by Alan Shapiro

The earliest enigma was outside
the window above the kitchen sink
the way the branches full of leaves
could be waving in at shadows
of leaves and branches on the far
wall waving back, while in the air
between the wall and window
there was only air just air empty
of tree and shadow through which
the one must have been turning right
before my eyes without my seeing
into the other. Yet when I’d climb up
onto the counter and stand there
tall as my father what waved on the wall
waved on me too now, on my shirt,
along my arms, from pant leg waving
the shadows out of hiding,
out from the undercover of the air.

My body felt it more the more I couldn’t
think it, couldn’t not, as if the body
shared an understanding
I was kept from of this being
in the way of what wasn’t there
unless I stood there in the way of it —
not knowing until later it was just
the universe continuing its accidental
long-before-me detonation
from inside itself to where long after
me or house or family there’d be
no inside left except as shadow
everywhere without a solid
thing to show it what it was.

I held my hand up to see it wash
across my fingers disappearing
in the spaces between them — and
I knew just then not knowing how
if I could have seen my face
it would have been there too,
cheek nose lips eyes entangled
with it signaling by means of me
a message never meant for me, what
ever since has never let me climb down
from the counter where I couldn’t
feel my skin crawl with an alien
body’s mother tongue of shadow.

by Alan Shapiro

There was howling somewhere hard to pinpoint like a penned
dog in a pen no bigger than a closet pacing and howling all day
every day, from all directions howling so when it sometimes did
stop, never for long (your hand again unthinkingly by habit
on my shoulder, or mine on yours) the sudden stark uneasy
quiet grew even more unbearable because we spent it listening
for the barking to return, as it would, and did, and when it didn’t
finally all the dog would do was cower at our approach, its hackles up,
snout on paws, lips retracted slightly, trembling just enough
for us to see the fang tips, to hear the growling low and faint
and frighteningly softer than a purr. White cur of our last days
blue ice of eyes that couldn’t tell freedom from backed-into
corner, danger from offered hand, catcall from cooing
“come on now, baby, what’s wrong now, baby, shhhh.”

by Alan Shapiro

He never learns.
When brother Moe
holds a fist out
saying hit this
he hits it and surprise!
the fist wheels round
to bop him
on his own head —
over and over
and all this while
the world is after him,
on the run from cop,
landlord, boss, or wife
until he ducks
into a fancy
kitchen and donning
apron and chef
hat white as the
f lour he dumps
on counter, as the paint
he mistakes the milk
for and the salt
he thinks is sugar
while he kneads it all
together up to his
elbows in it
he can’t help sing,
he’s singing in that
La-Li la-la la-li
la-la falsetto
paradise of his own
making that makes
nothing useful
aping use — and
when the boss
the wife the cop
the real chef
blows by him through
the kitchen as even
brother Moe
blows by enraged
and blaming him
for everything it’s like
he can’t be seen
he can’t be touched,
as if the singing
walled off the body
that otherwise
is just the bull’s
eye of every hurt
conceivable, a singing
slapstick shield
of Achilles that
protects only
the shield maker
and only while
the shield is
being made —
with glittery bitch
slap on this panel
and bright eye
gouge on that
and in the middle
a cake the mucky-
mucks gag on
and the jig
is up and there
he is running
in place beside
a bronze Moe
holding a bronze
fist out and saying
hit this, so he does.

by Alan Shapiro

Without a bet on baseball, my father’s soul
and body were out of phase or focus
in a kind of split screen vision.  Only,
as he called it, “a little action on the side,”
sawbuck, ten spot, two bits or a penny,
with anyone really, man, woman, child,
even the family dog we didn’t have,
could catalyze the TV blizzard of his
inattention into near mystic clarity.
Sometimes to hone his edge, he’d go all in
with house, car, first born, and not just
on the macros of who would win, by how
much, in what way, but the micros too
of over/under in balls and strikes, pitch
count per game, per inning, if or how often
each batter would kick dirt, adjust helmet,
cup crotch or spit.  Drenched in consequence,
adrenaline enchanted, the universe that
otherwise never spoke his name
suddenly awoke to do or not do his
bidding, to place him in the transient
quicksilver center of winner or loser,
it didn’t matter which, so long as he
knew where and what he was.

Most of his life was lived “between bets,”
smiling without ever looking pleased; so
when he got old and retired from a job
selling men’s suits at Saks, and his eyes
began to fail, it was like he’d awakened
in a cloud chamber, a stone camera obscura,
staring at a mineral sky neither colorless
nor black nor white, adrift with cloud
hauntings, phantasms of action
only the newly dead might see; as if his life
now lived apart, in some other dimension
he didn’t know about, had never heard of,
couldn’t imagine ever having lived in, bound
as he was now to a recliner in front of a flat screen.