Floaters by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Epub3
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Be There When They Swarm Me

for Paul Mariani

You were once the boy of the big shoulders, hauling cartons

of Campbell’s Soup at the A&P in 1959, yearning to brain

the boss with a wrench. You were the poet of the great handshake

and all the stories, squeezing my arm to tell me about Hart Crane,

who leapt from a ship to drown at sea: Did he struggle

to regain the surface, suddenly sobered by what he’d done?

I wandered lonely as a Puerto Rican in an English

Department, and you found me in the hallway,

calling me brother as my own brother never would,

calling me poet as if that word had never drowned at sea.

Once, I was a boy with big shoulders too, plotting

to shrink-wrap the foreman’s head the night of the layoffs.

Not for you the poet learning to smoke like a poet,

bursting into tears at the sight of a mayonnaise jar

because he loves the letter M, locking himself

in the bathroom because his haiku is too short.

Now, you tell tales of the hospital bed, your spine a wreck,

your wobbling brain. Now, you write of scrubbing the deck

when hornets sting and zoom into your eyes, as one winged fiend

multiplies by twenty, and you win but know you cannot win,

and so you pray: Be there when they swarm me.

I wear a leg brace up to the knee. The surgeons

opened my belly like curious children inspecting

the pendulum of a grandfather clock. My insurance

will not pay for my hearing aids. At the airport,

they stop me because my beard is a suspect.

And yet, I will be there when they swarm you.

I will arm myself against the hornets with natural

insecticides, the eucalyptus oil, the citronella,

the spray of chrysanthemum flower tea, and then

the baseball bat, since I was born in Brooklyn,

where people used baseball bats to smash burglars,

cars, television screens, anything but baseballs.

We will win, though we know we cannot win.

You called me brother in the hallway as my brother

never would, spoke the word poet like a benediction,

and so we wait together for the next wave

of winged demons. Be there when they swarm me.

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