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GAIL WRONSKY

KAMIKAZE FEMINIST FISH

That time is past/And all its aching joys are now no more,/And all its dizzy raptures.  
                                                                                     William Wordsworth


And then the goldfish, whose bowl had been placed mistakenly on the radiator, 
started leaping out of the water, landing on a heap of old Ms. magazines piled on 
an end table next to them.

(Oh wow, says the author, a woman in her twenties whose life has not yet really 
organized itself around a theme, those fish!  They’re just like me—bravely 
ideological, flashing their gaudy appendages awkwardly and proud beyond the no 
longer habitable waters of captivity . . . ) 

A woman discovering an unfinished poem in a desk drawer after thirty-some 
years thinks, I’m not just this person, full of regret and self-doubt, who writes right 
now—I am also one who has written—one for whom the whole world once winked 
and signed.  

(The fantasy of authenticity is sublime, isn’t it?  The farmhouse outside Siena 
retaining a couple of original stones in its entryway; the expensive Moroccan 
chair “once carried on the back of a camel.”) 
  
In the end the goldfish weren’t very much like her, the suicidal riot grrrl who still 
occasionally flashes some gaud.  And the act of dying for a cause, I have to 
admit, has lost almost all of its ability to hold my attention..

For then it will be as noiseless as a 
piece of mellowing pear, or it will 
lope out like a wind-wild unbridled 
horse, or pause with you on your 
balcony, taking in the sea smell, not 
hearing the words of the poet 
telling you love is a dark piano, love 
is a mysterious pulse, love is never 
anything a poet says it is.  It will be 
as enchanting as a wandering orphic 
singer in her little boat surrounded by 
attentive birds.  Indeed, were I not now 
furling my sails and hastening to turn my 
prow toward land, I might hold forth 
further on the topic.  And you might 
think me beautiful.

A FUNERAL IN MY BRAIN

                                   for Di Seuss


(the world a bell and we its ear) we hijacked worlds we governed ovens 
we summoned lovers and fireworks out of the eternal mud of Niles 
Michigan and then we were falling for so long through planks of work 
children and weather now whether I’m out in the devil’s own desert or 
under a sheltering eave somewhere even farther yonder it makes no 
difference something mournful crawls in my brain marches in place 
glides in circles or sometimes just loiters around in there like a big 
carrion bird not singing it makes no difference which or whether 
what’s being missed is your face or your grace our hallucinations or 
idleness it makes (don’t know why it would) no difference we loved the 
new seasons didn’t we sister we their eyes we their mothers wives 
daughters drummers all the while not knowing there would be no end
after all that omnipotence to this private slow dying part of living.

WHAT IS IT THAT SLOWS THE LINGERING NIGHTS

As I lift my face a thick dew settles on it.  On top of that wind scatters grains of 
silver sand that flicker like stars so that my face becomes a small reflection of the 
sky facing the real sky, suggesting a possibility of infinite correspondence and 
depth, of an undifferentiated cosmos in which I am not I but am everything.  
Like all intimations of immortality this takes only a minute.  After that I drink a 
luminous beer and shoo a blackbird from my japanese maple.  Black feathers 
fall through scarlet leaves inside a glow from window light.  And then there’s the 
insect nightmare, and a great ocean wave rearing up in the panic of three 
o’clock, some bothersome recriminations from a rustled curtain, a cup of subtle 
tea, decisions to be made about the newly arrived fleet of small lapis carvings, 
and so on.  Tomorrow still as unimaginable as the Galapagos, farther away than 
even worry can carry.