and still the sea is salt

I wanted to write a poem about death
but it ended up being about sex.
Death is beautiful if set to music,
preferably by a German composer.
The French call an orgasm “the little death.”
My favorite porno is Triumph of the Will.
Prague erupts with the sweet music
of a Sten gun jamming and a bomb going off.
At the Auschwitz Museum,
I try on the bifocals of murdered Jews.
The Jews of Vienna were forced to scrub the streets;
I fantasize about licking a jackboot until it shines.
If G-d exists, It’s a poet—
only a poet could invent blood poisoning.
I could never be an academic historian:
my mind’s a veritable nation of perversities.
A good German is hard to find.
Herr Reichsprotektor, fuck me from behind.

The female spotted hyena
has three times as much testosterone
as the male. Her clitoris
is almost as long as his penis;
it can get erect, urinate, give birth.
Most of her pups will die
trying to escape her.
Her anatomy makes rape impossible.

The female spotted hyena
is a hairy, panting bitch.
She has sharp teeth and a big cock,
fucks who she wants
when she wants,
entertains no pretensions
to the status of noble huntress.
She scavenges and knows the word revenge.

The female spotted hyena
is king in her queendom,
paw pads encrusted with dirt jewels.
You’ll know a virgin king
by her long sleek defiant organ,
a king-mother by her stretched-out
cunt-cock. Know your debased place,
brittle boy: on your knees and lick.

The female spotted hyena
feasts on meaty bones, gore
matting her thick neck.
Harsh woman,
emperor of thieves,
teach me how to kill, I beg.
She casts a black eye at me
and barks hard as a rock.

Goodbye, old comrade, goodbye!
Let this not be adieu!
I’ll bring you some glory
back from the burning fields!
I’ll bring you the skin of a tiger!
Think of me and my red nose!
Napoleon and his marshals
know what they’re doing!
They won’t let us down!
(My boots are worn out with marching
and the snow is falling
awfully
slow
on
my
hat.)

In this world of princes it’s kill and be kill’d
no matter what gender you are.
If you’re man enough to wear a woman’s weeds
you might get away with poison or grief.
Whether or not you bleed is of no importance.
Backstage, Hamlet takes off her makeup
and unbinds her chest.
This barren kingdom she never called her own
folds itself up into the rafters
like a dollhouse someone took an ax to.
Courtiers have their own gender, as do scholars.
The gender of ghosts is revenge.
All jesters are women. All gravediggers, too.

1.
Oskar is playing Chopin again, Nocturne No. 10 in A-Flat Major—my favorite, as it happens. I watch his slim, deft fingers glide over the piano keys like little waves lapping at a beach. He is, as always, perfectly poised, his back straight, his broad shoulders effortlessly carrying the weight of his masculine grace. I have always envied men like that. Actually, I have always envied men.

He notices me looking at him—I see his eyes dart in my direction for a second, the hint of a smile. When the piece is finished, he turns to me and says, “Would you like me to teach you?”

I’m taken aback for a moment. “Oh, I—”

He shifts to one side of the piano bench and pats the empty space next to him. I oblige, sitting down by his side, close enough for our legs to touch. My pinstriped trousers against his gray wool slacks.

I play horribly, stumbling over notes, barely able to make sense of the sheet music in front of me. He guides me patiently, his eyes dancing with amusement. He even slaps my back in a brotherly way when I manage to hit a chord correctly. I struggle to the end of the piece, the music limping along like a clumsy old dog.

“Not bad for a first try,” he says, and I can feel he means it. His brilliant smile—dimples showing, blue eyes crinkling and almost disappearing into pleased half-moons—makes it all worth it.



2.
“I wish you would mind the time more,” Bruno says, watching impatiently as I undress. “I was expecting you at ten.”

“The tram at Hermannplatz was delayed!”

“Leave earlier, then. I can give you my watch, if you like.”

“You pawned it last week, remember?”

He makes an exasperated noise and sits down, his black brows furrowed and his arms crossed petulantly.

I take off my paisley tie, blue waistcoat, rumpled white shirt. Soon I’m standing naked in the studio, the dark hair on my arms prickling in the cold January light. I take my place in front of the blue backdrop, next to the potted Venus flytrap. He scrutinizes me for a moment; unsatisfied with something, he walks over and spends a good few minutes adjusting my pose, moving my arms, wrists, head, hips, as if I’m a posable doll. His paint-stained hands are gentle and warm on my skin. I shiver slightly.

