Late Empire. Lisa Olstein

      ARRANGEMENTS

      It’s November, so we’re talking politics

      and I’ve been personally selected to hear

      from Mark Ruffalo what it was he dreamt

      last night. This is when I begin to imagine

      his beautiful blurred head sinking into

      and somehow floating above a pillow

      very white and his beautiful blurred children,

      but no, no thank you, no wife, because

      if not here then where, exactly, am I

      supposed to insert myself? And if we’re talking

      movie stars, Mark seems to be doing it right.

      At least, anyone who still manages to be sexy

      even when you know you’re being played

      must be the good kind of wrong. Imagine,

      Mark writes. Imagine, is what he dreamt

      last night, imagine a world, and then

      I lost track of what he was so artfully made

      to be saying, but dinner was involved

      and a chance at something, a chance

      for something, a chance. Mark, what if

      by chance I met my true love when I was

      too young to know to keep him? Mark,

      what if by character or by foolishness

      or by fate sometimes good people are

      inexorably drawn to their own demise?

      Marked by desire is usually code for something

      catastrophic and even when we try to focus

      with quiet minds and pursue the animal

      feelings within us with only the most

      measured sighs, so often something

      catastrophic is what turns up in the late light

      of early night, like you did on Annette Bening’s

      porch in that movie and even as a loser,

      Mark, you were sexy, but less so, I’d be lying

      if I didn’t admit. Line, please. Just give me

      a hint. Actually, let’s take ten, I need

      some time alone in my trailer. Sometimes,

      we arrange in our minds a thousand goodbyes.

      By arrangement, a funeral publicly can be

      held to honor a body not present or, privately,

      for somebody technically not dead yet.

      Final arrangements may be made in advance

      and locked in a drawer in a sealed envelope

      with to be opened in the event of my death

      scrawled elegantly across the seam.

      Imagine, the next e-mail in my queue details

      arrangements being made to honor a man

      who made arrangements for the dispersal

      of his modest assets by embedding subtle clues

      only his family would detect in the arrangement

      of the phrases of what turned out to be,

      and probably he knew it, a farewell letter

      his cellmate memorized the night before

      his ransom came through. The cellmate’s, Mark.

      Like so many of the best parts of ourselves,

      like so many of the characters we like to watch

      you play, he was the good one left behind.