Teahouse of the Almighty (3 page)

is everything. His whole life hurtles past, paining him with its

scarlets and excess, the pulsing soundtrack a sweet irritant. The

first thing he sees is all of it, the interminable meetings, the mercy

fucks, a sweaty tumbler of ice water, finally his own knees. Eternity

is this looped, unblinking cinema of himself. Paradise is crammed

with the cruelly blessed struck dumb by scenes too loud to live.

THE WORLD WON'T WAIT

On Tuesday, I watched as a 27-year-old man

held an electric toothbrush in his hand.

His fingers fumbled a bit at the switch,

but he flipped it, then sat astounded

as the dry brush shimmied and jumped in his palm.

This run on batteries?,
he asked,

turning it upside down,

his eyes lit with a toddler's wonder.

Perhaps you see nothing amazing in this.

But let me paint a picture of this man.

His chest is impossibly plumped, thick and rigid,

his skin mapped with stretch marks

where the muscle has exploded beneath.

His shaved head, a field of grizzle and sweet spray,

is peppered with gouges where the blade sensed

his blood and slipped. He is a child of single syllables,

grunts just under the radar:

I need to eat.

I'm real tired.

Think it's gon' rain.

I like that shirt.

He is my

son, crafted of fevers unleashed and jailhouse iron.

And now, with the clear beyond cry, I see

that his punishment was never there,

among the scabbed tattoos, sluggish clocks, open toilets.

His sentence began in the free, in that moment

when he turned a cheap chugging red toothbrush

over and over in his huge hands and said,

Look at this, Ma. Wow, look at this.

LISTENING AT THE DOOR

Beneath the door, I could practically see

the wretched slither of tobacco and English Leather.

Hiding on the other side, I heard Mama giggle

through clenched teeth, which meant potential

husband sitting spitshined on our corduroy couch.

The needle hit that first groove and I wondered

why my mama had chosen the blues,

wrong, Friday-angled, when it was hope

she needed. I pressed my ear against the door,

heard dual damp panting, the Murphy bed squeal,

the occasional directive,

the sexless clink of jelly jar glasses.

What drove me to listen on those nights

when my mother let that fragrant man in,

banished me to the back of the apartment,

pretended she could shine above hurting?

I'd rest my ear against the cool wood all night

as she flipped through the 45s—

looking for Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder,

somebody blind this time,

somebody crawling on his knees toward love.

THE END OF A MARRIAGE

is totally silent, eerie in its zero.

Not even the clunk of paralleled possessions

dropping into cardboard boxes or the satisfying

slamming of doors, one after another, can slap

a period on chaos. It's just one syrupy moon-eyed

gaze, taking in his overlapped belly, the dangerous

mole dotting her left shoulder, the blue veins

like roads to death behind his knees. It's that watery

stare with no stop, the frenzied gulping of line,

curve, voice, all the stark unbended was of them.

Yes, we flinched against the losing, even our venom

was distinctly hued. Everyone kept asking, begging

detail, but all there was was the utter nothing, just

our eyes locked on our eyes, traversing that ragged

territory once more for the record, finally dropping

abruptly from the edge of my body, the edge of his.

It was a threadbare connect meant to end tragically,

one that was broken when we blinked and he turned

away and I turned away, our eyes fused open.

Then we began our walk toward separate sounds.

BOY DIES, GIRLFRIEND GETS HIS HEART

Patterson, Calif. (AP)—A 15-year-old boy who learned that his girlfriend needed a heart transplant told his mother three weeks ago that he was going to die and that the girl should have his heart. Felipe Garza, who his brother said had seemed in perfect health, died Saturday after a blood vessel burst in his head. His family followed his wishes, and Felipe's heart was transplanted Sunday into Donna Ashlock
.

The deep things we know.

How systems grow restless

and damning in us,

stunning the machine.

And what we feel.

The head romances us,

coos anxious wooings,

makes us want to lie back

and listen to the failures,

the bones thinning,

fat clogging the paths.

Outside us, what?

Some opening waiting to scar over.

Some flower peeled open,

its drum growing slow.

And, suddenly, the least we can do is us.

Patterson, Calif. (AP)—A 17-year-old girl, who three years ago received the heart of a boyfriend who died, needs a new heart because her body is rejecting the transplanted organ. Doctors are looking for a suitable heart for Donna Ashlock, who has been living with the heart of Felipe Garza since Jan. 4, 1986. Doctors learned last month that the Garza heart has been permanently damaged by Donna's body's repeated attempts to reject it.

I want this earth out of me,

this conjured world, this wire,

this battery, this button.

I would rather the suddening stoplight,

the dawned silence.

Beat it backwards, shoot it through

with slivers of glass, chop it from its walls.

