Emptying Town

—after Provincetown

Each fall this town empties, leaving me

drained, standing on the dock, waving bye-

bye, the white handkerchief

stuck in my throat. You know the way Jesus

rips open his shirt

to show us his heart, all flaming & thorny,

the way he points to it. I’m afraid

the way I miss you

will be this obvious. I have

a friend who everyone warns me

is dangerous, he hides

bloody images of Jesus around my house

for me to find when I come home—Jesus

behind the cupboard door, Jesus tucked

into the mirror. He wants to save me

but we disagree from what. My version of hell

is someone ripping open his

shirt & saying,

look what I did for you.

II

Oceanic

The ocean is always looking

for a way into your boat.

—The U.S. Coast Guard, on lifesaving

Angelization

When a plane goes down we search the wreckage

for the black box, where the pilot’s voice

lies: any hint

he saw the mountain rise up, if the gauges

functioned. The word for the process

by which any technology disembodies us

is angelization: a telephone can do it, computers

dense with blue chatter,

a television burning with the dead

who refuse to stay dead. The day Richard left

a woman sat in the waiting room, balancing

a goldfish on her knee

in a knotted plastic bag. The woman

seemed hypnotized by reruns, the goldfish

circled, always surprised by

the bag, as if expecting the water

to simply go on & on. Richard

was trying to speak—outside

a river flowed, lined with trees

beginning to bud, reflecting

in each of his eyes. I said,

squeeze my hand if you understand, but his hand

was quiet. Imagine him as a pilot, orbiting

forever, refueling midair. How could we know

the plane would fall, his body

dematerialize, fade. First we see

his hand, then the bones in his hand, then

the wheel behind the bones—an answering

machine in an empty room that whispers,

I’m not here right now…

Cartoon Physics, part 1

Children under, say, ten, shouldn’t know

that the universe is ever-expanding,

inexorably pushing into the vacuum, galaxies

swallowed by galaxies, whole

solar systems collapsing, all of it

acted out in silence. At ten we are still learning

the rules of cartoon animation,

that if a man draws a door on a rock

only he can pass through it.

Anyone else who tries

will crash into the rock. Ten-year-olds

should stick with burning houses, car wrecks,

ships going down—earthbound, tangible

disasters, arenas

where they can be heroes. You can run

back into a burning house, sinking ships

have lifeboats, the trucks will come

with their ladders, if you jump

you will be saved. A child

places her hand on the roof of a schoolbus,

& drives across a city of sand. She knows

the exact spot it will skid, at which point

the bridge will give, who will swim to safety