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.