erasure: cosmopolis (mutatis mutandis)

By Stan Rogal

For Don DeLillo

What struck him:
 
The Sikh at the wheel was missing a finger
            the stub impressive, serious, a body ruin
                           that carried history & pain. In the diner
stray words in French, Italian & Somali
seeped through the ambient noise.
 
             Dark women in ivory robes, apartment towers
                          called L’Ecole & Octavia, Irish nannies
                                       pushing strollers in parks, & Elise,
             Swiss, or something
             sitting at a window table.
 
Nearby, a Turk, bald & no-necked, whose head
            seemed removable for maintenance, wearing
                          an ear bud, the handset of his cell phone
belted under his jacket, not far from a
voice-activated Czech-made firearm.
 
           My mother would send people to find me, said Elise,
                          her guttural heritage hardly traceable, long buried
                                         within the thick Brooklyn fog. Mexican maids
           & Filipino gardeners combing the grounds.              
           She thought I was dissolvable in water.
 
He nodded to the owner of the place, a Greek from
           Albania, who waved back. Freud’s finished, he said,
                           Einstein’s next. Tonight, I tackle the Special Theory
in English & German. Then: I like your mother.
You have her breasts. Great alpine tits.
 
          He watched the Turk bend a hand to his ear bud,
                           to his cell, to his handgun. He knew these devices
                                        were already vestigial, were degenerate structures,
          that the words themselves were already lost &
          untranslatable amid the ever-shifting lingua franca.
 
When he died, he thought, he would not end. The world would end.

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Suburban Lesson

By Stan Rogal

they say the dawn brings learning & the midnight love
arms that are braceleted & white & bare
whose greatest comfort is music; is invisible
& does not smell
            …innumerable bees in immemorial elms…
 
chicken me up that egg, sweet
a famished kitten mews the step
we must weep & sing
say…who’s whistling up my sleeve?
 
I’d drunk some bad liquor that almost made me blind
the night nailed like an orange to my brow
oh, what lewd music crept into our ears
she kissed me close & then    (& then)
did something else

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(un)natural acts

By Stan Rogal

oftener & oftener groped your shoulder
excuse my blood : forgive my brain
I am dumpy, obtuse, old & out of it
at night I feel my hands prowl over me
 
every day has its dog
             struck with the force of myth
                           forget we never met
                                         forgive me my trespasses
 
hey sweet babe pretty mustard-sharp beauty
blame the planets & all the influences of the starry night
walls display advertisements with young girls in brassieres
ho, hosanna : the lamb of god
             has married an old piece of string

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Stan Rogal was born in Vancouver and now lives and writes in Toronto along with his artist partner, Jacquie Jacobs. Work has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies in Canada, the US, Europe and Asia. The author of 28 books, including 8 novels, 7 story and 13 poetry collections. A produced playwright and former coordinator of the popular (now defunct) Idler Pub Reading Series in Toronto. Retired from the UofT Standardized Program where he worked with Health students and professionals on improving technical and communication skills. No other distinguishing marks or scars that show.