WEBVTT

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This next one's called
"Tribute and Ash"

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as a reference in
the second section

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to Vesalius who was one
of the first biologists

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to trace the human circulation
in the Renaissance.

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First part is about this
really wretched painting,

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but in a nice way wretched
that my parents always had

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up above their living room.

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So for-- "One, A
Landscape by Grant Wood.

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By an open barn
door two cows loll,

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a Holstein and a Guernsey,
and a white horse

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grazes in the shadows of a hill.

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A one-lane bridge, and to
its right a gravel road

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that winds some feeble
mashed potato mounds.

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A Midwest effort at terrain
where barns outnumber houses,

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and a bone white church spire
nudges the left hand frame.

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Not a town, not even a hamlet.

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Grain elevator, tavern
on the riverbank,

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the trio of rickety windmills,
water tower, willows,

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and some mystery trees that
flank the water, resembling

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puff balls or grapes.

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Each night, she'd come
home from Northwest Bank,

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from her ledgers, and
her adding machine tapes

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littering the floor
like barbershop hair.

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And under these drab
cornfields, she'd

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smoke the packs of Salem
straights, curlers shaping

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their weird corona, romance
novels, and a highball tumbler

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replenished each hour
with a splash of gin.

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The endless curlicues of smoke.

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For 30 years, she'd
cough, flip the pages

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while the white frame grew
the color of a spoiled apple.

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A cheap print, not
even sentimental value.

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No one bought it
at the yard sale.

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Two, Memory Palace.

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Vesalius, scalpel
aloft, as he splits

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like a melon the hanged man's
skull, fragile trepanning

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to unveil some terra
incognita of the soul,

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uncover the seat of memory,
which resides in current,

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in minute sacs of
seawater, encoded,

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shot through with
electrical charges.

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The cerebral cortex
halved, dead wings.

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No computer, this,
to tell me that today

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she's been dead three years.

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An anniversary
marked unwittingly

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by purple tulips in a jar
and seven days of April rain.

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Reliquary.

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Missed connections.

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Sentences where no one stares
from windows longingly.

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Sentences refusing to
describe old photographs.

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Retrievable and
irretrievable, each fragment

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in its own canopic jar.

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No need to tell me I reside
still in that house where

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she's-- say it--
by the flowerbed,

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straw hat flaring and
tied with a yellow scarf.

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He died of this too, she
was saying from the couch

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where she had to be
propped in a certain way

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by the nurse, who'd come each
morning with the morphine.

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Who?

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I said.

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Hubert Humphrey.

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He shook hands with
me once at the bank.

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Always smiling.

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This borne to the
palaces of memory.

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Loot and booty, tribute and ash.

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The charnel house of memory.

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Open me, observe.

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The bone saw's snarl.

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The edifice viewed from
above, almost an aerial view.

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Inject the sinews with
purple dye, to circle

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and arc the synapses
like footage of squid.

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Tentacle, ink screen,
the dye vats of Tyre.

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I never did think
much of him, but you

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could see the pain on his
face every night on the news.

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He died, you know, at home.

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Doorways, courtyards, banisters.

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Beyond the room, another room.

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Beyond the room."

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