Four Poems
by Gary Leising
Goodbye
Silver plate engraved platitudes
that there should be no goodbyes
but wishes to see another again soon
instead feel false now because I hope
with all heart-hate I can feel
that your departure from my door
is permanent. May my door stay closed,
may the carpet in the hallway
crinkle up and trip you, not to hurt
your heavy head but so, in sight
of several onlookers, you look the fool.
May the style-box you subscribe to
send you fool’s clothes this month,
ill-fitting jester’s pied harlequin colors,
stripes and spots and petal-like,
bell-ended triangles dangling
from your head. I think of you,
with your filth-foul mouth
like an anglerfish, ugly nightmare beast
with a glowing lure before toothsome maw.
May you inhabit somewhere
far from me as that fish’s deep sea,
your jester-bell dangling before you
as you await whatever you might
next consume. May the jingling
in the current alert every little thing
to your presence. Hundreds of little
lumescent fish escaping, populating
your world with little glows like cinders
rising, swirling, and burning forever
as they escape your funerary pyre.
Overnight, the Mushrooms Appeared
jaundice colored,
tumors from Earth’s liver.
Spotted, like the scarred stump tail
of the snake when my swung hoe was too slow.
And they are helmets atop
harmless, unarmed brigades,
skinny monsters
mapping by inches the way to my house.
One day by the road, next
they close in on the shade trees
in my front yard.
They leave other selves
as shelves along the trunk,
growing up in steps,
circling the tree, as if making it
a watching post.
At my front step,
they were arrows shot from underground,
their shafts caught
between their world and mine.
I gathered them in a basket
lined with a gingham cloth.
Skillet. Melted butter.
Minced shallot. Parsley.
I eat them all
learning if they are poison.
The Arbiter of Beauty Said
There are not enough flowers on the table!
To the one small vase of roses & sprays
of baby’s breath, we added hyacinths.
Still there weren’t enough.
We added
spring’s first blooming tulips, a bursting
allium, its tiny petals in a ball the size of my head,
an explosion like the start of a grenade’s.
More—you need more still!
We took
every blossom off the apple tree, arrayed them
like a table cloth, formed its leaves into a rag rug.
The salad was wilting. Flower arranging
took as long as the filets cooked—
on the grill they sizzled through rare
& medium & on to the consistency
of meteorite.
By the time we dug up
the bougainvillea in the yard,
the steaks were cold & hard as the bark
of the petrified tree the Arbiter made us install.
Its heavy branches hung over the table.
On the table, tall glass vases & taller ones still
held stems—we only saw stems
for the blooms were so high above!—
blocked our vision. We saw no one else
around the table as we sipped
the melted sorbet, the only thing
edible.
One by one the Arbiter came to us,
said, Isn’t this lovely? Said, What else
do you think it needs? Said,
Quick, replace that dying African violet!
Laparoscope
Little fiber optic snake,
one-eyed mole tunneling
through patients like me,
long, sterile black tail dragged
back to an input jack,
I imagine you like that,
alive and bending to see,
like an eye stalk,
reporting back through nerve cells
and impulsive communication
to the surgeon about to clip
my appendix. But no,
you are cold, rigid, have something
resembling a trigger
(or maybe that’s the other
nightmare tool nosing
into my gut). You’re doctor-
dead, almost mouth-masked
yourself. Inhuman vision,
fear-stick, when I wake
and recover, return from knockout-
sleep to myself, there will be times
when I feel your cold tube
against the scar tissue,
half-inch shock,
so white, so white.
BIO: Gary Leising is the author of the book, The Alp at the End of My Street, from Brick Road Poetry Press (2014). He has also published three poetry chapbooks. He lives in Upstate New York, with his wife and two sons, where he teaches creative writing and poetry as professor of English.