Arise it beyond me, make it arc

over my dead head like a heaven.

Imagine the given thing being all you are.

Imagine a machine's steel tear.

Know how I know this cannot be my heart.

It loves me too much.

Patterson, Calif. (AP)—Donna Ashlock, the 17-year-old girl whose body rejected the transplanted heart of a boyfriend, died Tuesday while waiting for a new heart.

Heaven is a room without air,

tinier than you would expect.

Their harbors summarily discarded,

souls are smashed upon souls,

writhing, lit neon with overwhelms of holy.

Here names, crimes, and choices

are forgotten. There is only one door,

and the harried souls hurtle through,

bargain for space, pulse gleefully.

The fickle, traitorous heart is a need

no one misses. In heaven,

they keep one beating

in a cage, purely for show.

DUMPSTERS, WASTEBASKETS, SHALLOW GRAVES

I almost learned this in my almost life: Breathe

like your living depends on it. Here is something

I almost remember—Mama's prickly translation

of hold, belief strained. In the first hopeful instant

she held me, slip slide in looped chenille, scarlet

coil marring my belly, wee head sweatstuck to the

crook of her arm, my tiny chest had rockets inside.

One finger moved my wet, slick hair into pattern,

traced the shadow of my slowing heart. I learned

that swallowing once will not feed you. I learned

the brief language of a poking finger. And because

I cried so little and learned so well, she imagined

a misting future. She almost gave me a name.

TO 3, NO ONE IN THE PLACE

Ignore the crack in rhythm, the mangled lyrics,

my face stunned under sticky layers of cinnamon

and rose. I drew the woman you wanted. I spritzed

Chanel in my throat shadows and in a line inside

my thighs to my knees. I shaved landscapes,

shunned underwear, colored my nails bitterly red.

And then, just ten minutes to show,

I studied my angles of craving.

I will hoist myself up onto the ancient Steinway,

drag a blue feather boa along the gleam, tilt my head,

and separate the limelight into merely a million angels.

When I was 16, my hips moved like they had water in them.

When I was 22, men in patent clickers and sharkskin suits

couldn't say my name without weeping. I sang them to sleep,

then left. By 30, I had set fire to the names of two husbands.

Everything I crooned was pissed and indigo. Now I'm warbling

beneath a shifting layer of 40, bound to a sad stash of ballads

anyone with a steady tongue and half a dream could sing.

There's my half a dream over there, barely recognizable

as you, slumped in your seat at a quarter to leaving,

not knowing or caring if I ever got around to that song

you asked for with a wink, a single sweaty dollar.

You wanted to hear “My Romance,” which I sang

like any more breathing I planned to do depended on it.

I cooed, flirted, and crawled my whole self into every note,

and when I came up for air, I knew you hadn't heard it.

I was backdrop, I was time passing, I was hey somebody

get me one more whiskey, I was did the rain start yet,

I was bet those tits aren't real, I was wish she was younger,

I was at least the piano player's decent, I was damned

drinks are watered down, I was I can't believe I blew

this much cash, I was bet she was hot 20 years ago,

I was where's the john?, I was damn she blew
that
note,

I was should I wait around?, I was fuck, it's all the same

in the dark, I was hope this old piece a' ass is worth it,

I was is she ever gonna stop singing?, I was oh yeah

feelin' that Chivas, I was did she ever sing that song,

whatever the hell it was, that sappy shit I paid her to sing?

There's a back door to this place. I use it sometimes.

But first I have to face the dressing room's endless mirrors,

where the wronged songstress sees herself repeated,

where I scrub off four layers of sweetened skin,

ease folded toes out of tortuous pumps, and pray away

the broad ache in my throat. There's a tap on the door

and I think maybe it's the manager with my cash

or this week's excuse for not having my cash. But it's you,

rumpled and bleary, dangerous because you've peeked

my dreaming, because you are the lie I've decided to hear.

You want the whole heart of the millionth angel.

Cue the woo of surrender, the sloppy fuck with soundtrack.

SACRIFICE

“Twenty eight Chilean women stripped naked in the middle of a busy road in Santiago, Chile, to pay homage to poet Pablo Neruda…”

      
—
UPI, 1/2/2005

“Naked you are simple as one of your hands”

      
—
“Morning: Love Sonnet XXVII,” Neruda

Flustered, without license or sanction, the women

clawed at whispered cotton and lopsided seam,

pushed irritants to their ankles, and stood upright

for whole seconds, just long enough for nipples

to pimple in soft wind. Behind them, a home that

once held his pens, his grimace acknowledging

a tumbled phrase, earthquakes that grew pliant

in him, and now twenty-eight quick asses framed