I was a goner, they said. Oh
well. Could’ve been worse.
Could’ve been born
before they dug up
all the words. & we’d just stand
around trying not to
explode. I wanted,
above all, & with no
regard for human life, to play my Atari
& be alone without ugliness.
I admit I liked people best when
they’re far away inside
me. Like on the phone
in the 90s. Could’ve
been worse. Could’ve
forgotten to invent scented markers
on purpose. The truth is, as
president, I was kind of a
walk-on. Most people hated
my guts. Others envied my
insane tallness. So I rubbed it in
by wearing the most obnoxious
hat ever made. I should’ve
worn it that night—but the war
was over &, like you, you bastard,
I was full of hope & liquid
dreams. Way back, before
the locomotive, I was actually
pretty, girlish even. But I aged 1,000 fucking years
in 3 winters just to show you
what it takes. To be the leader of endless
cannons. Asking fucked up
questions around fucked up
gentlemen. I was
the president of a place
melting away & never there, over
the bones of mothers
I can no longer
imagine. My liver’s shit
& consumption’s up there
in these parts. Most days I envy
the captain of the Titanic. I won’t
explain. I’ve been walking
all night through this two
-stoplight town, my hat held behind me
like the softest, regrettable
turtle shell. I dropped my inhaler
back at the Dairy Queen &
didn’t even look back. Doctor said
I don’t need it but gave me one anyway
after Gettysburg. I’m sorry. I know
I didn’t get here soon enough. But
history, too, is a cage. The bars
only becoming doors when you’re
slipping thru as a ghost. Passing
the slaughter house, after the
YMCA, I covered my ears, even
if all I heard from the broken
windows were crickets going
crazy for sounding larger
than they were small. The hole
is no longer in my head—though
it’s larger, somehow, in my
mind. There’s a song kinda
stuck there, widening as I
talk. I’m always talking, Mary says,
dead. But tell me, how do we
fill it? The hole in God’s green
heart, the marriage, the boys sleeping
in the dew with their fists tight
as roots, even the hole in the word
whole (sorry not sorry). Is it wrong, so
wrong, that I wished, above all, as a man,
to punch the sunflower in the face
just for having a face? I do
forgive McClellan his lack
of conviction. But more so,
I forgive Burnside. Poor
Burnside, too scared to be
brave & too brave to
be smart. Like the best
poets. Someone once said
a president is a kind of
pornographer. We make
the bodies buckle in
the halogen just to show
the world all that wanting
leads to a quiet so total
it makes Daguerreotypes
weep. Daguerre, Daguerre, of war,
of war, of war. Weren’t there
other ways of singing? Was
anyone ever born? The thing
about the young & the very old
is they’re both closest to
nothing. Oh, to be the president
of nothing! If only! To make
a grand speech full of anaphora
under a palm tree at the end
of the mind! Look, you people
know more about my war than
I ever did—& it’s not fair. You didn’t
sit up all night stroking their dusky
forehands & lighting the lamps.
All I wanted was
to carry my boy thru the snow
to that one hearth buried in
the armpit of the world &
forget. But a ghost, friends,
is not so bad. It’s a ball of pain
just without the ball. Kinda like
a person—but only their shrug.
My wish, above all, was to be
so human, other humans, seeing
me crumpled on the floor, would
forgive their fathers. Forgive the finless sperm
who only knew one way. For
failing, always failing, to stop
the August ice cream from
melting on their fingers. For
waking up in a graveyard
after the quinceañera, hung over, only
to realize the graveyard is your
country & the blood on
your boots was always
your brother’s. But all I did, after
walking from Washington,
was arrive at this federal
Ferris wheel. I touch the cold
beams, the femur of some
ancient Leviathan, & get on. I sit
waiting for the stars to change
knowing only their names will.
Shhh, it’s starting. I can’t
see them but hear the seats creaking
one by one. They’re getting on
as the big wheel turns with
the weight of what’s missing, the light
from that Citgo winking
over peeling steel. & I call out their names.
Robert! I say. Mary! Willie!
Thomas! Trevor! I say. Noah!
Lan! Phuong! Linh! Ma! Cau, oi!
& the giant clanks into motion.
Shhh—look at me, son. Despite
your faith in my near-sighted, limp
-wristed two-step, I was never
your president. I’m a sixteen
-year-old soul sack riding shotgun
on a haunted Ferris wheel
at the tri-county fair. Because the hole
in my skull is full of people. & these
people leaking from my dreams—
Lord, they are everything, everything
I had to give.
