Down in the dirt, Persephone pops a few
more pomegranate seeds and reclines on her Lazy Boy
while Hades cleans the incinerator.
The ashes tap their cigars and turn the compost.
Down in the dirt, the bus arrives
and the tourists pour out like plagues
with their digital cameras, vying
for the best photos of themselves
posed under the chapel ceiling.
The plaster falls, and wax drips on their heads.
Down in the dirt, it’s a typical day for satyrs and nymphs
fucking in the woods or in fuming pools.
The goddess bubbles in the foam
and seeds swim through wavy air.
Helen lies down for the janitor on the back of a mule.
The mule brays for a little peace.
Planets circle our heads like bowling balls
on warped wood. Down in the dirt,
we all blow out our wishes. Our dreams
arrive in boxes, wrapped with pretty bows.
The silver historian scratches out another biography
of Zeus on the wall of the boat. Zeus tattoos
all his lovers’ nether lips on his torso in rainbow colors.
Down in the dirt, the garbage piles up,
but hardly anyone notices because we’re up to our necks
in shit and the piss burns.
My aunt Viola took up with Uncle Charlie in the 50s
after her first husband, a handsome rake, fled
her wild blue eyes and long, “suicide-red hair.”
She walked with a limp, a bad hip.
She fell in love with Charlie when he got down
on one knee and she could see a tiny bald country
shaped like Hungary. “Everyone there looks like us,
same beady eyes,” she always claimed, “and they’re all
crazy drinkers or just plain crazy.”
Charlie never acted nice to anyone,
but my aunt. He carried a folding chair
over his shoulder for her and opened it—even
on crowded NYC sidewalks—whenever she got tired of walking.
After they died I found an envelope behind some books
with the word “naughty” scribbled in red.
In the photos my aunt, so modest she wore
a robe over her bathing suit at the beach,
sits naked on the edge of the bed,
as though ready to wave at her nephews and nieces back home.
Charlie is somewhere near the radiator,
telling her to smile and look natural.
If she knew that anyone was looking at these photos
she would rise up and drop dead again.
Their ashes still float on the East River,
bickering like Hungarians.
Remember the distance?
It’s here and no longer distant
like my cousin Terri
who is not here, but somewhere distant
still beautiful though her hands tremble
perhaps more beautiful
because her hands tremble.
Of course, there’s a new distance
coming toward us at a tremendous speed—
cows, silky cornstalks, chunks of granite,
pudgy aunts, uncles with long noses
nodding off, bellies full of brisket.
It’s all blurring in curved space
as we curve into space, watching
the yellow ribbon unfold,
bright umbrellas floating
toward distant stars that are no longer
so distant. Then there’s distance
that remains distant like the horizon,
which never gets any closer
no matter how many times I blink
or how hard I press down on the gas pedal—
or like a would be lover
who wouldn’t be my lover
shunning me like an infectious disease,
which is nothing like infectious laughter
spreading through a room lighting up
the faces of strangers. There’s
the distance between us, Honey,
perhaps two hands apart,
but close enough our arms graze
with each disagreement, even though
now I’m now eager to agree—
and there’s the distant
possibility of sex,
still a possibility
no matter how distant.
Jeff Friedman’s poems, translations and mini stories have appeared in American Poetry Review, Quick Fiction, Poetry International, Ontario Review, Prairie Schooner, Night Train, Agni Online, The Antioch Review, Poetry, North American Review, and The New Republic. His fifth book of poems, Working in Flour, will be published by Carnegie Mellon University Press in January 2011.
