Poetry
by Marcus Trimble
Polo Gets Ass-Backward,
Stranded in Lapland
Oh the girls the girls were so
sweet and dark, faces tanned
like hard little acorns, their hands
so light, their breath tasting
of salmon, soaked in roses,
preserved. I bought twenty-three
for a cask of pepper and a sharp
carving knife but they suffered
on the ship, their eyes yellowing,
teeth rattling in their gums;
when dipped into the ocean
to revive their spirits, they simply
swam away like so many guttural fish.
The road bent out and back, and the
way
forward turned on him, and turned
again. His footprints faced backwards,
and fit a man three times his size.
He marked the path with what he had,
left various marks, signs, bits of himself;
he found them in a heap, ears atop
his toes,
fingers mounting his thighs. His tongue
lay with his spleen, their children
ill-mannered,
full of hate. His liver ran off with
his pancreas.
From Uruguay came a postcard: the
mountains are lovely, we all send love.
There must be something about her
hair,
the light from the window, something
basic. Her hands move as she speaks,
as if the articulation of the small
bones
could tell him what to do, where to
go,
as if the path of her hands in the morning
light
could sketch a map, a passage into
the darkness:
walled cities filled with silk and spice,
a country
where the trade routes are clearly
defined
and there are no blank spaces, nothing
unknown
crouched beneath the metallic surface
of the water.
This is how it ends: She stands and
leaves him sitting
staring at the faint impression she
has left on the couch,
watching it draw into itself and disappear,
fabric
springing back with a rustle, a sigh.
Achilles, Later,
Home from the Wars
Thick around the middle, badly
in need of a haircut, he spends most
days
in the kitchen, eating, staring out
the window
at the chickens in the backyard. He
keeps
a garden, some goats, a few acres
of grapes.
He's sometimes called to make an appearance
at public functions, symposiums, affairs
of state. He takes down the breastplate
from the mantle, sucks in his stomach
as his wife cinches the straps, her
hands
like doves, gentle, touching him here,
and there.
She straightens the feathers on his
helmet,
looks him over, her head cocked. After
the parades he sits in his chair, rubs
his swollen feet, wonders what she
will cook
for dinner. Occasionally, in the bathroom,
walking back from town, he's struck
with a stray pain in his knee; he looks
quickly to the sky, looks for rain,
a sign of some sorts, something written
in the clouds. He sleeps little, lies
awake
at night and listens to her snore, feels
the cool wind blow in from the coast,
arranging and disarranging his hair,
whispering
something to the sunburned skin of
his ears.
Some nights, too drunk to stand, he
takes his chair
out to the backyard, sits with the
chickens, head
thrown back to stare at the stars, picking
at a piece of meat caught between
his teeth.
