When You Go to Venice Alone
you’ll haunt the narrow corridors at night,
circling the blackened palaces.
Long after the market has closed, cobbles
strewn with mint and crushed flowers,
you’ll watch a waiter lower the umbrellas,
stack the chairs and hose the pavement.
And when he finally appears,
about twenty and no English,
you’ll shadow him past the Fenice,
follow his gesture up the endless stairs.
At first you won’t see his old parents
on the couch, lit by an American gameshow,
and when you finally reach his tiny room
at the top of the house — each waiting
for the other to confirm why we are here —
you’ll do nothing but sit on the narrow bed
and smoke, exiling your homeless blue breaths.
* * * * *
The Uses of Pain
When they wheel us from surgery
we feel none, but as we begin to stir
they ask us to rate our pain one to ten,
and wrap us in sheets from the warming cabinet.
Green clogs and shower caps move around,
asking Where is the key to the narc closet?
A dad offers a graham cracker to a boy’s lips, saying
If I was the one hurt, wouldn’t you feed me?
A woman refuses to give her pain
a number, only more, less, better, worse.
I beat a man once with my fists and belt,
for his pleasure and mine, each of us
certain the other was paying attention.
Picture us afterward, poor and tender
as swaddled saints, and shriven clean,
like when one has wept for a long time.
If anyone had tried to offer us love
we would have carried it in our mouths
to the nearest dung hill, and let it fall.