Nobody lived bad luck like
he did: the murals in Newark
blotted over by fools; the fire
that ate five years of dread
and paint; days lost and months
and false starts and faux pas
and who knew, the cosmos
incorrectly aligned; and his
penis refusing almost always
to rise and rage and self-hatred
and the wife shipping out (he
pledged his love to Marie
by pilfering books, invented
his name (bitter Achilles) and
and past and credentials); and
next it was cancer, then the car
wreck and broken neck and deeper
dark and then the neck snapped
again: this time out back
with a rope. And not one plane
throbbed overhead, trailing
its vapor. No quake or outcry;
just wind overhead and a door
banging somewhere and a glimpse
of something intense, the village
he was as a kid, plain, unadorned,
an ocean and a sea and a life away
from the Housatonic and Newark;
a village of steeples and dirt tracks
and moss and men with scythes
singing; of porcupine nests and wild
carrots, and that ancient leafless
poplar with bits of torn skirt
affixed on low branches for
hope; and in the shade farther
on, that holy blue rock stuck
in black earth, and the childless
women still young bending
bare-breasted to touch it,
nipple to stone, praying
for luck, praying to God
that luck would rub off.