“I’m sorry it’s so cold in here,” he says with a sigh, an embarrassed, bitter tone to his voice. “I can’t even afford to turn on the heat.”

“I’m not cold.”

He goes back to his seat and takes up the paintbrush. I wink at him, eliciting a frustrated blush, and then the canvas obscures his face.



3.
Bruno says it first. He’s always been one for ritual, always had a theatrical streak, so of course he gets down on one knee, presents me with a ring, says in a hushed tone, “Will you marry me?”
Before I can even formulate a response, the first feeling I register in my mind is a terrible pang of sadness at how much the ring must have cost him. It’s then that I realize why he’s been catching so many colds lately: he pawned his winter coat.

I refuse as gently as I can, but already I can see a storm gathering in his eyes, darkening the rough edges of his face. He says nothing, and I know he’ll spend the next two days drinking.

Oskar says it when we’re walking through a frozen garden, bare twigs and dead grass crunching under our shoes. “Will you—would you like to—be my wife?”

It’s easier to refuse him because his fur coat is warm and his shoes are nicely polished. He laughs and says, “Of course. What was I thinking.” He puts his hands in his pockets and doesn’t look at me for the rest of the afternoon.

On the way home I walk past a dressmaker’s, a mannequin modeling a wedding dress and lace veil poised in the window. The mannequin is faceless, its blond coiffure actually just horsehair. My eyes slide off it and I see my reflection in the glass, my dark hair cropped short, my collar buttoned to the throat, my face sharply defined.



4.
There’s a bead of sunlight on the tip of the needle. Bruno wraps the tourniquet around his arm and pulls it taut with his teeth. His movements, despite the state he’s in, are practiced and calm, almost mechanical. I look away when the needle pierces his skin, not from fear but discretion.

In just a few minutes it’s as if nothing ever happened—he’s back to his old self, eyes grave instead of wild, with sardonic laughter on his lips. He brushes his black hair from his forehead and smooths it down. The familiar gesture tears at my heart and I can’t stop myself from kissing his long, tapering fingers.

I know this won’t last, of course. I know in a week or two I’ll be staying up by him through the night as he lies shivering on the couch, his breath irregular and his usually calm baritone raspy as he raves about Ypres and Verdun and mustard gas. I know I won’t question any of this or fault him for it, I will simply get him a glass of cold water and hold it up to his mouth because his hands are trembling too much. I know I will hold him close and stroke his hair and kiss his damp brow and I won’t say a word and the next day he will avoid my gaze as he paints my portrait.

It was not for his wealth that she stayed with him, as many thought. The riches he possessed—souls and spirits, granite and rock—were worthless to her, who counted wealth in harvests and rainfall. And he knew this and loved her all the more for it.

No, she stayed with him because he was the only one who understood the dark circles under her eyes, who did not wonder why a goddess of spring should be so pale. Who knew why the beings most beloved of her were those that only came out at night: the tawny owl, the white-winged moth, the moonflower with its haunted glow.

Many in the mortal realm imagined her with the long flowing hair and gauzy dress of a nymph, but she was not a nymph. She was the one kneeling in her mother’s abundant fields with her hands in the dirt, her brown curls cropped short, her farmer’s tunic exposing the bristly hair on her legs. Her body was stout and stocky, her arms well-muscled from digging, just like her mother’s. But where her mother’s skin was a deep, rich tan from centuries spent in the sun, her own remained pallid as ever, like a plant’s white roots buried beneath the soil.

Yes, people too often ignored the roots, forgot where things sprang from. A tree’s leafy branches may touch the sky, but it is the roots that give it stability, the roots that plunge deep underground and flourish in perpetual darkness.

She relished the yearly walk to the underworld. She refused all offers of chariots and winged sandals, preferring to take her time and feel the earth beneath her feet. As she walked, she observed how the undergrowth changed from riotous blossoms to spiraling ferns, clusters of mushrooms, dark carpets of moss. The path sloped further and further downward. Darkness dawned slowly. At the end of the path her husband would be waiting for her, and she would finally break into a stride, and meet his embrace, and feel his strong wiry arms encircling her. And she would think of her mother, there up above with the winter descending. Each turn of the seasons was bittersweet—forsaking one love to be with another. Such was the cycle, and the goddess was pleased.

