Adam Fitzgerald

The Bride

You could read Ruskin all day to me about sesame clouds
and the appearance of linen on sprawling walkways.
Pouring your stiff, bright eyes into the avenue
would be one way, and staying on the phone while drawing
a pink-splattered mist covered around an eggshell
would be another. You could heat rice and recite Faust.
Batter an eyelash until the fringe resembled small turf.
There we shall play, like ponies on green banks, all day.

You could induce a train rhythm, one that set me back
a ways, having a vague peripheral hint of horticulture—
the cornice of flower water, the snail horn sandwiched
in air. You could pull the covers over the ocean in bed,
and bring me soup, deigning to peak at my hook lip,
removing the vestige of flint from my dwarfish cap.
You could sit, like a woman, dainty in a peach atrium,
a computer on her lap, beckoning with the back of her head. 

 José Raul Capablanca

It wasn’t always like this.
Speaking, but not speaking.
Once, it was different.
Time with its résumé.
I can’t say who read it.
Or why they couldn’t have.
But so it was.
Things changed.
And thinned out.
Toasts were empty.
Linen was heavy.
And the meals,
wherever meals there were,
felt false even if filling.
They were often filling.
But they were also often not.
People put themselves onwards.
Onwards became old.
One time someone would look back
and find they had not seen a thing.
So they resumed sleep.
In the purple garden,
a moon clipped the hedge
for the dumb couple
out of respect for insurance.
A chalice came from the faucet.
In the sink, there were newsmen
and newsheadlines that vanished.
No one spoke of chalk.
No one aroused dust.
Only spilled ink filled the wash.
And that was accidental procedure.
Soon men arose in graves.
The grass fell like a blanket.
Neat and orderly and set that way.
The will read: Let there be pieces of the valley
for all men, but somewhere there wasn’t.
Until there was. This followed
for a few years, and I grew tiresome,
and irksome, and shot glances
when I had nothing to shoot at
or shoot for. I suspended the routine.
I ate breakfast and dreamed of a rodeo.
I even began with matins in the morning.
And dovetailing, always a hobby,
replaced my love of tsunamis,
artworks chilled by colorists.
Oblong expressions of medicine
and cosmetics of Eastern wisdom.
There was no wisdom. There was no sun.
Only wizened streets, with exposed feet.
And the socks of the trees were left there.
And the bikes were locked with expense.
And the doors became like records
of all the people that had lived there.
Once I tried to reach you at the hotel,
but longing came, with its lascivious
stockings and one thing became another.
Columns were sure-footed. Anger was paid.
Skies were ordered. Horns were dulcified.
Smoke went back to its topical allusions.
The tropics spun out from the webbing.
A small plane rode across my sleep
and in it I left, having no time for words,
figuring the whole rest of the trip
a solo concerto. I didn’t know what that
meant but it occurred. There was rain.
It was light. It turned out to be enough. Then.

Adam Fitzgerald is a graduate student at Columbia University. He is a minor expert on Zoroastrian studies. He lives in New York City with his wife and two children, and a pet chimp named Oleander.