ENCOUNTERS WITH AN EX
Does a previous intimacy become nothing? Does a previous intimacy kindle a strange longing or a new awareness of any sort? Think back to an accidental encounter with an ex and turn it into a poem. ------------------------- An umcomfortable encounter with my ex-husband in 1990, led to this poem 20 years later.
Naked Pictures
"Hey"
"Hey"
"How's it going?"
"Been worse."
It's 1990 --
after our final split
but before the bullshit with the lawyers --
He was out of the psych ward
living on social assistance
and art.
We chat uncomfortably.
"Remember those pictures of me
-- the nude ones --
You borrowed them a few years back"
Back when I didn't want to be controlling
Back when I experimented with love and trust
"You said it was for an art thing."
Goddam artists and their art things.
"Do you remember what you did with them?"
The messy untanglings of parted lovers.
The missing pictures have bothered me since we split
bothered me the moment I let him see them...
a psycho artist with naked pictures of me?
Not good.
"I know where they are."
"Cool -- can I have them back?"
He is hedging, looking past me, planning a getaway.
"I can't get them for a while."
"Why not? Where are they?"
"In a safety deposit box."
"Great, let's go get them."
"Well.... it's expired. I haven't renewed it.
They won't let me have my stuff back until I pay them."
"It can't be that much -- $25 a year?"
Pause...
"I owe them for three years."
He'd never been able to hang on to a penny.
Ran up thousands in debt
I was struggling, but I'd better come up with the $75...
"Look, I'll pay. Let's go now."
It has to be now -- who knows when I'll see him again, if ever.
We walk six blocks to his bank.
Pause...
"There's something else -- "
"What?"
"I lost the key."
"You lost the safety deposit key!!"
"There might be another charge."
The bank is $100 richer when I finally get my pictures back.
My pictures -
1974
a province far away:
a lush scene
fireplace pillows
sheepskin rugs
large tropical plants
The pictures tell a photo-drama in 24 prints
directed by an ex-boyfriend
who set up his new Canon SLR on a tripod.
Pic One Nineteen-year-old girl in tight jeans meets older man with beard
Pic Two Girl removes shirt
Pic Three Man gasps and kneels, undoes girl's jeans with teeth
Pic Four Man naked except for red silk robe. Girl peeks under robe
Pic Five Man stands behind naked girl, arms wrapped around her
and on for 19 pictures more...
It is 2004
The photographer died suddenly last year, alone in his apartment
The artist hasn't been seen for 15 years
And I'm in sunny Key West
with my current husband
Who has never never never seen these pictures.
I've been tinkering with this one for a little bit. Sometimes it feels like encountering a person from the past causes the past to live again, if only when certain elements are present. I don't have a title for this yet, but the working title is Girls. Girls, I remember you as women. That is,
I remember you, as a man. I remember
the Important Ones, ones that taught me
Lessons. Some girls I grasp ghostly gasps
of, the outer ripples of a taste of, perhaps
the way I didn't like her when she kissed.
Some girls I remember immediately, reasons
why we never see each other anymore.
Some girls I wonder what the fuck happened
to and what I did to undo it, even if only
a bra. Sometimes I find a hair in some long
unworn shirt or held static in a notebook,
tracing fingertips along its length as if doing so
will place it back into your scalp, my fingers
on the nape of your neck. Some girls I remember
for perfect moments, or the inference of one,
as a draft felt in the wake of someone passing.
I remember I said “I love you,” countless times,
never bothering to count the times I meant it.
I learned nothing, except two became one,
became two, becomes one again, that long ago
in a tongue now forgotten except in the pulp
memories of dust from a thousand codices, two
as one-by-one, flames on separate wicks, each
illuminated, never intersecting, never crossed.
This one gives more with each reading.
I might have a suggestion, if you're interested. I checked out your drafts blog as well.
How does this work for you - the drafts - do you tinker with them for a while and then send them out somewhere? Are you writing with a writing group or alone in a smokey pub?
Does your future book have a movement from X to Y?
Thanks for checking it out as well as my blog. I am very open to suggestions or critique, so, please. Drafting tends to be very erratic as far as process goes. I chew things over a lot and don't know that anything is finished. As for writing, I generally write alone in my room and very occasionally in public. I do ask certain friends to take a look at my stuff and I look at theirs too. I don't have any real direction as far as collecting poems goes, though I do have one unfinished chapbook based around paranoia.
I love the ending - of course we bring a lot of our own experience to a poem. I kept seeing this candle. but of course you are talking about candles each illuminated, never crossed. Why would I imagine a braided candle on one wick? Maybe that's what I wish it would be. First a question: when you use the word "tongue" in the almost last stanza - had you used that word in an earlier stanza in an earlier draft? Just wondering. More on this in a bit. also, line six... "the way" ... "the way"...
Interesting, "havdalah" means "separation." That opens up some more room to play, thanks lil!