(PROSE POEMS)
WILLIAM DORESKI
WILLIAM DORESKI
TO THE BREADWINNER
When I think of vacant office space in skyscrapers drooping with age I see you knitting and purling through boring meetings with middle managers you despise. The days enrich themselves in pinks and swirls of violet. The views through unwashed windows curdle like old snapshots. You probably made another million today, trading in commodities. You probably diced and fired several unlucky functionaries. You were one of them when you were young enough to wear a modest below-the-knee dress to work, when you bought lunch at the ice cream shop where little old Boston ladies giggled like nuns. But now the smacking of the harbor’s big lips seems personal. The snarl of railroads stretching toward New York and the cringing of the slums madden you beyond human limitation. I expect you to breathe life into those vacant offices as if they were terrariums. I expect you to tease those skyscrapers into standing erect again, ready and eager to impregnate entire worlds of power. The next sweater you knit in your absentminded way may or may not fit me, but I’ll wear it, in exile, with pride.
YOUR PET TURTLE
YOUR PET TURTLE
We agree that nothing is absolute, not the dark of closets, not clock-faces, not the stink of cooking fat. But we disagree on the exceptions. You place your plastic crucifix on the wall and claim that it represents the ultimate. I prop Wallace Stevens’ Collected Poems against the bassinette to make the baby cry. You prod my undercarriage with the skewer you used for lamb until I objected to cooking the young of innocent animals. I scratch you very slightly with a genuine Thoreau pencil I bought in a rare book shop forty years ago. You respond with the word “Animula.” I reply with “Condensed.” We agree that if we laugh it has to be aloud.
The room sweetens with the breath of your tiny pet turtle. It walked all the way from the Caribbean to live in your terrarium. Soon the immigration police will arrive to arrest us for importing disease from the furthest reach of the galaxy. We will explain that nothing is absolute, not even the furthest reach of the galaxy, and that law enforce peters out beyond the limits of the atmosphere. They will arrest your plastic crucifix for violating the religious clause of the Bill of Rights but allow your turtle to remain with you until a judge hears its case.
The room sweetens with the breath of your tiny pet turtle. It walked all the way from the Caribbean to live in your terrarium. Soon the immigration police will arrive to arrest us for importing disease from the furthest reach of the galaxy. We will explain that nothing is absolute, not even the furthest reach of the galaxy, and that law enforce peters out beyond the limits of the atmosphere. They will arrest your plastic crucifix for violating the religious clause of the Bill of Rights but allow your turtle to remain with you until a judge hears its case.
William Doreski's work has appeared in various e and print journals and in several collections, most recently A Black River, A Dark Fall (2019).