After A Party
by Varya Kluev
after Frank O'Hara, Vladimir Nabokov, Kurt Vonnegut, Audrey Niffenegger, & Gregory Orr
Quietly and mercilessly the downpour starts! And I had wanted
one to wake up to like eggs in the morning, perhaps not dreaming
but dreaming still
of two pillows thrown aside, four feet in three slippers (one was eaten by the dog),
curtains yanked shut but not before some water on the wood.
My hands can’t hold enough.
Like steam, I wanted furious warmth. A heat that raised hair to attention
and wet the tongue. Did I dream?
Yes, still, of a sky
not irritated, as he said, by stars, a purity that was entire.
It is all mud sitting up, as he said, but I had my clay wet
and had not known what to do with it so I
pulled cold orbits in closer through hot words and
relinquished it, always too quickly, to sweat—
but what could I expect?
She is twelve and she is lying in the dirt.
(She is toothless and the porch is not yet rebuilt.)
Only later will she know
why we look at underpasses filled with tents or
tufts of hair on sticky bathroom floors
or pull hats down well over the ears
and pool the dregs of water from a styrofoam cup,
a flower's vase, a sleeping kettle,
(because I could not make it to the sink)
for half a cup of tepid tea. Especially then,
it had been the net under the rope-walker, the thread through the labyrinth,
the thing that floats.
If we can’t sell it then shouldn’t we give it away?
I pull the shawl tighter around me now, my sock
getting cold from the water on the wood.