The Poetry of Erin Belieu, Part 2

The Hideous Chair

This hideous,
upholstered in gift-wrap fabric, chromed
in places, design possibility

for the future canned ham.
Its genius
wonderful, circa I993.

I've assumed a great many things:
the perversity of choices, affairs
I did or did not have.

But let the record show
that I was happy.

O let the hideous chair

stand! For the Chinese apothecary
with his roots and fluids;
for Paoul at the bank;

for the young woman in Bailey's Drug,
expert on henna; and Warren Beatty,
tough, sleek stray. For Fluff and Flo,

drunk at noon, and the Am Vets lady
reading her Vogue, the cholos
on the corner where the 57 bus comes by,

for their gratifying, cool appraisal
and courtly manner when I pass.
Let the seat be comfortable

but let the chair be hideous
and stand against the correct,
hygienic, completely proper

subdued in taxidermied elegance.
Let me have in any future
some hideous thing to love,

here Boston, MA, 8 Farrington Ave.

For Catherine:
Juana, Infanta of Navarre

Ferdinand was systematic when
he drove his daughter mad.

With a Casanova's careful art,
he moved slowly,
stole only one child at a time
through tunnels specially dug
behind the walls of her royal
chamber, then paid the Duenna
well to remember nothing
but his appreciation.

Imagine how quietly
the servants must have worked,

loosening the dirt, the muffled
ring of pick-ends against
the castle stone. The Duenna,
one eye gauging the drugged girl's
sleep, each night handing over
another light parcel, another
small body vanished
through the mouth of a hole.

Once you were a daughter, too,
then a wife and now the mother
of a baby with a Spanish name.

Paloma, you call her, little dove;
she sleeps in a room beyond you.

Your husband, too, works late,
drinks too much at night, comes
home lit, wanting sex and dinner.
You feign sleep, shrunk
in the corner of the queen-sized bed.

You've confessed, you can't feel things
when they touch you;

take Prozac for depression, Ativan
for the buzz. Drunk, you call your father
who doesn't want to claim
a ha!fsand-niggergrandkid.
He says he never loved your mother.

No one remembers Juana; almost
everything's forgotten in time,

and if I tell her story,
it's only when guessing
what she loved, what she dreamed
about, the lost details of a life
that barely survives history.

God and Latin, I suppose, what she loved.
And dreams of mice pouring out
from a hole. The Duenna, in spite
of her black, widow's veil, leaning
to kiss her, saying Juana, don't listen...

FROM The Exploding Madonna

- She was incomprehensible, for, in her, soul and
spirit were one - the beauty of her body was the
essence of her soul. She was that unity sought for by
philosophers through many centuries. In this outdoor
waiting room of winds and stars she had been sitting
for a hundred years at peace in the contemplation of
herself It became known to her, at length, that she
was to be born again. Sighing, she began a long
conversation with a voice that was in the white wind,
a conversation which took many hours and of which
I can give only a fragment here...

BEAUTY: (Her lips scarcely stirring, her eyes turned,
as always, inward upon herself)

Whither shall I journey now?...

I. THE ADDRESS

Beauty, your copper-colored face floats up
Then down, mirrors from the base of the candle,
Mimics my face, my eyes, my hair and hands;
Fetal little pig-me buoyed in the crystal,
Amniotic waters reflecting
From the mantle. But I'm no Beauty, I've let
That go, allowed the shock to fracture through
A pulled plug more live than we've ever been.
I'm named rightly for the dog-faced Furies,
Avengers of Demeter's mythic mood;
My father never grasps the happy
Accident of his choice. Cliché, you say?

Another dirty father? Look around,
Beauty, Demeter's rage still floods the headlines
Every day, cause célèbre of People
Magazine; little girls grown fat and sad
or sadly glamorous remembering,
Forgetting, where their fathers' hands have lain.
Think of it, Beauty - a voice like a ball
Forever bouncing: shadow in the hall,
Shadow on the stairs, shadow that you'll take
To bed. So in a moment, Beauty, I will stand
Up, taking hold of the candlestick, and
Tapping gently, separating white from yolk,
Release you in my palm. This will be a trick,
- a most difficult illusion, to leave
The body, here, in my chair, nodding - to slip
Away quiet, quiet as a dimmed light, holding
You still, nervous mercury, dividing
And dividing in the quarters of my
Hot hand. Don't be afraid, I like your face,
No matter what some mirrors tell us, and,
If you concentrate, the voice grows dimmer,
Dissolving to the smallest parts of speech:
Tagmeme, phoneme, the skeleton bare and
Bleached, picked serene from corrupted sound,
Syllables filling with hot molecules,
Agitated word-balloons popping into
Language that came before all prefixes,
Before the final loss of pure quiet.
I'll take you anywhere you want to go,
I'll catch you up on everything you've missed,
Beauty. Be ready when I give the signal.
We'll go silent. No one will ever know.

ii. AN ANNUNCIATION

... the ascension of his wife's body above the target
area, Exploding Madonna of the weapons range,
was a celebration of the rectilinear intervals through
which he perceived the surrounding continuum of time
and space. Here she became one with the madonnas of
the hoardings and the ophthalmic films, the Venus of
the magazine cuttings whose postures celebrated his
own search through the suburbs of hell ...

