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  which some are remarkably. They even understand

  what their children are saying with grunts and groans.

  They even make them laugh with tickling games

  or goofy faces or hiding a rubber squeeze toy beneath their shirts.

  They even laugh themselves,

  and, because they do, our daughter does.

  What she likes most is to laugh. You should see her laugh.

  And her hair—you should see her hair—radiant light browns

  over darker and darker underlayers that overflowed my hands this morning

  while I held her hair for her.

  Contentment

  Fragile, provisional, it comes unbidden

  as evening: the children on the block

  called in to dinner that for tonight

  is plentiful, as if it had cost nothing

  either in money or worry about money.

  Then evening deepens and the street

  turns silent. There may be disasters

  idling in driveways, and countless distresses

  sharpening, but all that matters

  most that must be done is done.

  Happy Anniversary

  The jolt that opened me to you

  and shook me to my toes

  needs no implanted seismograph

  to read how deep it goes

  because it’s still rattling me

  into this surprise

  that the real dream begins

  when I open my eyes

  to see you so improbably here

  and so entirely true

  with all our random ducks lined up

  for me to marry you

  quacking a glorious Gloria

  (transcribed into Duck)

  to sexy earthy unnerving love

  and astonishing good luck.

  Spring

  Fat black bumblebees fucking in our yard—

  orgiastic they knot up, five or six

  like a buzzing fist looping in midair

  until two lock and the lucky

  couple snaps off and lands intact

  hunching like puppies. They’ve even done it

  on my armrest: the male’s bent knees

  clutched her hips for his teensy shudder.

  Then he took off with no more ceremony

  than if she had been a flower.

  She seemed stunned, helpless

  for all of a nanosecond.

  You could almost see her shrug it off

  before she too flew away, undamaged.

  Is this more fun than the human version?

  Come out again in your pink swimsuit,

  my darling. The bees aren’t swarming,

  but I am.

  Miss Joy

  Husband dead, son grown and gone, her life

  simplified—“her life” being a subject

  almost independent of her and “simplified”

  the verb through which her life acted

  almost independently of her and what she wanted.

  Her husband died suddenly and young

  the week their son was born,

  then there she was, bereaved and stunned,

  trying to dig up money for a burial,

  finding herself instead in a hole,

  in deep grief, infant in arms,

  inexorable in his needs as any infant is,

  although her wishes for him were

  all the stronger for her being alone—

  her wishes being really only one wish:

  that he have the chance to flourish.

  Her vow to give him this she made

  at the burial, but she made it

  silently and only to herself.

  Not until her son was grown and gone

  did she see she had made it for herself

  to give herself a reason to go on.

  With this vow she made another—

  never to give up sculpting—

  which she thought then was for herself.

  But she couldn’t give her son the chance to flourish

  unless she gave herself the chance in spirit,

  and that meant sculpting whether or not

  there would ever be any money from it.

  And there hasn’t been, except from teaching children

  art classes in her bare-bones murphy-bed studio.

  That’s where I come in, way late and far

  at the periphery, picking up my daughter Emily

  age ten now who has been Miss Joy’s student

  since she was four. I rarely see Miss Joy.

  Her classes were my wife Doreen’s discovery.

  When Doreen told me the teacher was “Miss Joy,”

  I asked if Miss Joy had won a pageant

  like Miss Galaxy or Miss Pork Belly

  sponsored by a maker of antidepressants.

  “Joy is her name,” Doreen said, deadpan.

  “Even the parents call her Miss Joy.”

  Today I know why:

  she looks like a fresh birthday candle

  with her tuft of white hair and soft bright smock,

  and her eyes seem fired by what they see,

  a delight in seeing she’s taught Emily.

  Miss Joy and Doreen have become friends.

  Her story comes to me in pieces secondhand.

  Have I made her seem saccharine?

  I love her for loving Emily and Doreen.

  I don’t know what else she’s done.

  I don’t hear much about her son

  and even less of what she suffers.

  Twisted metal scraps she finds in dumpsters

  she hammers into battered solitary figures.

  Condolence

  The roses dying in your study

  were never going to live forever.

  The dancers study to embody

  beauty: one is our daughter.

  She exhausts herself. In thick leg warmers

  she sprawls extravagantly on the couch

  as if too sore to walk upstairs—

  until she does, mouthing ouchouchouch.

  She thrives inside our life together.

  Where is it heading? How long will it last?

  Hummingbirds keep returning to the feeder

  we watch at breakfast through the glass.

  How can we tell her what we see?

  What can we give her now, or each other?

  To what she loves she gives herself entirely.

  We were never going to live forever.

  Girls Middle School Orchestra

  They’re all dressed up in carmine

  floor-length velvet gowns, their upswirled hair

  festooned with matching ribbons:

  their fresh hopes and our fond hopes for them

  infuse this sort-of-music as if happiness could actually be

  each-plays-her-part-and-all-will-take-care-of-itself.

  Their hearts unscarred under quartz lights

  beam through the darkness in which we sit

  to show us why we endured at home

  the squeaking and squawking and botched notes

  that now in concert are almost beautiful,

  almost rendering this heartrending music

  composed for an archduke who loved it so much

  he spent his fortune for the musicians

  who could bring it brilliantly to life.

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to the editors of the magazines in which these poems first appeared:

  The American Poetry Review: “Condolence,” “Contentment,” “Dachau,” “The Dog,” “Fucked Up,” “Funeral,” “Garbage Truck,” “Girls Middle School Orchestra,” “Half Mile Down,” “Happy Anniversary,” “Here I Am,” “Melanoma Infusion Center Waiting Area,” “Miss Joy,” “Odd Moment,” “Open Window Truck Noise 3 a.m.,” “Petting Zoo,” “Splitsville,” “Spring,” “Sustenance,” “This Morning,” “Very Hot Day”

  The Kenyon Review: “Campus Vagrant,
” “Daredevil,” “Sabbatical”

  The New Yorker: “A Cartoon of Hurt,” “Earphones,” “Ill Wind,” “Insult,” “No Warning No Reason,” “Sixtieth-Birthday Dinner”

  Poetry: “Against Which,” “Hard Times,” “I Had a Tapeworm”

  Slate: “Mug,” “My Young Mother”

  The Threepenny Review: “Airplane Food,” “In the Mirror”