Lucia Perillo: Inseminating the Elephant

I felt bad about his class’s being such a snoozefest, though peaceful too,

a quiet little interlude from everyone outside

rooting up the corpse of literature

for being too Caucasian. There was a simple answer

to my own question (how come no one loved me,

stomping on the pedals of my little bicycle):

I was insufferable . So, too, was Emerson I bet,

though I liked If the red slayer think he slays —

the professor drew a giant eyeball to depict the Over-soul.

Then he read a chapter from his own book:

naptime.

He didn’t care if our heads tipped forward on their stalks.

When spring came, he even threw us a picnic in his yard

where dogwood bloomed despite a few last

dirty bergs of snow. He was a wounded animal

being chased across the tundra by those wolves,

the postmodernists. At any moment

you expected to see blood come dripping through his clothes.

And I am I who never understood his question,

though he let me climb to take a seat

aboard the wooden scow he’d been building in the shade

of thirty-odd years. How I ever rowed it

from his yard, into my life — remains a mystery.

The work is hard because the eyeball’s heavy, riding in the bow.

When the Black Elvis takes the stage, five of him appear—

start with the man in his white jumpsuit,

then add the jumbo projection behind,

throw in a replication of his replicated feet

plus two copies of his shadow. Though he is five,

he has never been ranked #1

because he does not look like Elvis, which is true:

his voice is more soulful than anyother Elvi

but the judges at the yearly Memphis finals

will not close their eyes and make that final leap.

Not so for the women here, who can frog

the leap still one bounce farther

until a spirit descends and the dead man

lives. It is a little troubling

how much the pageant resembles a Catholic mass

when the women approach as he descends

the stage’s steps, bell-bottoms aflutter

around the doves of his white boots.

Then he drapes a satin strip around their necks.

Then comes the Amen of their swoons.

As for me, I don’t see why a spirit

would deign to enter the body again

when you consider bloat colitis amphetamines etc.

and the final humiliations of the toilet.

Me, I’d prefer to be housed in a ghost

as I’d also prefer that Robert Washington

not wear the electric guitar around his neck

when it is not plugged in. But the scarves

have plugged in these women, who sound

as if they too have been amplified by five, forming one

big animal body my soul just might deign

to descend into. For the plain speech

of its snarls and yips: we are housed

in fur and we’re housed in heat—

we are dogs tied to trees, at the end of a leap

before the lights come up and we are yanked back by our chains.

NOTE: Robert Washington did win the 2003

Images of Elvis contest, after I wrote this poem.

Word of it comes whispered by a slippery thin section

of the paper, where the models pantomime unruffled tête-à-têtes

despite the absence of their blouses.

Each year when my familiar latches on them so intently

like a grand master plotting the white queen’s path,

like a baby trying to suckle a whole roast beef,

I ask: What, you salt block, are you dreaming

about being clubbed by thunderheads? — but he will not say.

Meanwhile Capricorn’s dark hours flabbed me,

uneasy about surrendering to the expert fitter

(even if the cupped hands were licensed and bonded)—

I had August in mind, seeing the pygmy goats at the county fair.

Now the sky is having its daily rain event

and the trees are having their hibernal bark event,

pretending they feel unruffled

despite the absence of their leaves. And we forget how they looked

all flouncy and green. Instead we regard

fearfully the sway of their old trunks.

Big stink wobbles down the library aisles

from you endomorphs who’ve come in from the thorns—

your musk percolates the picture books

while children sing to the donkey Tingalayo.

It creeps into the reference nook

and biographies of despot popes,

the manuals on car repair, even the old edition Joy of Sex ,

the one whose hairy armpits haunt me.

How will the smudge of rotten leaves

ever be lifted from so many paperbackèd bosoms,

the baby doze peacefully in its holster, the ancestors spring

from the accordion-files in their old hats?

Outside, the slacker deer refuse to rut

ever since your scent made its bed on the lawn,

the Chamber of Commerce outraged and

the mayor mowing down the brambles.

Sleep safe here, men! — with your heads tipped back,

wooden newspaper spindles across your chests like swords

while those good Samaritans the moths

knit scarves from the wool of your loud roars and whistles.

Let the dance begin .

In magazine-land, you two are dancing—

though a moment ago you were engaged

in some activity like stringing fenceline

or baling hay — why else the work gloves

sticking up from your back pockets?

In a whirlwind of pollen, you-the-man

have seized you-the-woman to your breast

— his breast, her breast, tenderly, tenderly—

now you turn away and shyly grin.

Oh you possessors of youthful haircuts

& attractive activewear from L.L. Bean,

you whose buttocks are still small enough

to permit the rearview photograph:

don’t you already have enough silver coinage

pouring from life’s slot? But no, you also want

the river’s silver surge where its bed drops off,

you want the namesake in all its glory— Niagara:

even the barge of animals teetering on its lip.

This ploy was wrought by some 19th-century huckster,

the honeymooners gathered on the shore’s high bank

to watch the barge drop as creature-cries rise up…

before all the couples re-bungalow themselves

to do what, then what, it’s hard to imagine

after so much death. I always thought Tigers

until I read the barge was full of dogs and cats—

one baby camel, a demented old monkey,

la petite mort , that little French whimper

given up by the ordinary before it breaks into splinters.

The widow Taylor straps herself in a barrel

and rides it safely over the century’s cusp,

& Maud Willard imbarrels herself with her dog

who’ll leap from the busted staves alone.

Still, wouldn’t the ride be worth that one live leap—

doesn’t part of us want to be broken to bits?

After all, our bodies are what cage us,

what keep us, while, outside, the river

says more, wants more, is more: the R

( grrrr, argh, graa…) in all its variegated coats.

A sound always coming, always smashing, always spoken

by the silver teeth and tongue that guard the river’s open throat.

At first I didn’t get it: I thought it was just scrap metal roped on the roof