1 In my dream an elderly man climbs through the window wearing
only boxers and a threadbare tank top. His hair is dripping and it
appears as though he swam a great distance. He opens the door to
my closet. “Mine!” he says, touching the white shirt. The gabardine
suit. The green wool sweater with leather patches on the elbows
and shoulders. You can have them back, I say. I can give you some
money. “Do you have a tangerine?” he asks. “All I want is a
tangerine.”
2 Williams? Miller? You are born and are given a name. You are
clothed. One day you die in the nursing home where my mother
works. I walk through the tomato garden. I let the beaded water
shine your shoes. Your shirt is baggy and bright and spotless in the
sun. When I wear your clothes, is there something of the living in
you? Of the dead in me? Vast cities between cloth and skin? I’m
with my friends, standing around in the parking lot, talking before
school.
3 When given the assignment to write a poem in the style of your
favorite poet, I choose Edgar Allan Poe. The best poems will be
posted on the east wall of the classroom just above the desk of the
lovely woman child, Annabel Lee, a.k.a. Trish. Sunday night, I stare
at Poe’s picture in our anthology as if it were a mirror. My poem
is entitled, “The Consequences of Life” and is all about death, but
with a social message: I think Trish should accompany me to the
senior dance. I think that Poe would not disagree with the exact fit
of a dead man’s clothes.
4 I picture you watching me as if I were a small man in a small town
inside a snow-globe. You see the shoes you checked the mail in. The
pants you jitterbugged in, one December, alive, beside yourself. You
are so far away from me, there is no way to thank you. You do not
know my name. I never hear yours. I think of you as “Addlestein,
the Memphis Taylor,” which is stitched to the inside pocket of your
black coat. The same coat that I wear, cutting a sharp figure, or so
I imagine, walking home past the cornfield with its poorly attired
scarecrow.
