Plumtree’s Home Potted Meats

 

 

You flourish a ceramic jar

labeled “Plumtree Home Potted

Meats” and challenge me to name

 

the book in which it features.

Everyone knows Ulysses

with its sexual puns and slang,

 

but who remembers who’s condemned

to eat that tasteless processed beef?

Cooked on Railway Street in Southport,

 

Plumtree’s meat-mush, we’re assured,

“represents Bloom’s frustration

with his job, his home, and marriage.”

 

As Bloom reads the newspaper

he conjures up cannibalism,

Kosher rules, and slaughterhouses.

 

You look comfortable in the center

of your antique shop, your wares

trickling down from Quebec

 

and lounging in your shop for months

or years before tourists cart them

to New Jersey or New York.

 

Since Canada still honors

the queen when she appears,

clutching her white leather purse,

 

objects from the British Isles

often appear in your stash.

Old Ireland, though, recedes in time,

 

the Republic gradually shedding

the strictures of the priesthood

that strangled Dublin for centuries.

 

Potted meats no longer required

to represent marital duties.

You want too much actual money

 

for this antique jar. I’ll pass.

Joyce died well before I was born,

and mice ate the last shreds

 

of potted meat from under the bed

while Molly lay aghast with pleasure

and her lover discreetly retired.

 

 

 

Art with a Capital T

 

Woods at the edge of a marsh.

Someone has placed a bookcase

of varnished maple, shelves

vacant but expectant. Also

a slab of plywood on the ground

with a large plastic jug, a wire

device of unknown purpose,

and an unused bar of soap.

The jug has a pink stopper,

the plywood is filthy with mildew.

 

Discovering this installation

far from the nearest house

confirms that art is everywhere.

You order me to photograph it

before coming rain can spoil it.

But this isn’t something the Louvre

would hanker for. A narrow board

lies beside it with “Free” spray-painted,

so this is only discarded junk,

not the clever arrangement

we saw from the corners of our eyes.

 

Still, I snap a couple of pictures

to hang in the MFA, the Tate,

the Met, or Wadsworth Atheneum

when the curators aren’t looking.

Then all would agree that art

with a capital T has arrived

in woods at the edge of a marsh

in Harrisville, New Hampshire,

blossoming in the autumn when

people add worn-out belongings

to landscapes too plain to admire

without a touch of culture.

 

Barred Owl in the Larch

 

 

The owl thinks so hard the air

around it shivers like foil.

 

You’re excited by its presence,

a brown muddle in the larch.

 

Other birds sound alarms, jays

rasping from deep in their throats,

 

crows hacking at the atmosphere.

You want me to photograph

 

this hunter as it thinks of mice,

its brain waves almost visible.

 

It may look like a slab of bark,

but our friends will admire it

 

and envy its bottomless poise.

The day darkens into thunder.

 

We dread these late summer storms,

which sometimes fell large maples

 

or pepper us with bursts of hail.

The owl will ignore the weather,

 

shrugging deeper into its feathers

and gripping its perch with talons

 

firmer than our finest handshakes.

I retreat to my room and clutch

 

my various timid organs

while you in the kitchen soothe

 

our pair of tuxedo cats

who stare at the owl outside

 

with all their instincts tingling.

As the storm breaks, I’m staring

 

at my photograph of the owl.

Shaped like a loaf of whole wheat bread,          

 

it clutches the perceptible

world around itself and peers

 

into the imperceptible world

with a focus honed to kill.

 

Peterborough Murder Mystery

 

We say, “Good night,” but the night

incorporates nothing good.

The river exhales an opaque mist.

We both hear the splash of a corpse

tossed from the bridge. We return

to the spot on the pavement

where our alibis had lingered

not quite long enough. The stiff

may turn up so far downstream

no one will blame us for dashing

to the all-night diner to regroup.

 

The stainless well-lit space

hums to itself. Cops perch on stools

and chat up the waitress. Her face

is cloudy as a nebula. Smiles

droop from it like rusty sickles.

We order coffee and console

ourselves with knowable facts.

That splash may be innocent.

Maybe it was a buck deer leaping

into the river for a bath.

Maybe it was suicide

and therefore not our business.

 

But there was something absolute

about that splash, something creeping

through the mist to shiver us.

Only murder crawls so many

legged up the spine and haunts

bystanders with a lack of clues.

The squat cops gnawing burgers

are prepared to handle the dark side

of this village. But we know nothing,

except that the river’s very cold.                         

 

Was that your carcass or mine

tossed so casually into the dark?

Let whoever finds the victim

drifting downriver alert

whatever authority lingers

in this world of gray excuses.

The mist is so thick tonight

it erases all but the cruelest

moments, leaving minor dramas

to terminate well before dawn.