Ten Poems on Marriage Plus a Wish
I.
I’m thinking of Victoria’s
Secret’s models.
What do they write about?
What models
do supermodels
model their confidence on?
Are people still reading
the leaves in their tea?
Are you worried?
The next draft of this poem
will have zombies in it.
And songbirds.
Don’t say I never had goals.
II.
On most days
I love my wife best
when I’m setting traps
around the house.
The snare that snags her
and lifts her like light
into the industrial
ceiling fan.
She must have known
when she said “I do.”
God knows I did.
Surely your wife’s
too smart for your traps.
It’s true, she is.
But avoiding them would
be like avoiding herself.
We do have some ground rules:
For instance,
there has to be love.
Always love.
Don’t you feel guilty?
That’s something to consider,
but our marriage is better
than that.
I don’t torture myself for torturing
my wife with traps I set
around the house
My wife wouldn’t respect me
if I did….
III.
A totally trustworthy used-car salesman—
It’s a rare experience.
Yet there I was, experiencing one.
Or so I thought.
Until the phone rang and he had to go
speak with the finance manager.
Of course this is a trick.
The phone is still on.
The used-car salesman and finance manager
are sitting quietly in the next room
thinking I was born yesterday.
Listening in on me and wife
as we express our used-car reservations.
This gives me the opportunity
to accuse my wife—
Of being “drunk again before noon.”
Of being “inseminated by government agents.”
To have never been in this situation—
eavesdropped upon
by untrustworthy used-car salesmen
while you embarrass the one you love—
is to never have lived.
IV.
Sometimes I try paying for cigarettes with knowledge.
I’ll put 3 cartons of cigarettes on the counter
and the teenage checkout girl will say, 57 dollars
And then I’ll say, I’ll be paying for these with knowledge.
If she’s brave, she’ll look me in the eye
for as long as it takes—
A kind of pleasure standoff.
That’s usually when I confess that I don’t even smoke—
Never have.
But I intend to stand there anyway until one of us disappears.
V.
I can’t imagine anything more selfish
than my wife behaving rationally.
Hasn’t she read these incoherent directions?
Can’t she see how powerless I am
against the screws gone missing from their package?
How much I’m suffering having to build this end table?
Tonight it will be a wound in my dreams—
an infinite column of end tables
collapsing like cards.
In the morning she’ll ask me to hang blinds.
As if I’m not blind enough.
VI.
I was paying my bills because I had to
beginning with the ones I most despised—
The membership at the vaguely Christian health club
where my gym shorts kept getting stolen.
The student loan to the company that harassed me monthly
for having been a student who needed loans.
It’s as true now as it was then—
Nothing guarantees my un-satisfaction
like a satisfaction guarantee.
VII.
I should like us to dress like Pilgrims
whenever we have sex.
To evoke the proper fear.
How much braver then we would be
for ripping off each other’s clothes.
VIII.
I like to have a beer at noon.
I like to sit outside in the summertime
with friends drinking noontime beers,
ogling the pert waitresses.
Then I like to make a toast to our youth.
Then I go home and wait for night to fall,
imagining the end of the world.
I rush my confused wife
and frightened son to the basement.
Quiet, I say, or we won’t hear the flood.
There’s going to be a flood? my son says, starting to cry.
Only if we’re lucky, I say.
We have to believe.
If you can think of a better way to make a religion
I’m all ears….
IX.
I will say something to my wife like:
I too was once a crawfish. Never was I freer from sin!
And my wife, like a great sea, will ignore me.
This ignoring washes over me. It forms the heart of us.
It’s how we keep the love alive!
X.
Sometimes I bring the weed-whipper into the house.
I start weed whipping the furniture.
Why? My wife screams. Why?
We have to try, I offer.
You’d think a man like me would have more friends.
So little dignity between us.
It’s true, incidents like these
are quarrelsome, but each quarrel
affords an opportunity for something new.
Thus, I’m piling stones in the corners of our house.
It takes courage.
My wife knows better than most.
XI.
I’m sure you’ve been asked the question:
Who, dead or alive, would you like invite to dinner?
Of course I would invite Jesus.
Get to the bottom of that “loaves and fishes” thing.
What kind of bread was it? Organic? Stone ground? Artisanal?
Were those fishes pond raised or wild caught? Fried? Or baked in salt?
Basically what I’m saying is this:
I’d invite Jesus to dinner so I could bore him to death.
