Lucia Perillo: Inseminating the Elephant

of her story, and now she is sorry

she cannot tell it well enough — she left school to work

in the hotdog plant

years before the wave. Yes,

there were others who survived,

but they were children, so they were quick,

outsprinting the surf—

they did not spend the night

all stretched out on the sea.

Which was a deeper black than you could ever imagine,

though what she says is:

All my friends are dead —

not the wreckage, just the clarity

when you get to be so very old— or in the hospital

with no brains left .

Only me , she says:

she’s the one who was saved.

And then she holds up her index finger, for you

to throw your life ring on.

We turned off the highway at Chuckanut Drive

(everyone told us to turn off at Chuckanut Drive)

where, when we finally slid from the cedars,

the ocean smacked us in the face.

Jane squints down into her steering and talking

(her voice like the hushing of the wet road)

about how her mother fled from the house

(one of the many times he beat her).

How they wore their pajamas into the store

after crossing the parking-lot stripes in their slippers—

see how easy it is to start over

after the hangers screech.

In the motel, there’d always be a picture of the sea

(as if all you needed was the idea of its rocking)—

you feel your life starting over on Chuckanut Drive

(is what made Jane remember).

Our car crept like a grub on the country’s edge,

there on a cliff above Samish Bay:

mountains to the north, mountains to the south,

(& a life equaled)

the huge unbroken water in between.

Her daughter wrote back to say my friend had died

(my friend to whom I wrote a letter maybe twice a year).

From time to time I’d pictured her amid strange foliage

(and in a Mongol yurt, for she was fond of travel).

Why not a flock of something darkening the sky, so we would know

( ah, so-and-so is gone! )?

To a woman from the city, this might perhaps be pigeons

(blacking out the sun).

Or else a human messenger, as once when she was fabric-shopping

(bolt of green silk furled across her body)

Garbo passed, and nodded. At Macy’s years ago

(when I was not a creature in her world).

Of course she bought the cloth, but never sewed the dress

(“a massive stroke, and I take comfort in the fact she felt no pain”).

Logic says we should make omens of our Garbos and our birds

(but which one bears the message? which one just the mess?).

From the kayak, I’ve seen pigeons nesting underneath the pier

(a dim ammoniated stink)

where one flew into my face. I read this as a sign

(that rancid smash of feathers)

but couldn’t fathom what it meant, the bird trapped in the lag time

(of an oracle’s translation).

Foolish mind, wanting to obliterate the lag and why—

(let memory wait to catch up to its sorrow).

What I remember about the famous writer is how

he took the English muffin sleeve from a high shelf,

how he mumbled his apologies

on finding only one stale white puck. How

he blew the cornmeal off

before he forked the halves apart, twisting to loosen them

the way my mother did.

How therefore came a little intermission of memory—

a patch of time he filled by pacing

in front of the toaster-oven window,

lacquered and leaded with grease

like the stained glass of a church.

How I was looking for wisdom, how he was no talker.

How he devoted himself instead to buttering,

palming the muffin-half close to his eye

while the golden glob vanished

into the craters.

How slowly he heaved it with his knife.

Many of the great men — Buddha, Saint Augustine,

Jefferson, Einstein — had a woman and child

they needed to ditch. A little prologue

before the great accomplishments could happen.

From nothing came this bloody turnip

umbilicaled to the once-beloved,

only now she’s transformed like a Hindu god

with an animal snout and too many limbs.

You’d rather board a steamer with chalk dust on your pants

or sit under a bo tree and be pelted by flaming rocks,

renounce the flesh

or ride off on a stallion—

there is no papoose designed for such purposes,

plus the baby would have to be sedated.

Sorry.

We don’t want the future to fall into the hands of the wrong — ists!

That’s how civilization came into being

for us who remained in the doorways of here,

our companions those kids who became chimney sweeps, car thieves,

and makers of lace.

By day we live in the shadows of theories; by night

the moon holds us in its regard

when it doesn’t have more important business

on the back side of the clouds.

Because I’d drunk a lot of coffee on top of some antibiotics

strange ideas were already swimming in my brain

like sharks patrolling their aquarium walls

when I saw those strange rafts circling in the harbor.

Gatling was the word that came to mind

for the machine guns mounted on their turrets,

but Jim said I was wrong. And also:

Great, so now the war comes to Palookaville

while I stood too stymied for a superior thought.

Eventually we turned back from the window

to our task to prove ourselves

not easily deterred:

loading the truck with bags of garbage

so we could take them to the dump.

Styrofoam boxes from the Vietnamese restaurants

by which we are sustained.

We came back dirty, so we washed,

then lay down predictably.

And it seemed oddly synchronous

that I’d just been reading Baudelaire,

who couldn’t stand what sex did to the face. Meanwhile

a big ship slid into port

like a capsule sinking in the throat,

then some jeeps and earthmovers drove aboard.

And why not say we fucked right through it! —

an optimist might say that love prevailed.

But there is another way to look at it:

as greed, the body taking its cut first

(although I didn’t look, I never can stand to look).

Later I thought I saw a frogman in the bay,

but it could have been a seal.

I mean a real seal,

which is to say an animal.

Then, Infamous Reader, comes your turn to say: But we are all animals .

Nearly all the remaining quarter million passenger pigeons were killed in one day in 1896 .

They named the last one Martha,

and she died September 1, 1914, in the Cincinnati Zoo,

she who was once one of so many billions

the sky went dark for days

when they flew past.

Makes me wonder what else could go,

some multitudinous widget like clouds or leaves

or the jellyfish ghosting the water in autumn

or the shore-shards of crushed clams?

Goodbye kisses:

once I had so many of you but now I note

your numbers growing slim—

yesterday a man stood me up in the sea

behind the big rock where the sand dollars live.

And when I said Now we should kiss