WEBVTT

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I wrote this poem, this next
poem, about four years ago,

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I think.

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And I have actually
never read it in public.

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And I might be about
to discover why.

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When I left Tucson, my wife
and I moved to San Francisco.

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And I took a job
working in a law firm,

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three nights a week from 6:00
in the evening until 4:00

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in the morning, proofreading
legal documents.

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And this poem is
about that experience.

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"Document Processing."

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Not the Chilean
debt restructuring,

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not even the pro bono for
San Quentin prisoners,

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and certainly none of
the Venture Sheets,

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the startups in gene
splicing, none of it loved us.

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24 floors below,
the Embarcadero,

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impudent, the neon pagodas
and coffee roasting plants,

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melancholy.

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The fog erasing bridges in Bay.

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But it never blanked the
legal docs I proofed.

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So, lights off, three or
four of us, the night shift,

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slouched in attorneys'
chairs, our midnight lunch

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break in the law firms,
unadorned, Politburo-gray glass

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and Formica conference
room, where,

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occasionally, one of the
document processors, a woman,

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would entertain.

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She said, at home, coming from
some of the other apartments,

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there were little moans.

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She heard them through
her kitchen window.

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And we all loved her voice,
its connivance and submersion.

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A dark glint because the men and
women she imagined making love

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were never the real
tenants, but people

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she pulled together from other
places and times, whoever had

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loved enough, whoever had not.

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The clerk from a
Palo Alto bookstore,

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the slur of her long, blond hair
across the nipples of a man she

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had seen throw a
painting into a dumpster.

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The ones in 3H, brothers who
painted barracks on a military

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post.

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They masturbated
for their wives.

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The document processor
told us about it.

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She said little moans,
persuasive slatherings,

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light slaps like
spanking, or like slaps,

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altercations, short cries
and louder moans, snaps

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undone and giggled cliches.

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And every so often, the
shiver of smudged instruction,

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of fabric, the breath of a wet
command, annoyance, zippers,

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endearment, coaxing,
ripping, wheedling.

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That noisy?

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Of course not, no.

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But augmented, prolonged in the
privacy of my blood, my brain.

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And now you think I'm telling
you some secret about myself.

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I did, after all, move from
body to body, borrowing.

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Why be stuck staying one
person, a mouthful of hopes,

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a handful of denials?

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She brought together
whoever she felt

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most needful and polished
or inept and thrilled.

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The work product rippled across
our desks, currency agreements,

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development bankruptcies.

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And we drifted along.

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We pictured her at a stove
frying onions and leaning

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nearer the window,
listening to two women she'd

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watched at a rugby game, the
Marina Green, the asbestos

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litigation, the conveyance
of profit margins,

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the deeding of cattle
empires, of windmill projects.

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The singer at the BART station,
he was loud, a heckler.

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At home, polite, because
the waitress, a Moroccan,

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wanted him submissive.

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It was always after arriving
from work, she said,

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or as she got ready to go.

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But some of you might care
more that on those nights

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she had no stories,
we improvised,

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through the nearly deserted
offices and corridors,

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a course from minigolf.

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Knocking the ball around ficus
trees and computer stations,

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playing carpet holes
and cigarette burns

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as water hazards, file
folders as sand traps.

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The building swayed in
wind and light earthquakes.

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A temblor of 5.3, and,
imperceptibly, the dimpled ball

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rolled.

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6.4 and my curiosity
surprised me, revolving.

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3.7, I lost interest
in my own inhibitions.

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On clear nights, Sausalito
smeared the hilly, black horizon

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with its imitation of sparks,
a mercenary army's encampment,

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the fires of the
victors and vanquished.

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Whoever wished could
try to pick out

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the lights of the split-level
where a young broker drowned

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a woman he'd hired
to fuck, bound

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and gagged in a bathtub, his
wife and children off visiting.

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Now, you think I'm telling
you innocence flares only as

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its potential for destruction
and self-indictment,

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as if there were too many games.

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But there aren't enough.

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Their purpose is
always to reflect,

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to mirror the darker leathers,
the worn and unworn, the mouth

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marks that stain the
skin for a day or two,

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to mimic the speechless
plural of glances, swellings,

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a drunken gentle
attendance, the ungentle.

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You think I'm telling you
something naive or wrong.

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But I don't exist except as
an absolute distrust of words,

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a dark trinket you
can wear and finger

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while you decide what you most
want, the care or the taunts.

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Whichever you think
you're getting,

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the strappado or the luxuries,
whatever is unexpected.

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The windows raised and
wanton and wanting.

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You know the ones.

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