Fin de Siècle

My wife could not care less, but I insisted

that no daughter of mine was to be wedded

without there being served at the reception

our precious shark fin soup of celebration.

I said, “Remember, dear, when you and I-”

...she rolled her eyes.

My daughter did the same, adding

“Dad, it doesn’t taste like anything.

Plus they hack the fins off while they’re

still alive. Poor beasts.”

(Poor beasts? With all those teeth?)

But I left the office early anyway

and hit the streets of Chinatown, praying

I’d find some not too pricey specimen,

a gray wedge of dried-up cartilage chopped

from a mako or porbeagle shark.

Once they were common sights in any shop

in the district, dangling in the windows

wrapped in plastic. Now there was not

a single fin to be had. The predators had been

declared endangered, their purchase

made illegal. I was incensed.

How could they prohibit our traditions?

Our memories condemned, our past deemed sinful.

Would they deny Marcel his madeleine?

Reproach the kosher Jew for noshing brisket?

I wept with rage. My tongue still felt

the texture, could taste the broth

being spooned into my mouth by my young bride.

I suppose I shall resort to the black market.

I can’t allow my child to be denied.

She will be wed. And I will have my shark.

Snake Eyes

Instructions tumble from your unclenched fist.

Each word can be interpreted six ways

Though just one meaning will reveal its face.

Rattle the cup. I hiss your name in Braille.

I scrimshaw my instructions on your tooth,

Etched revelations spelling win or lose. 
My ribs are rungs, a ladder into hell.
Each ivory cube, a socket-riddled skull
Scorched by venom dripped like liquid cinders.
The stench of worm-stitched windfall taints your breath.  

The choice to leave or stay is not your own.
Now go ahead, sit back, blow on those bones.

Helter Skelter

The air rang like finest crystal,

and every bead of foam tossed

from the curling fist of every wave

became a prism, catching and reflecting 
every hue that danced and twirled across the earth.

Her hand and mine were tightly clasped, our fingers

engineered to interlace.

Our heels pressed perfect bowls into the sand

that filled with water where crustaceans paddled

playfully about. The ocean breeze and sun 
had signed a truce.

If you know me, you’re expecting her to ask

“What is that stench?” 
as we approach a lump of squelchy, blackened flesh,

long dead, its bulk collapsed upon itself.

Then you might think, “Oh, here’s his usual

repugnant metaphor. A secret

in this happy couple’s past, forecasting

their inevitable split.”

Or maybe you think, “This must be the

prelude to some awful act of carnage.

The calm before the storm, the lulling 
into complacency. This couple must end up

tortured, mutilated, violated, brutalized.”

The light fixtures of our motel room hang crooked 
beneath the weight of our swaying entrails.

A filthy couplet drips across the walls.

Are you surprised, then, to find that nothing happens,

that the beach is clean and empty,

that there’s not a single cloud in our blue sky?

Are you disappointed when I tell you we grow old together,

that the ocean of our love does not go dry?

Yellowcake

Forget the gun: it’s Chekhov’s custard pie

that the peephole lens shrinks down around 
and serves on a platter to your hungry eye.

You know in time that pie will cover some sap’s face

like an eyeless mask at a palace masquerade. 

That said, may I present to you: the cake!

This tasty, many tiered monstrosity,

a saccharine ziggurat, chateau sucrée,,

a baked-goods tower of Babel garnished

with a Babylonian garden’s worth of frosted petals,

with more rococo curlicues than a Louis XIV dog kennel.

...and, speaking of dogs, let me introduce the terriers:

enter Becquerel and Boom Boom, rescued from the pound 
by some foolish sucker. (That would be Yours Truly.)

Cute but unruly, they’ve been exiled to the yard until

their whining moves me to pity

and I tenderly spring them, unlatching the door

to the kitchen. Just then, in the next room,

the phone rings. You see where this is heading.

When I return, the cake is on the floor
and the dogs are busy gorging.

Sick with frosting, poisoned by confection,

they have to be put to sleep. It makes me weep,

and I cannot scrub the sticky from the floor.

Of course, there are no cakes like that anymore.

These days, who can afford a stick of butter?

How long has it been since you held an egg 
or saw a pint of milk?

How many years since that pie, flipping through

the unbreathable air, hit its inevitable mark?

Paulette Goddard (Chaplin at Golgotha)

A modern Salomé, or Magdalene,

getting by on the strength of her grin,

grips between her perfect teeth a blade

to sever banana stems with,

flinging fruit up to the grubby gamins

who beg at the edge of the pier.

He would lie for that smile, do time for that smile,

risk his life, eat his hat, sing gibberish in public 
if it ever comes to that. (And of course it does.)

All it takes is her cherubic face,

that devilish grin

to send him tumbling,

his own weight doing the rest, dragging him down,

though of course he always springs

back to his feet again.

Like her, we come to adore him, 
this twitchy, mischievous cipher, 
this upstanding imp. 
We cannot help ourselves. He is us

when he falls. When he leaps back up

he is who we pray to be.

(Why I Don't Write) Poems (Anymore)

They started off as
pinches of gunpowder
and a few crumbs of gravel
bundled together in a paper twist
and flung at the pavement
to snap, snap,
sending spasms of delight rippling
through the bodies of
the giggling children.
Now, all that remains
are burst paper scraps
plastered to the wet sidewalk
like gray, soggy petals
dropped from some
exploding blossom.

Sluice

Your teeth part, loosing a stream of invectives
to gush from between your lips.
The words pour through a woven mesh 
of burlap whose fibers are so coarse, the grid they form so loose
sound slips right through the weave 
like water flowing through a sieve.
The cloth is rough against my cheek, but still I can't perceive  
if it's your head or mine this sack enshrouds. 
I rest my neck within the groove in this eroded block 
as your curses rush along my auditory canal
to plug the drain and clog every channel, 
overflow cognition's aqueduct.
I hold my breath, wait for the current to slow,
wait for the blade to drop, your mouth to clamp shut.