I met Vasily Grossman in Berlin.
He stood surrounded by a ring of flames,
his glasses all fogged up, and still he wrote,
and smiled as if I were his oldest friend.

Your tall blond corpse lies rotting in a field—
white daisies grow around your polished boots,
dried blood is leaking from your Roman nose,
your stiffened hand still clutches a revolver.

I dug a skull up one September day
and asked whom it belonged to, how it got there.
It didn’t answer. A butterfly took wing
from deep inside its empty, endless eye.

A happy and a sweet new year to all
who outran history, and those who didn’t.
Write me a telegram from Pluto’s realm
and I’ll send back pressed flowers for Proserpine.

Chopin is my favorite. The first clean, clear notes like patches of light. His slender hands, the workings of each intricate joint as he plays the Nocturnes. I am content to listen and let the wanting wash over me. Cool air drifts in through the open window, the balcony door ajar, crickets chirping goodbye to summer.

A storm is a storm whether habited
in the heart or the heath.
My perfect wedding is a panoply of blood
and symbolism. At my wrists
there will be red pearls. Nobody
will dare look at me and call me bride.

Rain drenches the heath and us. I can just barely make out his face, his wide eyes, in the darkness and downpour. He’s saying something about God or love but the squall drowns him out. I want more than anything to touch his face but I know he would never understand.

Please take this chalice
from me. Make me taste other things
before I drink my delusion dry.
The wolf leaves widows
in every wood but I
do not mind, I
want to wed the wolf.

His face half-shadowed. Caravaggio minus the plumes and daggers. He still hasn’t noticed me looking at him. Since the events of last night on the stairwell we have not spoken, but I know what he’s thinking of. Times like these his thoughts always wander to the heath again. The heath and the harsh light, the sun growing spiteful in its weakness. Like me.

I’ve read my fair share of folk tales.
Dead and double dead.
Eye, sea, yew.
Love is time’s gravedigger—
you’re standing in it.

He hardly knows who I am. I’ve told him almost nothing yet he does not resent me. He shivers at my least touch, gasps when I so much as stroke his hair. Leans into my hand like a stray cat. I realize I hold such power over him, this man so much taller and stronger than I. It brings me no pleasure, I tell myself.

Yes, I will wed the wolf.
I’ve been glutting on my own blood
for years, pretending it’s someone else.
Kill for me, kill with me, kill kill kill.
It isn’t goodness that makes the rain fall.

Train tracks,
shaved head,
smokestack,
bunk bed,
blue stripe,
passport,
blood type,
brown shirt,
armband,
yellow star,
gas van,
freight car,
oak leaf,
barbed wire,
gold teeth,
gunfire,
boot heel,
broken glass,
last meal,
Giftgas,
bloodstain,
Totenkopf,
mass grave,
last stop.

Schadenfreude

Every woman adores a Fascist.
—Sylvia Plath


When Friedrich and Frieda were children, they told each other bedtime stories about the noble lords and ladies from whom they were descended. They described how their ancestors would climb a ladder up to a canopied featherbed, and how as they nodded off they counted silver instead of sheep, or amused themselves by looking at the gold-embroidered tapestries on their walls. There was Saint George vanquishing the dragon, its spouting blood a burst of red thread; there was the chained unicorn in its garden. And eventually Friedrich and Frieda would both drift off to sleep in their bunk cots, curled up under the thin, scratchy sheets.

It came as a great shock to the children when they were told their ancestors had been not chivalrous knights but common laborers, and their mother not a tragic princess deprived of her inheritance but a woman of loose morals and bad blood.

“I don’t believe it!” cried Friedrich.

“If the Mother Superior says so, it must be true,” said Frieda.

“What does she know, that old witch! Bad blood—I’ll show her blood!”

Nothing came of the little boy’s attempt to protect his family’s honor, because it was suppertime and then lights out. But for a long while afterward he would occasionally stare, brow furrowed, at the bluish veins on his wrists. ( Read more... )