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Dining in the University's Medieval Union We Elevate the Bus Boy


     He's not walking so much as lurching
past us in the aisle between our row
of tables and the wall, dragging the lifeless
freight of his foot and his shorter leg
across the floorboards with a rhythmic precision,
his  deficiency—so apparent in the squat,
barrel-chested column of his body—compelling
in the way all such aberrations are
in the  moment we first both observe
and ignore them, or

                 in the way we secretly crave
imperfection, though the gray cathedral
light and Gothic proportions of the hall
through which he works his receding progression
are perfect, though his deft balance
of the dozen stacks of cups on his tray
is perfect, though he has already become
the Quasimodian figure at the center
of the story to whom our regard
is finally given.

Your Last Mistress


Is older than I thought—
at least forty-five, or six. I expected
the slender waist and small breasts,
the bold, businesslike walk,
but not this face—so striking from a distance—
that coarsens in each black and white blow-up.
In this one, for instance, where I've snapped her coming
out of John's IGA, it's the grim register
of her disappointment, what even the bag boy—
carrying her cans of beans and carrots—knows
no makeup, no bucking up, can disguise.
And here, where she's been shot
in her kitchen (from an odd angle, I'll admit)
her face is a blank, moon-shaped smudge
above the dark bulk of her sweats;
down on her hands and knees like this
she could be anyone, or anything—a favored
family dog, a black pock on the lens—
though in fact she's the good housewife
about to scrub her muddied floor.
Notice the slack of boredom in every line of her body?
You can't see it, but just out of range
is a portrait, hung low on the wall.
Everyone's smiling: the husband, the son
who lives, the son who died . . . .
I won't show you more, except for this
taken this morning, a month to the day—
or had you forgotten—since you gave her up. It's quite
grainy, but you can still clearly see
her body sprawled on the bed; the other body,
too tall to be the husband's, looks a little like yours,
but harder . . . . What a comfort
we no longer need to worry. She's back again
in the groove, in the saddle, back again
back on her back.

                        for d k

Only Lovers As Chaste


In their mutual expression
  is something pure and oddly touching,
a certain youthful, flagrant intimacy
    neither chooses to disguise, the woman's

face a model of definition
  and the quick persuasion of a piquant
beauty, the man's cooler, less intense,
    the natural outdoor light of a busy city

street, the anonymous traffic
  and colorful World War II display
in a window in the background
    intensifying the impact of the pleasure

they take in one another's
  presence, in the alliance they proclaim
by their public joining of hands—
    and though they gaze directly into

the camera, it's each other
  they see. Only two lovers as chaste,
as illicitly paired as these, know
    the measure of their promises to others,

how the woman, even a half-
  century later, will pause over her book
or needle, still stunned by the power
    of a kiss, or how the man, standing in line

at the theater or the market,
  will be struck by the sheer impudence
of her lips in another woman's smile,
    the complexity of the lives they've lived

apart from one another—
  the rituals of arrivals and departures,
the authentic or imagined betrayals—
    put aside for an instant in the repeated thrall

of memory, how the woman may
  even now abruptly wave her hand as if
to dismiss some errant thought, though
    her face is suddenly fresh and wickedly lit.

In the Parish of Padre Pio


No Byzantine exotica here, no basilica, no bronze
baptistry doors sculpted in Ghiberti's winning hand,
no tour buses trolling dust in the piazza at noon

and nine, scathing village streets above this province
of grapes and certifiable saints. Six A.M. darkness:
an acolyte unlatches iron, wood, the plaster vaults

beyond the nave antic in candle and vigil light.
The processional begins: peasant women in black
crossing themselves down the stone aisle's length,

claiming on genuflectory knees the knobby pews
intimate with the altar. Clearly, they are holy,
these pilgrims fresh from their beds who watch

in silence while one of their own, a bead noose cinched
at her wrist, dislodges her mute and drooling son
from the railing, from open-mouthed adoration

beneath the Virgin's outstretched arms. Flames rock
on wicks, tracing Pio's passage from the sacristy wings,
the march of maroon trousers beneath his vestments

evidence of a life outside these walls. The women
murmur, approve his bandaged palms, the unseen
presence of white linen wrapping his ribs and feet.

He raises his hands, encompassing this and the higher
world, begging the ancient ritual that peaks in the moment
the women wait for: the host risen above his head,

this is my body in singsong, that first thrilling
blush of blood on layered linen . . . . And what final
authority can say, to those faithful who gather

in whispering groups after benediction, that it's merely
the engine of Pio's mind powering his Christly wounds,
that the idiot child, kneeling slack-jawed yet again

at the Virgin's feet, will not in the next instant
search his own body for stigmata, and rise up
in an ecstasy of unexpected, lucid speech?

ForPoetry