THE GLUEMAN
By Joe Weil
I scrapped the glue off my
Father's workshoes
Every day for thirty years
And when he was dead
And sufficiently prayed over
By the Knights of Columbus
And the Holy Rosary Society
I went to work:
I built his effigy out of glue
And he stood in the yard
A wonder to all the neighbors
The ultimate glueman,
A monument to glue:
His ex-boss came by
And he was impressed!
He offered me a thou
"Good P.R.," he said,
"We'll stick him in the parking lot."
I told him to give me a week to think about it,
And he drove away,
I had more glue
So I went to work:
I sculpted a time clock,
And constructed the mortgage,
The failure to pay the mortgage,
The extra job,
Driving a taxi
The severed thumb,
Heād lost to a compactor,
My motherās old dresses
From the Salvation Army,
The asses he kissed
Including that boss's.
And I made Uncle Sam
With the wings of an eagle
And the tail of a serpent.
Uncle Sam was well-hung and desired
To dick some poor boy
Up the ass,
So I made the draft notice
And the frozen landscape of Korea
And the shitty U.N.-issued rifle
That didn't work
And my dad, eighteen
Frightened, freezing,
And the corpses of Chinamen
Piled high on the border,
And I made the lungs of my father
Ruined by breathing
That glue for thirty years.
And a week passed
And the boss came back,
"What's all this shit?" he asked,
"I offered to buy the statue, not this shit."
I told him there was no charge for the extra.
"I just don't want it," he said,
"Just give me the statue."
And I told him I couldn't break up the set.
If he wanted the statue, the rest came with it
So he called me a fool
And he drove away.
By Joe Weil
You know the same odd comforts I do,
having grown up in ratty apartments,
ramshackle two family frames:
How a piece of torn linoleum
can feel so good
against an itching heel.
Just swing your naked foot
till it makes a breeze,
grazing the tear in question
(It's always under the kitchen table).
And there is my favorite
speckled sauce pan in which I make
cream of tomato soup, and the tea kettle
that produces a noise
like the wings of a mourning dove.
And, speaking of birds,
you, too, love the jay,
trust how he pierces winter
with his cry,
trust how his splendidly harsh voice
always arrives before he does.
But I'm stalling.
This poem will not out,
though I am both midwife
and belly to it,
though I insist on
boiling more hot water.
How can I write a love poem?
It would have to give off
heat and spice the way your body does.
It would have to raise the dead.
You make me laugh so hard
milk pours from my nose!
You know the suffering
that can't be tamed,
the river we live next to.
Your nipples are more beautiful to me
than the Sunday arts and leisure section!
I have fallen in love with you
at all hours of the day.
For instance, at the stroke of three
when you stretch behind your desk,and forsake the Russian novel,
your back arching, your yawn displaying
a single gold filling;
or how you stood last year at five oāclock
in a mint green trench coat
waiting at the train station,
and I was Robert Walker
stepping out from the train
rain pelting my leather jacket,
as you ran, bleeding Mint green to the puddles,
to give me one of those
cold and clammy rain kisses
that taste a little bit like clay.
I put my arm around you
and thought: Recompense!
Recompense! And Charles Laughton swung
from the bell of my heart crying: "Sanctuary!"
(for mercy is not the least of your attractions).
yes--Hollywood certainly
enters into this
Look how the long table of Heaven's brightest stars
applauds us:
James Cagney, Irene Dunne,
Saint Augustine, Ethel Barrymore,
They all approve!
Even Spencer Tracy winks
And the warm fuzzy audience of ghosts
proceeds out into the lobby
under cherubs and Greek nymphs
the men all wearing hats, lighting their cigarettes
in the manner of Charles Boyer.
how can I deny all of history
conspires to make me love you
Everything aids and abets my love
even that river to which I too often return
to see my face reflected in the water,
above the gold carp nibbling the muck,
a taste of clay on my tongue.
Volume 8 Index