Читать книгу Late Empire - Lisa Olstein - Страница 6

BUILT FOR IT

Maybe age or some other slow cooling

of the limbs one day will will me

from the water, from this desire to

plunge my body in. I tried hot yoga once,

once, winks the fireman on the park bench

overlooking the sea. To be honest, he says,

it felt like wearing full gear in a house fire.

You should try Bikram, says the mother

in workout clothes taking a sticker for her kid.

Whose motives are ever pure? Let’s face it,

tennis is mostly about the outfits even if

it is what taught me how to go for the other

girl’s jugular, that I should, even with her

daddy watching. Want rings out in the house

of the self and in the self the self must live.

It’s Friday morning and I know what I’m doing

here, but what’s everyone else’s excuse?

There’s everything and nothing to want

from the sea, the sea who does not answer.

Complete refusal transforms itself

into a kind of total acceptance, at least

so it seems because one way or another

our voices travel away from us and this is

a relief. Code Red, the children scream

every time they spy a crab. Dozens of men

are killed, says the paper, and their wives

are kept for single soldiers of the day’s conquering.

Killed, we say, if a war zone. Kept, we say,

if a woman. Love–love we say when the score is

zero. Irrelevant, says the sea into which

everything we throw away ends up, words.