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I’m a liar. It’s not a job
that pays well but I am
my own boss. My wife
brushes teeth. Hers. She
flosses, too. I’ve asked her
to do mine. Get a job,
she tells me. I have one.
I’m a liar, I tell her. We
look at each other, as if
we were paintings, as if
looking would make clear
some deep meaning,
make us smarter,
make us at least feel
better about ourselves.
Copyright © 2010 by Curtis Bauer. “Stupid Job” originally appeared in The Cortland Review. Used with permission of the author.
—for Patrick Rosal
Before, ache never seemed long like a tunnel
under the city flaring off another tunnel
the subway rumbled against, or the dark
jutting out of daylight’s reach up on 187th
when I know some part is inhabited and
that habitation looks out at me. I know
every uninhabited place lodges a thing looking
out. I have grown into a life, become middle
aged, deepened into the hidden inside, like
Today I still don’t know
how to fly a kite, or let it
be flown, picked up
and assaulted by the gust
constant as sun rise
in this south that isn’t
south for those who live
here. I haven’t been swept
away either, by any face
or woman’s bare shoulder,
not even spring budding
again after a late freeze,
even though it’s more beautiful
the second time around. Like
that woman you told me about
who smiled once when you
met, and once when you both
turned to admire the distance
between you. She must have
I’ve got two hands and an urge
to yank out your teeth,
my lover said, dropping the dress
she made from my shirt
to the floor, to see the landscape
a mouth of holes might look like.
Maybe jagged potholes on a rainslick
street, she said, climbing over
the bed. Maybe, she winked, a prairie
dog town in West Texas after a flood.