Marc Vincenz

Biohazard

Unequivocally yours, Molly—in her last note, she signs off.

It rings in-finite. Toxicity level 4:  What we fear but never conceive.

War you tolerate as an acquaintance turned, matter rings in your ears,

crumbled stuff. The virus claims the head, devours the soul,

mal de los rastrojos, breakbone fever, Ebola, hanta, Lassa, mutating variola.

Things are left standing. In the end we know all their God-fearing names

like very bad men from the Gestapo, the Stasi. Molly pins them on a fridge,

beneath magnetized pineapples and smiley faces, beneath Max’s crayoned skyline,

to-do lists, tax return form curling at the corners, takeout menu

from Wang’s Golden Wok. They secrete through taps, drizzle dams, slipstream—

like hurricanes we baptize them Alma and Boris, Katrina and Yolanda

to make them more innocuous for Max. Within a week,

the surgical masks on every street corner, blue and white, then

Gucci pink and Hermes polka-dot, splutters contained behind high fashion.

And the water we drink is Antarctic ice, eons old—once swilled by dinosaurs,

an inside joke. Carrier rats bear the brunt, followed by ticks, fleas, lice,

the effervescent tsetse, and we don’t swat and shoo—but never the monkeys,

our harmless swing-in-the-trees ancestors separated by a single strand of amino acid

who’ve learn to uphold themselves and eat bananas. I say it was the dogs,

the Labradors, Alsatians, those ratty Chihuahuas, cuddled, coddled and Tickle Tickle.

Still, none of it explains away the quakes, the freak storms and tsunamis,

none of it justifies the plummeting price of gold, the vanishing of the beggars

and the birds, the vacant beehives, none of it. In my mind Molly still nags

about that damn tax return. Isn’t it strange how you prioritize?

previously published in The Green Door

__

Weighing the Broken Heart

Blessed the wind. Cantankerous, asthmatic priest

in swollen robes & feathered headgear—

once oceanblue & redgold—now charcoaled

darkening to soot. Waterfed & corn-bred, sun-

worshipping, sun-cursed, a ruinous disseminating

soul, gilded & guilt-ridden, heavy-handed &

lightly-touched—exhales in exhausted prayer

through empty lanes & alleys, prods rooftops,

rattles broken panes, half-open doors, hinges

groaning upon buckling frames, fingers

familiar faces of dying trees, thumbs anemic

birds’ nests, rubs eggs to awaken life within,

kicks empty bottles & tins into blank squares,

crumpled things under porticos & steps, blows

ancient news into coppery osprey, kites, puffed up

eagles with giant wings, tears leatherbound

psalms from the palms of pews & aisles,

whispers names of long-forgotten gods, leftover

vowels as if in pidgin, as if in a burning

foreign tongue &, as he gathers himself

from his four corners, draws upon the strings,

he recalls what it was like to breathe

life into sun-filled stuff, how oxygen was

a litany & how every rain was an Amen,

he remembers cragged prayers, fragments

in leaves scattering within his own tree, roots

sinking to search for belief, limbs stretching out

over a flock—the tremulous keys of a Portuguese

accordion wheezing a simple song into his lungs,

the exhumation of a thousand jagged sins.

& now, on his last legs, he must remind himself

once & again, he is neither woman nor is he man,

he is nothing, nothing at all. Blessed the wind.

previously published in The Canary

___

On a Day Like This

Let me open

your mouth

with mine,

let me tell tale

of the drowned

whose hearts

stopped on a day

like this                a day

too early

for fruiting trees

You know    with each

of your touches

my flesh burns

with curious meaning.

So tell me

is it really breath

that glues

us together

and laughter

that makes the day

shorter than

it truly is?

            Or is there something

                        else you’re just not

telling me about?

(unpublished)

© Marc Vincenz



///