go?
SLIPPAGE
One day rummaging through
the “utility room,” I find
a few loose pages of a journal
I assume is my own: pages
and pages of self-doubt;
a relentlessly plaintive tone;
and a wanting, a raw wanting
not yet hidden in my
poems. But I don’t have
a beautiful, hard-leaning
script, nor was I alive
in 1966. The journal is
Jane’s, from when she was
twenty years old. After
making sure no one’s at home,
I sneak into my mother’s office
and Xerox all of it, then carefully place
the original back where it belongs.
(1966)
You know, for a world that demands direction, I certainly have none.
Will I be a teacher? Will I go to France?
Really I don’t know how smart I am—
and that above all else keeps me working and working hard.
I’m not sure I’ve a good mind.
I’m not sure I reason well.
I know I can be as confused as anybody else.
I don’t know how I’ll do in advanced courses—
I don’t know how I’ll do on the next econ hourly.
I don’t know if I could be a great debater.
And there are a million other things I don’t know about my intellectual capacities.
Let’s leave emotional ones alone tonite—they’re in worse shape.
I want so much—to be versatile, charming, warm, deep, intelligent, accomplishing something, loving,
fooling around, giving instead of getting, cheery not driven, sure not uncertain, possessing not anticipating,
answers not questions.
I’m seething lately
—but it too shall pass.
FIRST PHOTOS
The only photo of Jane
I saw while growing up
hung in my parents’
bedroom. She was wearing
a long raincoat and
standing on a stair,
against a tacky interior
of bronze chevrons.
Later I will find out
that Jane was wearing
a long raincoat the night
she was killed. What if
it were the same coat
as in the picture, the one
I looked at all those years?
I arrive at the New York Public Library
with my two dates, the bare brackets
of a life. I ask a librarian
where I might find information
about an old murder. Was it
a famous murder? she queries.
Not really, I say. It was in the family.
My answer embarrasses me.
She gives me little slips of paper
which I fill out and roll up
then shove into silver tubes
as long as pinkies. After
dropping them down a hatch
I wait for the invisible staff
to send up dark blue spools
of the Detroit News from below.
Rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat, the spools
rocket across the lighted screen.
Ike Fights Heart Setback. Blacks
End Long Strike at College. Old Foes
Truman and Nixon Hold
a Sentimental Visit. “We’ll Be
on the Moon by July!” Then
on March 22, 1969, Jane’s face
suddenly fills the screen.
Her youth an aura like a
new haircut—just blatant,
raw, crushing. A headband
keeps her brown hair back;
her lips are parted slightly.
How she wants. How she
penetrates, her eyes set back
in her brow like my mother’s,
like their father’s: dark,
obedient, devouring.
My face stares into hers,
our thoughts frozen together
on the cusp of a wave
just starting to go white-cold, curl
and fall back into the spitting green.
When I started looking at