I have snapshots in my wallet wrapped in
A plastic case, next to credit cards:
Visa, MasterCard, American Express;
Millions of dots matrixed into Mother, Father,
Brother, Daughter, their faces swaddled
In dollar bills. When you look at this one
Think Ingrid Bergman, circa Notorious,
Dewy drunk, with Devlin's handkerchief tied
About her waist, before the karate
Chop but without the rose filter. Add
A more pragmatic nose, a more generous
Profile, an extra inch of curving bosom
Like soft, grainless bread in my father's hands.
In this photo he's from the movies, too,
As everything eventually is.
Night of the Iguana cabana boy,
A touchingly sinister pompadour
Sculpted above his forehead. They're dancing.
They're pressed close to each other, one breath
Between them, thigh exploring thigh. They will
Make love and she will be a virgin;
The Testimony: look closely - delicate
Brush strokes drawn with blood in the pure lines
Of a Japanese character; dark ink
Indelibly defining a white sheet.

I'm not yet born somewhere. I sit shelved:
Narrating soul, crap-shooter of dual fates,
Untimely gag gift chosen from a file,
Love Child of the Supremes'Top Forty hit;
(there's war in Rhodesia, riots ending in Watts),
Bastard of the Birchwood Country Club
Fox trot, backseat tango in the parking lot.
At five, I was as spoiled as the new decade:
Daringly pre-dysfunctional daughter
Of the I970s, split-level,
Incest-and-Manhattans patio crowd.
It's Love American Style, so I
Took this photograph myself. You can see
My shadow, my thumb obscuring the window
Of the lens, my childish silhouette
A murder-scene outline against the wall.
But here, tonight, they're dancing, as lanterns
Drench the floor; his hands fleetingly at peace
In the folds of her yellow gown. They love
Each other. Tonight, they love each other.
Look at the picture. My mother. Father...

iii:THE HOUR OF LEAD

... First - Chill - then Stupor - then the letting go - - - -

The chrome shines until it stings, reflecting
The women's sad asses as they shuffle
In papery gowns from the locker room:
Fun house butts or the elongated and
Elegantly dead derrieres of a
Mannerist's piet'a, depending on
How kind the angle, how soft the focus.
The big blonde nurse is a sugar mountain
Inserting ivs all around the room.
Hair spun to confection, sticky in sea-foams,

Girded in an arsenal of pastels,
She reviews the proper method for mounting
The gurneys - Place both hands on the side guards,
Then lift and scooch, swinging the legs over
Onto the bed. She demonstrates scooching.
The blue paper gowns chatter uniformly,
Obediently. Each woman reviews
The advice she's been given by her friends.

1. Ignore the first sound you'll hear. It's just
    Machines separating blood from plasma.
2 .There are two doctors. Ask for LaBenz. The one
    Who looks like Trapper John on TV.
3 .Head for the escorts in the orange vests.
    Keep your head down and just keep walking. They can't
    Come across the sidewalk. Wear sunglasses,
    Maybe a hat, and don't look at the signs.
4. Make sure you bring cash. No checks accepted.
5. Pay the extra for the anesthesia.
One woman is thinking of an old Greek
Philosopher, how his students must have
Hated him, stolen his ideas, maybe
Even went to bed with him only for
The grade, and how this ancient philosopher
Must have known they mocked him, those beautiful
Young men, so smooth, and how it filled him with
Shame but, still, he couldn't stop, the ways he loved
Them, adored their soft hands and conversation,
Their white tunics brushing at the knees.
Another woman, a very young woman, is
Thinking of the boyfriend she's left sitting
Somewhere, out there, somewhere past the surgical,
Sitting in a chair, his hands together,
Fingers steepled over his crotch. She is
Thinking about the night they slept naked

Under the big screen TV, thinking of
The way the colors blurred over their skin;
Pale green, then red, yellow, all the colors,
Bleeding and separating, then coming
Together, one hue bruised onto their bodies.
Next to her a woman is fascinated
By the needle pushed into the vein
Snaking across the top of her wrist,
The small pucker of skin around its entry
Point, the cold sensation of the drip
Burning up her arm. She consoles herself
By making a hierarchy of pain: less than
Having your ears pierced, less than having your
Teeth cleaned, less than getting a tattoo...
Top Forty hits float down from speakers hidden
In the ceiling: Whitney Houston wants to know
If he really loves her; Mötley Crüe reveals
She goes down good. When the doctor comes through
The double doors at the far end of the room,
He speaks softly to the women, holds someone's
Hand as the gurneys wheel past, then disappear.

(Epigraph and inserted text fragments taken from F. Scott Fitzgerald, J. G. Ballard, Don DeLillo and Emily Dickinson)

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