Читать книгу Late Empire - Lisa Olstein - Страница 8

ARRANGEMENTS

It’s November, so we’re talking politics

and I’ve been personally selected to hear

from Mark Ruffalo what it was he dreamt

last night. This is when I begin to imagine

his beautiful blurred head sinking into

and somehow floating above a pillow

very white and his beautiful blurred children,

but no, no thank you, no wife, because

if not here then where, exactly, am I

supposed to insert myself? And if we’re talking

movie stars, Mark seems to be doing it right.

At least, anyone who still manages to be sexy

even when you know you’re being played

must be the good kind of wrong. Imagine,

Mark writes. Imagine, is what he dreamt

last night, imagine a world, and then

I lost track of what he was so artfully made

to be saying, but dinner was involved

and a chance at something, a chance

for something, a chance. Mark, what if

by chance I met my true love when I was

too young to know to keep him? Mark,

what if by character or by foolishness

or by fate sometimes good people are

inexorably drawn to their own demise?

Marked by desire is usually code for something

catastrophic and even when we try to focus

with quiet minds and pursue the animal

feelings within us with only the most

measured sighs, so often something

catastrophic is what turns up in the late light

of early night, like you did on Annette Bening’s

porch in that movie and even as a loser,

Mark, you were sexy, but less so, I’d be lying

if I didn’t admit. Line, please. Just give me

a hint. Actually, let’s take ten, I need

some time alone in my trailer. Sometimes,

we arrange in our minds a thousand goodbyes.

By arrangement, a funeral publicly can be

held to honor a body not present or, privately,

for somebody technically not dead yet.

Final arrangements may be made in advance

and locked in a drawer in a sealed envelope

with to be opened in the event of my death

scrawled elegantly across the seam.

Imagine, the next e-mail in my queue details

arrangements being made to honor a man

who made arrangements for the dispersal

of his modest assets by embedding subtle clues

only his family would detect in the arrangement

of the phrases of what turned out to be,

and probably he knew it, a farewell letter

his cellmate memorized the night before

his ransom came through. The cellmate’s, Mark.

Like so many of the best parts of ourselves,

like so many of the characters we like to watch

you play, he was the good one left behind.