LAST POEM
This is the last poem. I’m jogging alongside it. I’m writing as fast as I can, but each time I stop to read what I’ve written, I can’t read my goddamn handwriting. There will be no other poems. I will have no future running shoes. My laces are untied. But each time I stop to tie them, they assume the form of my handwriting. I can’t make anything out. I look up from the ground, away from the confident weevils and ants. Away from the twitching corpse of a June bug and from a shuddering, chewed-up piece of pink gum. The poem has gotten away. I jog, then walk. What I do is walk. I am in a delicatessen that has been closed for thirty years. A guy with muscles bursting through his shirt is winding his arm around and around. Like he’s going to throw a baseball. But the baseball is his fist. He looks at me like a pastrami sandwich looks at a vegetarian. The poem writes me a letter. It hates similes. The muscle guy looks at me. A baseball looks at me. A pastrami sandwich looks at me. I am a vegetarian. A fist, I don’t know where it came from, though I asked everyone, connects with my jaw. I sail through the air and out the window, like a cowboy hurled from a saloon into the dusty street. The poem writes me a letter. I sail. The window breaks. A cowboy lands in the dirt. I am that cowboy. I brush the dirt from my pants, until I notice my hands are manatees. Can manatees kill you? Are manatees friendly? These are the first questions asked by Ayesha and Epstein, two seven-year-olds in Miss Leibovici’s Grade 2 class when Miss Leibovici introduces the manatee. I write a postcard to the poem. But even when I’m still, I can’t decipher my handwriting, so I don’t know what I’ve told the poem or what I’ve asked of it. I drop the postcard in a mailbox. The mailbox is red. The mailbox is filled with bread. It is a breadbox. I am a biped. Each foot that punctuates each leg holds a shoe. These are my last shoes. I will have no future shoes. I look up from my untied laces. I say something aloud and I am unable to read it. I debate which direction to run in, but, dearest, what’s a direction?