Suffering: A Game

Let's imagine an ordinary man

untouched by atrocities, indifferent

to the world, which he considers to exist

someplace beyond the roof of his neighbor's house,

the last on the cul-de-sac, beyond

the soapy scent of his wife as she sinks

into bed beside him and companionably

turns away, snoring lightly, her hair loose

over his left arm.  Let's lift

him from her and shove him into line

behind those others, the survivors

of the camps who live long enough

to tell their story before dying of it,

or the ones whose names aren't recorded

anywhere, not even scratched into the bare

dirt with a bald stick, let's set him down

next to the ones he's been separated from

by accident, by history, by things

we can't control.  Let's say he's different

from them you can see he's definitely fatter,

slower and probably stupider and his face,

with no grief to give it character,

is oddly shapeless, though now

you notice he's nervously looking around

for his wife and calling her name,

while all around him the others

press closer, reaching out their hands to him.

This is where the game always ends, because now

he's almost like them;  I can't help feeling sorry

for the poor bastard, and so I let him go.

I let him run across his own yard,

throw the bolt and hurl himself beneath

the covers with his sleeping wife.

She's dreaming something awful she won't

remember, except for the lingering sense

of dread she'll feel on waking.  Let's leave them

alone, they are the spared;  draw the darkening sky

over them, tuck each flickering star

into its enviable, incriminating silence.


By Kim Addonizio

What the Dead Fear

On winter nights, the dead

see their photographs slipped

from the windows of wallets,

their letters stuffed in a box

with the clothes for Goodwill.

No one remembers their jokes,

their nervous habits, their dread

of enclosed places.

In these nightmares, the dead feel

the soft nub of the eraser

lightening their bones.  They wake up

in a panic, go for a glass of milk

and see the moon, the fresh snow,

the stripped trees.

Maybe they fix a turkey sandwich,

or watch the patterns on the TV.

It's all a dream anyway.

In a few months

they'll turn the clocks ahead,

and when they sleep they'll know the living

are grieving for them, unbearably lonely

and indifferent to beauty.  On these nights

the dead feel better.  They rise

in the morning, refreshed, and when the cut

flowers are laid before their names

they smile like shy brides.  Thank you,

thank you, they say.  You shouldn't have,

they say, but very softly, so it sounds

like the wind, like nothing human.


By Kim Addonizio

Fuck

There are people who will tell you
that using the word fuck in a poem
indicates a serious lapse
of taste, or imagination,


or both. It's vulgar,
indecorous, an obscenity
that crashes down like an anvil
falling through a skylight


to land on a restaurant table,
on the white linen, the cut-glass vase of lilacs.
But if you were sitting
over coffee when the metal


hit your saucer like a missile,
wouldn't that be the first thing
you'd say? Wouldn't you leap back
shouting, or at least thinking it,


over and over, bell-note riotously clanging
in the church of your brain
while the solicitous waiter
led you away, wouldn't you prop


your shaking elbows on the bar
and order your first drink in months,
telling yourself you were lucky
to be alive? And if you wouldn't


say anything but Mercy or Oh my
or Land sakes, well then
I don't want to know you anyway
and I don't give a fuck what you think


of my poem. The world is divided
into those whose opinions matter
and those who will never have
a clue, and if you knew


which one you were I could talk
to you, and tell you that sometimes
there's only one word that means
what you need it to mean, the way


there's only one person
when you first fall in love,
or one infant's cry that calls forth
the burning milk, one name


that you pray to when prayer
is what's left to you. I'm saying
in the beginning was the word
and it was good, it meant one human


entering another and it's still
what I love, the word made
flesh. Fuck me, I say to the one
whose lovely body I want close,


and as we fuck I know it's holy,
a psalm, a hymn, a hammer
ringing down on an anvil,
forging a whole new world.


by Kim Addonizio

What Do Women Want?

I want a red dress.

I want it flimsy and cheap,

I want it too tight, I want to wear it   

until someone tears it off me.

I want it sleeveless and backless,

this dress, so no one has to guess

what’s underneath. I want to walk down

the street past Thrifty’s and the hardware store   

with all those keys glittering in the window,   

past Mr. and Mrs. Wong selling day-old   

donuts in their café, past the Guerra brothers   

slinging pigs from the truck and onto the dolly,   

hoisting the slick snouts over their shoulders.   

I want to walk like I’m the only

woman on earth and I can have my pick.   

I want that red dress bad.

I want it to confirm

your worst fears about me,

to show you how little I care about you   

or anything except what

I want. When I find it, I’ll pull that garment   

from its hanger like I’m choosing a body   

to carry me into this world, through   

the birth-cries and the love-cries too,   

and I’ll wear it like bones, like skin,   

it’ll be the goddamned

dress they bury me in.


by Kim Addonizio