Sit down, Domenic. What we do to stay alive
is different from what we are,
and some things are lost so well
we won't ever have to lose them again.

- Dorothy Barresi, “For Domenic, My 1970s”

COMEUPPANCE
for Michael, fallen through a skylight

Your enemies call it comeuppance
and relish the details
of a drug too fine, how long
you must have dangled there beside yourself.
In the middle distance of your
twenty-ninth year, night split open
like a fighter's bruised palm,
a purple ripeness.

Friends shook their heads.
With you it was always
the next attractive trouble,
as if an arranged marriage had been made
in a country of wing walkers, lion tamers,
choirboys leaping from bellpulls
into the high numb glitter, and you,
born with the breath of wild on your tongue
brash as gin.

True, it was charming for a while.
Your devil's balance, your debts.
Then no one was laughing.
Hypodermic needles and cash registers
emptied themselves in your presence.
Cars went head-on.
Sympathy, old motor, ran out
or we grew old, our tongues
wearing little grooves in our mouths
clucking disappointment.

Michael, what pulled you up
by upstart roots
and set you packing,
left the rest of us here, body-heavy
on the edge of our pews.
Over the reverend's lament
we could still hear laughter, your mustache
the angled black wings
of a perfect crow. Later
we taught ourselves the proper method for mourning
haphazard life: salt, tequila, lemon.
Drinking and drifting
in your honor we barely felt a thing.

- Dorothy Barresi, from “All of the Above”

GK bought me this book New Year's Day 2003. Funny how books fall back into your hands, lines surfacing from brain cells faster than we can kill them off. “Some things are lost so well we won't ever have to lose them again.” I've lost more people to themselves than to death, that's for sure. I've been thinking a lot lately about what progress costs, what we have to lose, whom we lose, what I've lost or put aside or buried, not buried in the sense of suppressed but coffined, ceremonied, interred. I've lost track of the people I've been, but I have pictures, and the body remembers. and now, the poems remember.

comeuppance. what an old word. but clear, exact. and cruel, somehow, inherently. but all things in time, yes. all things returning. “Your enemies call it comeuppance” -- what a start. alignment of the speaker with the subject, an immediate sympathy of sorts. “relish” the details – a visceral word, hungry. gapers on the highway, a third serving.

“in the middle distance of your twenty-ninth year” -- the repeated short i, the repeated d, the emphasis on these words, the sense that to make it this far, the middle distance, and not make it... so close. but halfway to go, maybe too much. “night split open / like a fighter's bruised palm, / a purple ripeness” -- the excess, the struggle – look at the way the image itself works in tandem with the sounds of the words. the image of the split hand, the fighter's bruise purple, the idea of swelling, ripeness, too much, too much – paired with the sounds: the long I, I, I, I (night, like, fight, ripe) – pain sounds. the way your jaw moves to say it.

and these things, nobody decides in the heat of the draft, the pain of the dead friend heavy in the wrist. but why the lines work, why they fall as the ideal words for this precise minute – that's the trick, that's the art.

“Friends shook their heads” -- the first stanza begins with enemies, the second with friends. and right after the visceral imagery of the first stanza, to move to a simple sentence, a landing place just as the reader could lose her footing watching the split hand, the purple. and the simple lead-in tugging us along until suddenly we're once again in the weird, imagistic world, lion tamers and choirboys, high numb glitter, breath of wild -- and then the visceral again, back to the body, the breath of wild is not abstract but sits on the tongue “brash as gin.”

and landing again: “True, it was charming for a while. / Your devil's balance, your debts. / Then no one was laughing.” see how she threads us along, giving us these solid standing places so that we can take the journeys out into surreality and imagery, and stay tied to the very real heart of the poem, this man's death, and life.

“Hypodermic needles and cash registers / emptied themselves in your presence. / Cars went head-on. / Sympathy, old motor, ran out” and we're launched again into un/sur-reality, Barresi telling us just how much power this man's life had over him, the sense of uncontrol, the way everything seems to act of its own accord when you've let go of the figurative wheel to your life.

and the last stanza, this one directed to Michael. each stanza moving closer and closer to the speaker, the unmentioned I. only at the end of the third stanza does a “we” enter, and then in this stanza the speaker breaks through fully. the questioning, the inevitable why of it, the betrayal of the left-behind, “body-heavy / on the edge of our pews.” body-heavy, the almost envy not just of his leaving, but of the life, the almost admiration of it: how beautiful it was: wing walkers, lion tamers, choirboys leaping, high numb glitter: one understands, almost, the appeal. but not glamorizingly – the fact of the (inevitable?) death always present, always grounding.

the last few lines: “Later / we taught ourselves the proper method for mourning / haphazard life: salt, tequila, lemon.” not mourning death, but life. and haphazard life, the colon indicating definition, the two-fold meaning: salt, tequila, lemon is not just the proper method of mourning, but is the life as well.

and the end: “Drinking and drifting / in your honor we barely felt a thing.” the difference a linebreak makes, and the lack of a comma. drinking and drifting in your honor / we barely felt a thing. drinking and drifting / in your honor, we barely felt a thing. as opposed to the openness, the rush of a whole unbroken thought of “in your honor we barely felt a thing.” the need to get it all out, to be done, to be able to run from the room now that it's out, this necessary lie. the ace of irony, pulled out just here at the end. a contradiction to all the visceral, aching, images piling up at the end of each preceding stanza, this release, this statement, this letting go:

we barely felt a thing.