Entertainer of the Year
Before the lilac trees were cut down,
there were mornings the purplish
stems wrapped in tin foil could bring
a person happiness. Schoolchildren
made the nuns happy with their bouquets
& the mothers were happy to hear it.
I was once that giddy. I believed
in drinks with a lover, the work
of my hands, the afterlife. Wallace Stevens
says God & the imagination are one,
but the nuns of my mother’s childhood
chose the convent because it was easy
to walk away & retain your dignity.
Now, the world is replete with people
who’ll have you practice gratitude
& affix your daily affirmations
to the mirror. Like any good therapist,
I prefer cause & effect to everything happens
for a reason. I prefer harboring a fugitive
to the centuries-long controversy
between the sky & the stars. We can’t fight
the inevitability of our disasters,
but we can be Entertainer of the Year.
The only form of critique, to cut
the shape of ourselves from immediate
chaos & bury it inside our mouths.
Don’t be a stranger, they say,
but when someone implies I have
the key to survival, they haven’t caught on
to the fact that of self-awareness,
there can be too much of a good thing.
Like magnets on the fridge,
smart is the new sexy; the loudest
bird, the quietest bird; the protagonist,
the self-deluding villain. What it says
of humanity that pretending is the last
act of our volition? Just yesterday
on the phone, I ask my mother
about the children & she recalls the budding
warmth outside, the fresh scent
of lilacs, her mother wrapping the stems
as if the limbs of angels. How easy
it was to believe her. How easy.
The flowers made the children that happy.
