Sample Poems by David Dooley
Angel
He supposed he must have stayed on to find out
how much more innocence he had to lose.
Surely he should have known what it meant, the very day
he moved in, when Terry remarked too casually,
"You may get telephone calls for Angel."
He still wasn't prepared for his first sight of Terry
wearing wig, spike heels, and gold lame. Somehow
the mascara was even worse - he couldn't bear seeing
lipstick or rouge or eyeliner on a face he wanted
next to his own. He remembered coming back from classes -
psychology, biology, religion - to find in their living room
Terry's friends smoking pot or altering their gowns.
Him they mostly ignored or directed little put-downs to
(the only conversational style) or made semi-pretend passes at,
especially LaTrasha Washington, otherwise the nicest.
Each "come" or "big" or "thing" occasioned
a sexual innuendo; this, he learned,
was what it meant to be gay. Hands were never at ease;
one finger at least had to be cocked or curled;
that was what it meant to be a woman. He kept silent
when the infidelities began. Terry called him
cold. He'd learned, then, to control his jealousy:
a small advantage. Even worse than
the first time Terry stayed out all night
was their first threeway. Terry said having a lover
made it easier to pick up tricks. He became (this was
obvious now) bait. He, or they, or Terry through him
picked up an out-of-towner whose name he refused to recall.
The stranger on one side, Terry on the other, himself
not wanting either. One other memory still had power
to wound: nearly dusk. Terry kept cruising the bookstore
looking for action in the movie booths.
He sat outside in the car, memorizing the names of bones:
radius, ulna, carpals, metacarpals.
Second Spouse
She got used to death after a while,
like an unkind, unfaithful spouse
who had her enough in his power she couldn't
consider divorce, which the law or perhaps simply
the mores of her chosen class wouldn't permit.
Accustomed as she thought she was to the nearly
impersonal contempt, something bloomed unknowing
from time to time and registered shock,
disappointment, or, apparently inevitably,
loss. At the hospice she knew they were
going to die, as well as the invalids who hadn't yet
descended there, the housebound she fed
with meals cooked in her elegant kitchen
(the very cabinets and countertops
once brought her delight). For years she had
fought to obliterate his first wife,
who shot herself and their only son
as soon as she learned about the affair.
Even against such works of evil she had prevailed,
carrying the blood-price basket-like on her head
whenever she moved down the staircase
in a heavy thick-textured evening gown,
extinguishing the little deaths whenever,
the two of them alone in the evening
or with a few selected companions, she improvised
on the concert grand she played at a level
not far short of professional. Content
was not the life she'd wagered for and won,
but accomplishment. Political causes, especially
righteous ones, needed tall strong women with money
or husband's money the tenure of marriage
turned to community property. The first time,
she wouldn't allow a cellist she'd accompanied
to die without struggle. Then she would allow
none of them to give in. This life of deathwatch
had its small victories: a handclasp given,
a gruff word so the kindly deed could be done.
One did, at some point, tire. Perhaps even
give out. Wishing one had the strength
to give all to those in need, as Jesus had said
(and she had, in the new will since her husband's affair),
to live in one room and minister hour by hour
as a nun without faith.
She had sat still
for a very long time. She pulled the trigger.
The Way We Live Now
Eight-thirty. The main sleep done, we doze on our sides,
my arm circling his chest, his hand covering mine.
The cat, though he fed her after turning off the alarm
he mistakenly set, meow-meows into my face
to suggest he hasn't. Rhythmically she brushes
her tail against my head. All at once he rolls away,
staggers out of bed, turns to me and displays, then off
to start the shower he rigged up. The water's already warm
when I step into the tub behind him, squeeze soap
from the hanging bottle, and work my hands over his back,
then scoot past him and ease back into his hands.
While I towel dry, he flips on the radio. This morning
the college station's mixing conjunto and bluegrass.
Bagels and mugs of tea in the open breezeway.
He's in running shorts, I'm wearing a threadbare robe
his wife designed, interlacing geometries in purple and cream.
The grass needs cutting, he says. It looks fine to me.
The summer in Del Rio he was drying out, every weekend
he drank two gallons of orange juice rather than wine
and kept the carpet grass so even he could have
clipped it with manicure scissors. Nearby's a bathtub
where goldfish swim in the bright green water,
and in the corner's a rusty glider he wants to refinish.
The cat, a tortoiseshell tabby his ex, the male one, took in
as a kitten, declines to look at us through the window.
What shall we plant? He favors begonias, stock,
moss roses and bright scarlet cannas.
A woodpecker seems to be walking up the tall ash
by the turnaround. He brings out the photographs
he showed me last night and arranges them in order.
When he was stationed in Ankara, he traveled to Cappadocia,
where the early Christians, hiding in caves, carved
vaulted columns out of the rockface.
A mockingbird sings from the chain-link fence.
Suddenly he frowns. I question with an eyebrow.
Frown dissolves. "I need to re-pot that pittisporum."