Lucia Perillo: On the Spectrum of Possible Deaths

despite the tons of rock you wore.

was a gift from Angus, came with his new Harley

which no ladies deigned to perch their buttocks on

and was therefore sold minus the shirt—

net cost: three thousand dollars, I wear the money

in my sleep. The black braid flowing from the man

herding dice at the Squaxins’ Little Creek Casino

cost me two hundred thirty-five, well worth it

for the word croupier. Work seven months on a poem,

then you tear it up, this does not pencil out

especially for my mother who ate potatoes

every day from 1935–41. Who went to the famous

Jackson Pollock show after the war — sure, she was a rube

from across the Harlem River, snickering

at the swindle of those dribbles until death squelched the supply

and drove the prices up. I’ve known men

who gave up houses worth half a million just to see

the back of someone whom they once bought diamonds.

And I’ve known women to swallow diamonds

just to amplify the spectacle of their being flushed.

The Gutenberg Bible — okay, I get that:

five-point-four million dollars for a book of poems

written by God on the skin of a calf. A hundred years ago

the Squaxins could tell you easily

who the rich man was. He’d be dressed in a red robe

made of epaulets from redwing blackbird wings.

When I stopped along the road and climbed the platform that the wildlife people built, I saw the dead grass moving. A darker gold that broke free from the pale gold of the field.

“Wolves,” said the man who stood beside me on the platform. On his other side stood his wife and children, I assumed, dressed as if they’d come from church,

a boy and girl, her scalp crosshatched with partings from her braids. Note that this is my way of announcing they were black

or African American, I am shy not only of the terminology but of the subject altogether

compounded by the matter of words, black being strong

if not so precise a descriptor—

and my being torn about the language makes me nervous from the start. “Look at the wolves,” he told his children

before dropping a quarter in the scope, which I didn’t need because I had my own binoculars

and know the names and field marks of the birds

(like the white rump of the marsh hawk),

so I include “the white rump of the marsh hawk” as it flies over the field.

“Those are coyotes,” I said

with pity for the man’s foolishness? is there a correlation between my knowledge and my pity?

(an inside joke: the marsh hawk’s having been renamed the northern harrier,

though marsh hawk is stronger).

Plus what about the man’s pity for the white girl with coyote in her mouth

— coyote in two syllables, the rancher’s pronunciation,

when wolf is stronger. I wondered whether he was saving face before his family when he said, “No, those are wolves,”

or did he only want his kids to feel the dangerous elation of the word?

I could not tell because they did not look at me, they who had come from praying to a God in whom I don’t believe, though I am less smug about that not-belief

(could be wrong, I oftentimes suspect)

than I am about the wolves. Because I know the wolves were coyotes;

the wolves were coyotes

and so I said, “There are no wolves in Illinois.”

“No, those are wolves,” the man said, turning toward his wife who offered me her twisted smile, freighted with pity or not I couldn’t tell, the pity directed toward me another thing I couldn’t tell, or toward her husband

the believer in wolves

(at least he was sticking by them, having staked his claim).

In the autumn withering, the eyes of the children were noticeably shining, but I saw only the sidelong long-lashed white part of their eyes as they stepped up to the scope.

“Check out the wolves,” he said (the minutes ticking)

(the minutes nuzzling one another’s flanks)

(the minutes shining in the farthest portion of the field

as whatever emerged from it entered it again).

In the saltwater aquarium at the pain clinic

lives a yellow tang

who chews the minutes in its cheeks

while we await our unguents and anesthesias.

The big gods offer us this little god

before the turning of the locks

in their Formica cabinets

in the rooms of our interrogation.

We have otherwise been offered magazines

with movie stars whose shininess

diminishes as the pages lose

their crispness as they turn.

But the fish is undiminishing, its face

like the death mask of a pharaoh,

which remains while the mortal face

gets disassembled by the microbes of the tomb.

And because our pain is ancient,

we too will formalize our rituals with blood

leaking out around the needle

when the big gods try but fail

to find the bandit vein. It shrivels when pricked,

and they’ll say I’ve lost it

and prick and prick until the trouble’s brought

to the pale side of the other elbow

from which I turn my head away—

but Pharaoh you do not turn away.

You watch us hump past with our walkers

with the tennis balls on their hind legs,

your sideways black eye on our going

down the corridor to be caressed

by the hand with the knife and the hand with the balm

when we are called out by our names.

1.

At first they’re yellow butterflies

whirling outside the window—

but no: they’re flying seeds.

An offering from the maple tree,

hard to believe the earth-engine capable of such invention,

that the process of mutation and dispersal

will not only formulate the right equations

but that when they finally arrive they’ll be so

… giddy?

2.

Somewhere Darwin speculates that happiness

should be the outcome of his theory—

those who take pleasure

will produce offspring who’ll take pleasure,

though he concedes the advantage of the animal who keeps death in mind

and so is vigilant.

And doesn’t vigilance call for

at least an ounce of expectation,

imagining the lion’s tooth inside your neck already,

for you to have your best chance of outrunning the lion

on the arrival of the lion.

3.

When it comes time to “dedicate the merit”

my Buddhist friends chant from the ocean of samsara

may I free all beings —

at first I misremembered, and thought

the word for the seed the same.

Meaning “the wheel of birth and misery and death,”

nothing in between the birth and death but misery,

surely an overzealous bit of whittlework

on the part of Webster’s Third New International Unabridged

(though if you eliminate dogs and pie and swimming

feels about right to me—

oh shut up, Lucia. The rule is: you can’t nullify the world

in the middle of your singing).

4.

In the Autonomous Vehicle Laboratory

RoboSeed is flying.

It is not a sorrow though its motor makes an annoying sound.

The doctoral students have calculated

the correct thrust-to-weight ratio and heave dynamics.

On YouTube you can watch it flying in the moonlight

outside the engineering building with the fake Ionic columns.

I said “sorrow” for the fear that in the future all the beauties