Gail Hosking Gilberg, "Personal Effects"
Austin Hummell, "Heroin"
Marlys West, "The Opposite of Bomb is Etiquette"

Gail Hosking Gilberg

PERSONAL EFFECTS

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HEROIN

“Un punto solo m’è maggior letargo
che venticinque secoli a la ’mpresa
che fé Nettuno ammirar l’ombra d’Argo”
                            —Paradiso 33

I

It’s not sleep exactly, nor mandragora,
no nap off the path to Oz,
neither is it a stall-tactic snack
for the homecoming hero,
too contentedly slow in return.

More than a dalliance in flowers,
its gentle smell greets you like age:
a full stomach, the roving itch,
a penchant for moon-dull light.

You think you want both the shelter of bark
and the heart to beat beneath—
the plural nerve of laurel, like Daphne
weeping onto her father’s shoulder

for refuge from a glaring sun.
For her only the deepest wood would do,
her fear drawn from a fat child’s quiver.
When love is a wound, we drug it.

II

Spoon. You number it second of the shapes
your mouth memorizes as a child.
Your only skin is silence then,
your only silence sleep. Now each one
in the silverware drawer rests on a crescent
blackened by flame, the silver charred
and darkness spreading like the dilated
pupil of a junkie sick with morning,
the insolent light flooding its nerves. Call it
a decanter of ails to travel you,
the bed of breakfast, mother’s coaxing arm.
In it you boil out the cut, the dirt,
till it’s pure junk and a curious yellow
gold. Empty you find a concave face in it,
brittle as silver, shallow and stainless as steel.

III

Plunge is some of it, the taste of blood
sublingual, the rush of warmth
that laps through your heart till a pulse
of pleasure deepens to a nod.
You want both the armor of junk
and your heart to beat beneath.

So quick is its spell, so shellacked
its sleep, that you forget to pull out
the syringe sometimes, and it bobs
at the bend in your elbow
like the prick on a fickle boy,
or the question he saves for a certain
girl, like: Why have you driven
through my heart? Make that
what.

IV

You always wake before the needle pricks
the vein, almost always before you suck
the tar through the balled cotton you mop
the bowl of a spoon with, careful not to dull
your works. Before the browned, soggy ball dries
and whitens as you pull the plunger up.

The bulk of the plot is mostly chase,
what with sanguine faith you call score.
In each dream there are friends to ditch,
family to rob, women to make wait and betray
as waking turns on you—when the dream, dope,
the flu in your body and every poem you write
to kill it, withdraws. When shaking and awake
you beg for the laurel’s cloak
and your heart to slow beneath.

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THE OPPOSITE OF BOMB IS ETIQUETTE

You will know the finger bowl by its flowers.
Courtesy equals kindness plus two parts power

The opposite of hunger strike is top sheet.
Cream buns never go out of style.
The more threads, the softer the textile.
Rest the fork tines up when you’ve had enough

to eat. Three fingers poked neatly into the juicer
equal three spots grafted from the soft swell
of the palm by the thumb.
The opposite of swirling blade is numb.
The opposite of picnic lunch

is mounted gun. A paper rolled up in a tube is
sometimes my old diploma.
In a certain year I finished my formal education.
The opposite of boredom is fornication.

The cosecant of college degree is a trip
across the sea.
We asked the State Department where to go
as certain situations made us nervous and the mass
of our backpacks squared meant deficient flow.

And the shopping? Oh my cabbage, oh my little
cup of broth.

In Egypt they pour tea until it slops your saucer.
In Mexico they close for la siesta.
In China it is acceptable to belch.
The French drink the finest red wine,
which the children sip any old time.

At a Jewish wedding the groom crushed a glass
wrapped in napkin to signify
the Jericho wall.
At night I dream of noodle pudding, folded
skirts of flour-water.

You must never proffer your defiled hand
in certain lands
at all. It is akin to spitting or shitting.
We missed you at the last division of pork.
Don’t tell us you’ve given up the new white meat.

What will you tuck in your wedding cake?
What will we cut when you find the right man?
What will you eat for luck?
The proper way to eat an egg
is in an upright cup with a crack of the fork on top.

What is for cooking and what is left raw?
Mealy bugs, certain grubs, my daily worm, my
appetizer. This is indeed the wine-dark dinner,
my life a long, white shutter. The sea tastes
bitter all summer.

Gravity must curtsy to every planet. What emits
from the bowels of bird or plane must plummet.
Laws decree that gravity let fall whatsoever
will fertilize or detonate,
the opposite of most polite is accelerate.

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