Poetry of Issue #6                        Page 16
Previous Next Table of Contents	Long After Duchamp Down the elegance of this stairway flows an unseen nude. Don’t mistake her for the one in the Duchamp painting, a stutter of unkempt rhomboids. This one is a creature of fictive music, someone flowing into and out of herself with abandon and glee. She knows that we can’t see her, and guesses that we would rather not. She assumes that we admire the purity of the curved rail without a human hand marring it, and prefer that the pie-shaped treads and arc of white wall remain innocent of ghostly presence. This invisible nude is the residue of an unresolved schism. It happened in our mutual youth: the ideal form, distraught with the actual person, went adrift. That actual person lives nearby. Like us she has stumbled backward into age, but retains her outline, still casts a shadow. We phone and ask her to come and identify this detached and brightly polished figure. But when she arrives she can’t see it, either. We all agree, though, that unlike Duchamp’s rickety cubist slur this nude self-enhances with opalescent transparency, critiquing flesh by its absence.   William Doreski __ __________________________ Shabby Old Truck Although the lobsterman’s shabby old truck won’t take anyone anywhere, the surviving yellow paint goes well with the red-brown rust, and the aggressive grill looks eager as a shark trailing a trawler. The lobsterman doesn’t worry about sharks. He worries about the price of lobster in Boston and New York and the dwindling catch; he worries that his children will renounce their genders and that property tax will dismember him. Encouraged by his despair, the rich move in, plowing through his property with pants on fire and bug-eyes bleeding golden tears. Although the wall of lobster traps can’t stop them, the rusty old truck roars to life, snapping its grill. The rich neither waver nor retreat. They stand firm, swinging their heavy jowls. The truck lurches forward. After the sneer of exhaust dissipates, only an empty checkbook remains, flapping in the driveway like a run-over squirrel.   William Doreski__	Vapors Shaped like People Vapors shaped like people smoke from the earth after heavy rain. They curlicue into the sunlight and pose as if for photos. Something musical in their stance, something painterly in the slick transparency they overlay on trembling suburban gardens. Nothing sculptural, nothing solid enough to touch or embrace, but a faint yellow keening accompanies a violin scratching in a neighbor’s house where I swear I once saw ghosts cruising in the shrubs at dusk. The vapors aren’t ghosts, though, only daydreams hatching in the prepubescent residue of the average working life. Anyone could name those shapes after the unrequited lust that fringes one’s daily errands. After work, a drink at the pub, a tour of the supermarket, a chat with a smiling pharmacist. The vapors recall the moments in school, church, playground, camp, when flesh conspires with flesh to arouse the sleeping gene pool to what we hope is destiny. I know better. The vapors curdle like the last autumn bonfire when the promise of snow suggests I retreat to Mexico and open my pores to a language made of flowers that never fade.     William Doreski__	Window Washer at Logan Braced by a copper sunrise, the man cleaning the windows of the airport terminal splays himself against the glass with a ballet grace he learned on the job. His poise reassures the coach-class paying customers the airlines themselves disdain. Behind him, a parked airliner sports a tail whose horizonal stabilizer mocks his squeegee by sharing its simple geometry. Although not as glamorous as piloting, window-washing preserves a view of the world we need for the sake of sanity. The elegance of his effort flatters the garish sunup and suggests how the human figure might unfold in natural flight.   William Doreski__	Oak Street Houses upholstered like coffins sell for far more than they’re worth. The sunlight creaking in their attics aches like ancestral memories. Text messages flirt in the ether, settle in fluffy little bedrooms where adults cheat on adults and children fantasize in tones not even the loudest music can muffle. Walking the streets with the simple rhythm I once applied to New York, Paris, London, I avoid the accusing glance of these needy low-slung houses with their picture windows winking. If I could afford the mortgage and taxes on one of these coffins I’d move in forever, hunkering under layers of plush, leaving only fingers and toes showing for the Welcome Wagon lady to greet with her basket of trash. The April day emblazons itself in layers as rich as a cake’s. Bulbs perk from half-thawed soil— snowdrops, crocus, spring beauty. I wish I could hide from these houses in the slough and slur of cities, but distance pouring from the sky embalms me step by step, the street ebbing underfoot, the small rooms framing still-lives so impeccable no one is sure who has died.   William Doreski__