Fifteen prose poems from Necessities

American Poetry Review, The, Mar/Apr 2001 by Merrill, Christopher

Words borne across the land-by wind, in glacial drift, along the meandering course of the burning river: is that the reclining poet, the stick figure by the barn? Why is the horse eating the paint? And who is imprisoned in The Red Tower-the artist or the viewer? We had more than enough answers to go around, yet we failed every test administered by the military authorities. And when night raised its flags we saluted only the dark. History, that is-the way someone builds a cairn above the river and by morning the charred rocks are scattered across thousands of pages. The white horse circled the tower. Faster, faster! commanded the dog-sled driver from Nome, although the snow had melted long before his arrival. His huskies refused to pull the sled laden with dictionaries through the wildflower meadow, over wheel ruts and rusted traps and rocks left by the retreating glacier. But that was where we planned to learn the local language, if we could find a native speaker.

Dust off the words collected from the abandoned printing press, then stuff the extra type in all the parking meters on the barricaded street, where the homeless are on the march again. They avoid the bicycle messenger, the boy with a hatful of theories about the lovers hiding in the orchard. He spends his lunch hour at the zoo, taunting the bear that bangs its head against the bars of its cage-anything to escape the whistle of the train that never arrived! The street is emptying, and the police can't keep up with the thieves armed with keys to the meters. The mirrors in the judges' chambers are cracked, reinforcing the saint's argument that government is blind. Mercy is a word to hoard, the saint tells his charges, like leaves for the garden, now that the fertilizer factory is closing down. His last message to the lovers was not delivered: The Puritans are coming! That's why the apple pickers won't work this fall-and why the poor are heading for the zoo. The bear roars at the smiling boy.

No one checked the traps by the river. So the wolves and coyotes caught in the iron claws howled at the sun, gnawing on their,flesh to free themselves. Was that the mask you knew us by? We had our list of names to offer to the authorities, places to hide, a cache of food. The hermit climbing toward the ridge was in our sights, and the earplugs we had stolen from the army depot would protect us from the voices we could not identify, which were either in the walls or just outside the window: cries of animals, evacuation orders, homilies on the Last Judgment. Even the greediest trappers had found lovers in the city; nothing could convince them to canoe the burning river, not even the prospect of soldiers barricading the streets. At nightfall, when the hermit took in a three-legged wolf, we realized you had seen through our disguise. We had to act quickly: our list was growing longer, our supplies were dwindling, and no one knew how to fire a gun. There were voices everywhere.

The city was sinking, and the burning river rose higher than anyone imagined possible. If only we could understand the chanting in the cathedral! Or find enough ink to write constitutions for the animals in the zoo and penal codes for the plants in the botanical garden! Or remember where we hid the life jackets, the ashes of the oars we burned in the life boats, the moorings you knew us by! We had not discovered a new route to Juarez, the Lost City of Gold! Smoke straddled the border, and it had become impossible to breathe. Yet the streets were lined with trumpeters and white swans. Are we there yet? asked the men clutching demolition orders. No one was keeping watch over the bridge, and when the chanting turned into a battle cry fire flowed down the side streets, torching cars and the proclamations the city planners had nailed to the doors of the animal trainers. Ashes, feathers, and music filled the air. If only we could learn what happened to the gold buried at the border!

Masks, monuments, mildew. What nourishes exile once the leaves begin to fall? Our windows were broken so many times they no longer dose, and the weight training regimen we followed during our apprenticeship left us muscle-bound-hypersensitive, that is, to sunlight. Open the trunk before the moths escape across the border, then light a candle for the partisans hiding in the woods. The myth we live by now bears no relation to the books we burned last month. The fine ash drifting down from the sky? We will wear it to the costume ball, the invitations to which were never mailed. No wonder the papers say government is blind! The pack of seeing eye dogs circling the virgin's shrine (O Love!) will never find the partisans, armed only with rocks. And if we strip in front of our windows? Shield your eyes: the traffic patterns near the guildhall may change, but the glare from the shrine will make it impossible to read the books on the pyre. Nothing will stop the moths, the leaves, the exodus.

Waylaid by the stunning array of weapons and women at the International Congress of Assassins, we careened from one exhibit to the next, waving handkerchiefs at the soldiers guarding the doors. We had planned to spend our free time in the weight room, training under the supervision of the famous chef from Elim. What wonders he created with simple ingredients --palm fronds and water, prayer and war. And his discipline sustained us when we could no longer raise our hands to the sky. But when we received our nametags, the fictions we adopted and treated as if they were our own, our attention wandered to the women posing by the silencers and infrared scopes: they wore the skimpiest bikinis, their eyes were glazed. Soon sleep would claim the conferees as well as our caravan, washing over everyone like invisible ink. How would this look in the annual report? And who would revise the story of the sword opening the earth, the chronicle of our migrations? just before we drifted off, though, we heard our names called over the loudspeaker. The chef beckoned to us until the soldiers lifted their rifles. The women fell to their knees. It was too late for us to alter course.