Museum Pieces - Beloit Poetry Journal

ALBERT GOLDBARTH
or A. or Q. or T. or K. might think
in our glib metaphors isn’t the point
now anyway. And sometimes out my window, they say,
there are storms that can drive a whole house apart.
■
I must have been standing in front of a scrap
it desired, because the gull looped down
in front of me, eye level—we were truly
nose to beak—and, by some avian magic,
hovered there immovably without needing
to scull the air at all. One of us had
to yield the way and, after some rapid thinking,
it was me. I wasn’t out there to make
a living; the gull had greater claim.
■
And Herschel saw “a magnitude of stars,
in such array beyond our counting, I was lost there
like a child in a strange land.” What we do is make of them
a throne, a swan, a cup to dip with; even a dragon
is something relatively familiar.
On the intercoastal
waterway, the surface can be calm enough to see
the sky—the way a lover bends to the face
of a lover, and sees a version
of his own face there. That must be a thing we do
for each other: make ourselves seem somewhat
comprehensible.
“The anus, the urethra, and the vagina
were once called ‘the other face’: an appropriate name
for mock eyes, noses, and mouths”
(James Elkins). —Constellating
the terrifying and wondrous into something we know.
■
Ooo yumyum, food. Ooo, zero-in, food.
You have to live around them a while
to truly understand the etymology:
gull: gullet.
29 Beloit Poetry Journal Fall 2002