Everything We Always Knew Was True. James Galvin
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origami,
Creased in different shapes
(Someone must have done this
For him),
Triangles, rectangles, squares,
So he could tell their
Denominations.
A door opened,
And a wind scattered his currency.
All the people knelt
To gather his geometries
And return them
To his hand.
Snow
It was snowing nurses.
The blond ones
From ICU.
They wore those perky
Little nurse hats,
White coats.
They wore surgical
Masks and carried
IV needles
And bags of morphine.
They had sponges
In their pockets.
They landed gently
On the lawn,
And looked around,
Not knowing
What to do.
It was snowing
Polar bears,
Who loved us for
Our temporary mercy.
They landed gently
On the lawn,
On all fours,
But then stood
On their hind legs
And sniffed all around,
Confused.
It was snowing sawdust
From the Amish coffin shop.
It was snowing shuttlecocks
That looked like pastries
Or tiny volcanoes.
At least they looked at home
Lying on the grass.
It was snowing pastries.
It was snowing swaddled babies.
They landed gently.
It was snowing wan
Corpses in dress whites
That had started out
As babies with zero
Knowledge of pastries,
Or shuttlecocks,
Or sawdust,
Or polar bears,
And had (fate
Being fatal) of nurses,
Now, no knowledge
Or need.
Bringing Down the House
When they tore down the auditorium
The facade went first, rebar snarling out like a
Nest of centipedes. When they tore down
The auditorium, excavators
And backhoes roamed like sci-fi mantises,
Munching with hydraulic jaws as they
Hunted and gathered and devoured. When they
Tore down the auditorium, percussive
Wrecking balls kept time
As I thought of years of arts performing magics.
I saw Baryshnikov twice. Heard Pavarotti,
Marsalis, and Ma, heard Bobby McFerrin, Bernstein,
The Kronos Quartet. The stage was a realm of light,
Sound, and dance. Applause came in tsunamis.
All in Iowa City, Iowa.
Then came the real flood. Mud took the stage,
Mold took a curtain call. They tore down the
Auditorium, but I remember.
Wynton Marsalis gave a master class
To three or four Iowa high school white-bread
Jazz combos. When Marsalis walked in they throttled
Their horns and saxophones, and who could blame them?
They jammed. He taught them to listen to one another
And respond. “Did you hear that B-flat I played?
Well why didn’t you do something about it?”
And, “You can’t get up on a stage then act
Like you don’t belong there.” He took questions. They had
A few shy ones. Then one girl, whose parents
Probably couldn’t afford that night’s performance,
Asked the best question ever: “Will you
Play something for us?” By way of answer
He laid down an impossible Dizzy Gillespie
Riff. A stunned silence forestalled the applause,
A silence such as that which overawes
The din of tearing down the auditorium.
The Newlywed Acrobats
—after Chagall
Even though he is in church, the groom’s long yellow hair lilts in a
slight breeze from the sacristy.
He sports gold-sequined tights and
slippers.
The bride is decked out in a gold bikini.
Her breasts are
two miracles.
Her smile is, well, blinding.
He flips the wedding ring
high into the air like a florin.
She spears it (did you guess?) on her
ring finger.
The priest juggles chalices as they kiss.
The crowd
roars joyously as she cartwheels down the aisle.
The groom does
back-handsprings and sticks a double flip at the door.
On the steps,
an avalanche of confetti.
Clowns are shot from cannons to the
right and to the left.
On golden ropes the couple swings into the
waiting limo, which looks like a gold coffin being sawed in two and
appears to split in half as it disappears.
There happens to be a
trampoline in front of the hotel.
They spring each other higher and
higher