off a larger hunk with his sharp teeth. All the goat meat in the world, he thinks, is his. He’s the most powerful man in the world. He can eat and drink as much as he likes. He can blow up to be as fat as a deposed dictator.
Big O is looking for a slam dunk.…
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this poetry has been my life’s challenge
and I rose to it
every time
this poetry the arena I boldly entered
and I’m fighting still
I’m not quite sure I’ve imagined
locked doors of academia
and their thousand reasons
to do something else with my life
but I owe it all to poetry
it was my access to the inner life
lit my smoke in front of
the firing squad of time
gave the muse a fire escape
she could climb
in just an overcoat and heels…
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Mom is being buried today.
We will never see her face again except in photographs.
The coffin lid came down a week ago, forever,
or at least the seventy-five years it’s guaranteed.
Only seventy-five years, although it’s made of copper
the salesman said was indestructible.
We’ll all be long gone by then,
except for the grandchildren (maybe)
and great-grandchild.
Something to be said for being buried
not too far from Disneyland.
Four months later, on Shelter Island,
a cloud is coming toward us,
swiftly falling, like the ghost
of a meteor about to self-destruct. I can’t
tear my eyes away, until it passes—
not falling after all, only moving on
to the next—house, table, life.
I want it open.
Do we all want it open?
We take our seats under a shelter,
in the heat, before the coffin.…
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You and I took the old Jetta out there years ago. We drove into the sunset because you couldn’t wait for morning. On the drive over, you bounced your leg up and down and pointed out each color—the orange hue that turned pink, like the jars of powder you mixed to lemonade. I reached over and touched your thigh to steady it. You calmed. You wrapped your hand around mine. It felt soft, small. Your skin looked pale against my own, tinted red. The radio played old love songs, lyrics I didn’t know. I smiled when you belted out each word loudly, with confidence. You didn’t care that you sounded like a screeching cat when you missed the high notes. And neither did I. My memory often recreates your voice as flawless. …
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