Poem of the Day

My mother is a crossword puzzle fiend, and I go through phases myself (curtailed now that I don’t get the paper). This poem (from American Life in Poetry) just about knocked me out of my chair.

Blank
By George Bilgere

When I came to my mother’s house
the day after she had died
it was already a museum of her
unfinished gestures. The mysteries
from the public library, due
in two weeks. The half-eaten square
of lasagna in the fridge.

The half-burned wreckage
of her last cigarette,
and one red swallow
of wine in a lipsticked
glass beside her chair.

Finally, a blue Bic
on a couple of downs
and acrosses left blank
in the Sunday crossword,
which actually had the audacity
to look a little smug
at having, for once, won.

Here’s another reader-suggested poem. I snagged the text from The Writer’s Almanac. I love all the suggestions and I really appreciate your participation!

The White Museum
By George Bilgere

My aunt was an organ donor
and so, the day she died,
her organs were harvested
for medical science.
I suppose there must be people
who list, under “Occupation,”
“Organ Harvester,” people for whom
it is always harvest season,
each death bringing its bounty.
They spend their days
loading wagonloads of kidneys,
whole cornucopias of corneas,
burlap sacks groaning with hearts and lungs
and the pale green sprouts of gall bladders,
and even, from time to time,
the weighty cauliflower of a brain.

And perhaps today,
as I sit in this café, watching the snow
and thinking about my aunt,
a young medical student somewhere
is moving through the white museum
of her brain, making his way slowly
from one great room to the next.
Here is the gallery of her girlhood,
with that great canvas depicting her father
holding her on his lap in the backyard
of their bungalow in St. Louis.
And here is a sketch of her
the summer after her mother died,
walking down a street in Berlin
when the broken city was itself
a museum. And here
is a small, vivid oil of the two of us
sitting in a café in London
arguing over the work of Constable
or Turner, or Francis Bacon
after a visit to the Tate.

I want you to know, as you sit there
with your microscope and your slides,
there’s no need to be reverent before these images.
That’s the last thing she would have wanted.
But do be respectful. Speak quietly.
No flash photography. Tell your friends
you saw something beautiful.

I read this one in (shockingly) 180 More. I couldn’t get past the first line just now, but I’m going to post it and then head right to bed.

What I Want
By George Bilgere

          for my marriage, 1996-2000

I want a good night’s sleep.
I want to get up without feeling
That to waken is to plunge through a trap door.

I want to ride my motorcycle
In late spring through the Elysian Fields
Of the Rocky Mountains

And lie once more with Cecelia
In the summer of 1985
On a blanket in the backyard of our house

In Denver and watch the clouds expand.
And it would be great to see my mother
Alive again, at the stove, frying a pan of noodles

Into the peculiar carbonized disc that has never been replicated.
I would like for my ex-wife to get leprosy,
Her beauty falling away in little chunks

To the disgust of everyone in the chic café
Where she exercises her gift
For doing absolutely nothing.

*   *    *

I want world peace.
I want to come home one evening
And find Julia, the new assistant professor

In the history department,
Has let herself into my apartment
For the express purpose of lecturing me

On the history of lingerie.
I don’t ask for much: a good merlot.
An afternoon thunderstorm cooling off

The city as I sit listening to Ella
Sing “Spring is Here,” so the air goes lyrical
And perhaps a stray bolt of lightening

Strikes my ex-wife as she steps from her car,
Setting her on fire, to the unqualified delight
Of the friends she has come to visit,

Who are thoroughly sick of her self-aggrandizing stories.
I want to spark a bowl of Maui Wowie
And spend the entire afternoon in my dorm room

*   *    *

With Corrine Spellman, trying to remember
What we were talking about, wondering
Whether, in fact, we had had sex yet.

I’d like to sit at the little outdoor restaurant
By the lake in Forest Park, talking with my aunt
In the humid summer twilight, as the hot

St. Louis day expires upon the water
And the moth-eaten Chinese lanterns
Glow like faded Kodachrome.

We would argue about the great tenor voices
Of the century, or causes for the dearth
Of poetry about the Gulf War,

Or why my father drank himself into an elegy
We never stop revising,
While couples on their paddleboats come in

From the darkening lake, as they’ve done
Since the beginning of time, and children
Call each other across the shadowy fields.

*   *    *

Yes, that would be nice.
I want a good woman
With a sweet bosom

And a wicked sense of humor.
I want to wake up in London on a spring morning
And read in the paper that my ex-wife

Has received a lethal injection, courtesy of the state
Of Ohio, as part of a citywide program aimed
At improving the civic pride of Cleveland,

But something went terribly wrong
And she’s been left in a persistent
Vegetative state

Which everyone agrees
Is nonetheless an improvement.
And it would be wonderful

To sit down with Maria
At our favorite restaurant in Madrid
With some good red wine

*   *    *

And listen to her Spanish
Caress the evening.
I want to read that a new manuscript

Of poetry by James Wright
Has been discovered in someone’s attic,
And someone I haven’t yet met,

In some future I have yet to despoil
Has bought it for my birthday,
And after the kids are asleep

We sit out in the backyard,
A little drunk, and read it
Aloud to each other,

Something we often do
In summer, before climbing upstairs to the bedroom
In the big old house we love so much.