James Joyce as Interventionist God


The earth leaned towards some solstice
that might have been joy
but the streets were black with drizzle
and barren enough to feel safe
I shoved my hands in my pockets
and followed a rumor to an old warehouse
where Ulysses was supposed to be read aloud
from start to finish in 24 hours

it was late in the evening when I joined 
five other readers
drenched in an aura of artificial light
its stark beam honed on a tabletop 
of Guinness bottles and day-old scones

obsolete words from a story without plot
self-indulgent, it seemed 
traced to a time forgotten
when battlefields like Verdun
could script an aftermath of angst
onto what was once a new generation

a book to be hurled against the wall

one of the men reading that night
asked to be granted the last fifty lines
softly he spoke the words 
as our world slipped into the indigo shadow
of a new day

and then he told us those last fifty lines 
allowed him to forgive Joyce for all the rest

I thought, if there were an interventionist god
isn’t this what we would pray for?
That he would grant us fifty lines good enough
we could forgive him all the rest?

I think of you, and the way we found each other
when you were already old and I was worn out
anachronistic, we thought
but just in time for those fifty lines
 
the summer we met I put the rose in my hair 
like the Andalusian girls wore 
and will somehow always wear
lying among the rhododendrons
(Does your heart go like mad in the reading?)

when we embraced I pulled you down and down 
pressed to the fading perfume 
of my breasts 

Yes I said yes I will Yes




Northern Light
Ode to the Red-Yellow Tulip

Yellow luster luminous
below a rapid smear
of red
an artist’s fevered rush
 
that such a fleshy flower
solid as my grandmother’s legs
a flower from a latitude
of protestant attitude and capital
enlightenment
could heighten our perception
of light
like a Vermeer
 
that we might witness a thing
we cannot see with eyes alone
like vision falling fast
through a lens
magnified and clarified
 
risen from six inches under
winter’s frozen tundra
to be seen
is to be