| ABSENT, NOT GONE by Timothy Robbins Absent, Not GoneI don’t expect to miss you but I do tonight or rather this dark morning proofing these lines by TV light.Gone — let’s say absent, (the absence of an ah renders the word less hollow, less raw)less than 12 hours, not long enough for sour plums to sweeten or sweet plums to wrinkle. Myvisiting parents, grown used to retirement hours, are annoyed that I’m up and running appliances.One would think their presence would prevent my feeling so intensely the fleeting lapse ofyour presence. At this early undefined stage I’d rather you didn’t stray further than thelength of a dog’s chain. All day my mind will stray. Mom and Dad will feel like they’re housesitting. As Far From Egypt as One Can GetThis morning while you were still in your room I read a Diane Wakoski poem about a belly dancer. I could tell you I consumed the silks and the bells. I could claim I became the undulations around the un- undulating center which sucked men’s gazes like a peephole. Will you slip out, shoot out like a wild dog from a small cage, wander with an absorbed air almost as though you lacked any awareness of human speech? The manner of your emergence will help me judge as all performers must, the mood of their audience. Hopefully I’ll see that vividness of ripe fruit which means you’ll enjoy being reminded of how we laughed at the live audience member on the Jerry Springer Show who said of a Persian woman “That was all belly and no dance.” Or you’ll be in that needy state (a slow traveler, but it always comes) when you want to touch my new middle-aged belly, a child barely touching a dog, his attraction to the mutt having just collared his fear of it. An Evening InWhich shall be true now that the Tyrone Power DVDs have been delivered — that he liked men and women equally or that he preferred one at least a little to the other? Was he the rare merchandise these two-sided DVDs are? You can see what’s on my mind: when I noticed their thin cases, I thought of my husband’s thinness. What shall be true — that he is anorexic or that he’s careful here on the verge of forty? We begin with The Witness for the Prosecution and end with Café Metropole. When the café artist finishes Power’s head in Young’s lap, he sketches us in the same pose. After he goes, will we lie together like cold coffee in a cup too late in the day to be drunk? Or, when the room’s as black as Coat and Tails, will we lift each other from the couch and waltz till the orchestra fails? Minutes later, stacked on each other as though there were no place else to lie, which shall be true — are we anointing pleasure or freeing the Windsor knot that rides Power’s throat? Another Accompaniment for David’s Morning JoeThe chill through the door is deliberate. The chill on August fourth (while parts of the country burn like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego) reminds me of my scissor collection, some scissors quietly stolen, especially the loose, silver-colored, barely sharp pairs, too small for modern Americans, like beds in historical mansions. Just three weeks ago, on a hot day in Madison Indiana, in a mansion whose anachronistic air conditioner was on the fritz, I learned our forefathers and mothers where not as small as their beds imply. Sitting up in their sleep helped them breathe before there were medicines to encourage their lungs. I am a historical reenactment — sitting up, dozing on the sofa, facing balcony doors, welcoming the chill as the docent welcomed us — officially friendly as he pulled out the key. The chill intensifies my disillusionment, gives it the bracing quality of unsweetened iced tea. The chill is as wrong as a girl too young for her seductive outfit. It’s a better reliever of worry than copulation. It’s the soft organ accentuating funerals and radio soaps. Its convincing imposture of a kind therapist doesn’t fool me. I dreamed Madison was the afterlife, we were buyers, the docent was a real estate agent. Did the chill believe this? Ars VivendiIf you had the right detector you would see him glowing, sitting barelegged on a 5th grade floor with TeachYourself Latin held open by precocious toes. His dad’s busy rescuing dogs and pianos. His mom’sputting lipstick and scarfs on Gibson guitars. The indicative and the accusative get tangled up with hisyoung hard-ons. His first wet dream is tied up with a toga like a hobo’s bundle. He pays no attentionto his parents paying attention to him — his dad daring other dads at basketball games to guess what the prodigyis lost in — his mom passing declensions in awkward handwriting around the center table at the dinerwhere the working mothers lunch. Years later they’re on a road so long and straight it feels a crime that itdoesn’t lead to paradise, but presses on through the heart of sugarcane fields sending up smoke signalsof distress or exultation. Heading for a great uncle’s heart murmur and bypass. Next week at the longend of the state, their oldest and his new wife with her hunger for the carpenter’s trade his brother and he neverwanted. Then a week with Dad’s youngest brother, whose bones are already older than theirmother’s. In between: strawberries, darts, shuffling, lots of cleaning. He hears it all on the phone and writes it down(not in Latin, which he never learned) — his dispassionate record of an art they mastered. About the Author:  Timothy Robbins teaches ESL and does freelance translation in Wisconsin. He has a BA in French and an MA in Applied Linguistics from Indiana University. He has been a regular contributor to “Hanging Loose” since 1978. His poems have also appeared in Adelaide Literary Magazine, Three New Poets, The James White Review, Slant, Main Street Rag, Two Thirds North, The Pinyon Review, Wisconsin Review, and others. Denny’s Arbor Vitae is his first published book of poetry. (Adelaide Books, 2017) |