The Brooklyn Rail

JUL-AUG 2022

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JUL-AUG 2022 Issue
Poetry

four


THE FRUIT DOES NOT FALL FAR FROM THE TREE



I thought so and so still loved me.


Or wanted to have sex with me.


Or was it my husband.


Had been looking for anything “mild to wild.”


Had settled for.


Was actually quite vanilla when the clothes came off.


When he got off, that is.


Just wanted to get home to his wife and kiddos.


Glad I was done with making babies.


Been there done that.


Truth be told. I


I used to be careful.


Even selective.


Some said finicky, others fickle.


Of what I was willing to take into my body.


Over whoever I’d let fuck me.


And precisely which holes and in what order.


Now every day pretty much a slut fest.


A come hither what may.


Mask or no mask.


Vax or no vax.


Even my mother has gotten in line!


The ghost of my mother, that is.


Before the metastatic cancer devoured the lining of her stomach.


Her uterus.


Such appetite, we say!


Each week Dad tells me what he’s having for breakfast.


Right then and there.


A fried egg.


Avocado on toast.


Doesn’t matter if it’s ten a.m. or ten p.m.


Always seem to end up in my father’s head.


His bed.


The world imagined is the ultimate good.


Unending pillow talk.


Things we’ve never spoken about.


Morning wood, for example.


His, mine.


Such appetite!


So voracious and suddenly!


The grave cave now has us in its monstrous jaws!


The fruit does not fall far from the tree.


Ready or not.


Ready to eat.









HUNGER



We eat lower
on the food chain—


shrimp, scallops—


the future of this planet
on our minds


as we are that much


in love. He loves
his daughter, wants


food left in the ocean


long after we are
gone. Everyone


seems to be looking


for an exit strategy.
A poet once told me


feeling a tiger sink


its jaws into her
throat was the way


she wanted to go,


a woman hooked up
to a machine—


the metastatic


cancer twisting her
spinal bones beyond


recognition, her secret


lover too far away
to shut her eyes


when the last moments


came (just as he
had predicted), his


wife having called her


a five-cent whore
when answering


machines instead of


voice mails were
de rigueur


as the French are


fond of saying.
Her married lover


called me


six weeks later
when news of her


death had made


the rounds, he
who never got to


see her stripped


hospital bed.
She was too weak


for her last meal,


died without leaving
a notarized will,


intestate is what


the probate lawyers
said, smell of blood


in the air as everyone


circled. Is it a crime
to order a filet


of halibut or shark


in times like these
wherever the mythic


imagination


is to blame?
We want our love


modest, bite-sized


as little girls
slurp down oysters


at the roadside


bar, unaware
how their futures


depend on ours—









SELF-PORTRAIT AS STRIP-MALL MASSEUSE



Open wide. I’ve been
the sorry flavor


of the month. The fifteen-


minute back-room
gang bang. I can say


it sometimes hurt


to be made
to play the asshole


in someone else’s idea


of a good time.
Call me Jasmine.


Call me Pearl River


coagulating in your throat!
It took me forever


to get here, decked out


in my silk brocade!
Won’t you look at me


now? Am I not


the same woman
traded in for the next


model? Call me Whore


of the Earth! I’m begging
you to finger me


one last time.


Put a bullet in the back
of my skull—


I can take it.


Hurry. There's a long
line of rapt men


just outside the door


clamoring to cop
a feel, all dying


to get off—









THE WAR



At the base of the mountain
where I live, when a man starts


screaming, banging pots and pans,


I climb up on the roof and wait
for a bear to cross the road—


sometimes a mother and her cubs—


but this time it’s only geese
leaving poop on my neighbor’s lawn—


must be good for something


though what I couldn’t say.
What a ruckus privilege can be


on lands that were never ours


to begin with—speed-limit signs
blasted by a shotgun


leaving divots the size of golfballs


where the paint had been—
dented metal underneath an affront


to boredom. Hurry up


and graduate! No need not to
get out of town and leave


the landscape to its lonesome.


My neighbor’s mailbox
crowned with the silhouette


of a moose was taken out


by a snowplow—its door left
hanging on a hinge. He must be


popular by all the mail I see


spilling out of it, weeds
creeping up the rusted post.


I suppose it's politically correct


to mention how this land
was un-ceded by the Lenape


centuries ago, my ancestors


squatting on another continent
until the trains came through


piled high with first-growth wood


and beaver pelts. A few forts
remain on the pond with an island


where a black man had been


lynched. You can look it up
on microfiche in our town hall


but no one does, trusting


local rumors as we barbecue
brown-speckled trout


the Catskills are famous for


and you don't need a license
to eat it. Ever grow tired


of living? We've had it pretty


good, proud to be stewards
where taxes remain low,


the pandemic notwithstanding.


We can even speak a few words
in a native tongue learned


off the internet, sing


some songs to bless the raptors
who return each year


even when a pet or two


go missing. Sometimes birders
can be seen climbing over


barbed wire, their binoculars


a dead giveaway. Don't believe
everything you hear—kids


who scaled a cliff to reach


an eagle's nest they swore
was glittering in the sun


from miles off—its branches


interwoven with collars—
more dog and cat IDs


than medals hung on a general.


Contributor

Timothy Liu

Timothy Liu is enjoying his early retirement triggered by a pandemic-induced fiscal meltdown shit show at his former ivory tower where he had been imprisoned for twenty-four years. Now in the wake of a raging pardon, he?ll soon be swabbing the decks of SS SUNY New Paltz and SS Vassar College when those swart ships get ready to set sail. www.timothyliu.net

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The Brooklyn Rail

JUL-AUG 2022

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