print previewback EDWARD MAYES
Revanche, or Passing for Twenty-One
We had by that time loved the rain,
Wet miracle of cloud, on us at night
By the dark lake, as we prayed once
Again to Our Lady of Perpetual Hard-
Ons, our T-shirts crusty with beer,
And the cave of lake water into which
We would disappear: Goes the Body,
Goes the Body, Goes the Body. We had
All once drunk Tang, whether
We were astronaut-spangled
In starlight or in an ordinary hot
Kitchen, wracked by morning, sleep
Like stillbirth, still in us. That could
Be 1967, a “Sour Hour with Head
Over a Galvanized Pail Behind
The Garage.” We still have that painting,
Still hanging on a nail in the dust
That has its own dominion. When we
Stank of onions, when we hiked until
We ran out of Viceroys, when we
Weighed little more than south wind,
When the bed of the pickup was
Undone, nearly rusted through. We had
Wanted love of any sort, pontoon love,
Or love in a hollowed-out log, even love
Sawn in two, or love in the barber chair,
Pumped up, spun around, buzz-cut
Believers. We were in swarms
In the graveyards, the dead never
Reeling from our salutations, we were
Limping with laughter, nighthawks
In bracken, so precocial we never
Needed feathers. The short flight
We were on, the car ride and
The cakewalk, the action of the In
And the action of the Out. We grafted
This moment onto that moment,
Never having meant to change
The life-light that flicked a gold
Chrysanthemum shadow on
The water. We were drowned, all
The while singing the Suffocation
Blues, sodden with age, unseethed,
Struck with how straight was
The ruler, the entrance overarched
To a new life, the old one beaten
Down, thin as a spit of gold, still shiny
In the water at the bottom of the lake.
Recipes for disasters; captions for cartoons, the indifference, the reference, the fence; the dumb side of random, scale tipping, the weight of the wind; dirigible of desire, blimp of blame, the flame blame; self-importance and the artificial heart; sad streaks in the pound cake; if mum’s the word, what’s mum? Chrysanthemum: gold flower; fast break, Katyn, why did Stalin stop at 20,000; suffocation blues, tango and DNA, deaf and dumb; cadillacking, hoist point, public address, undressing in public; not the same as immortality, goes the body, the sour hour; piss elegant, recipes for dictators; root, enough, cèpes, idiots, prayer bound, eeny, meeny, sure; funny bone, the rude, nasty!, tetchy, tacky, an inferior horse; Emily Dickinson/George Clooney; the price of fame; dropped, revanche, tachygraphy, back to black 
Benders of Past Glory at the Blankety-Blank Bar
Gæð A Wyrd Swa Hio Scel
Revanche, or
Passing for Twenty-One