Barbara Joan Schaffer

OBJECTS IN THE REARVIEW MIRROR

Objects in the rearview mirror may be closer than they appear.
From the road already traveled I can still be hit,
or, perhaps, smash into someone from the past.
I constantly adjust my sideview mirrors
- and then forget to look -
as we weave along the interstate
keeping our distance
closer than we appear.

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................................ ROCKAWAY BEACH, 1952

               
Lakes are cold and boring. 
Rivers would rather be elsewhere. 
Desire is the ocean as it lunges to the shore.

        Stern mistress moon,
        keep him on a short leash.
        Pull him back, let him go...
        not that far.

Fat men with hairy chests,
skinny men in undershirts, 
young women in bandeau
bathing suits built like Dior gowns,
and grannies with amazing
mottled flesh falling down. 
       
Big kids bob in black inner tubes.
I stand very small where the waves
bring the foaming water to my knees.

The lifeguard blows his whistle; who knows why?
You're not to play in the white rowboat
sandlocked beneath his tower.

The boardwalk through a child's eyes
is in the gaps between the slats
you push the sand through
ignorant of the lovers below,
while miles of mechanical rides  -
carousels and ferris wheels  -
chime the physics of the tide.

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IN A RESTAURANT

In Guatemala, in Panajachal:
The waiters are holding up the wall.
Saturday night, as good as it gets,
and half the tables are not full;
someone's just left without paying the bill.

Meanwhile, across the sea, some time ago,
David, the cook, drinks absenta
from the fishermen's bar down the alley
I bring him for a taste of his sauces
and what is left on the plates
of gigot and florentine steaks.

Leo the waiter at El Olivo
brings home half-full bottles of Rioja
and Tonia rolls tobacco and kif
with Vivaldi's Four Seasons on the victrola.

Fortunately, we had the grace
to disappear without a trace,
and I'm as young as ever I was
wherever they are looking back.

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PLAY TIME

It's always interesting to see how things play out. How people play out
their lives, as if they were musical scores - the notes are familiar, the
same even, but it's all in the interpretation, the riffs, the codas, the
bow work or the fingering.

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GEOGRAPHY LESSON

They call it the doldrums, but what does she know about horse
latitudes. She's waiting for the wind, a good wind to blow her in the
right direction. If she consults the priests they might tell her to
sacrifice something, someone. It's called getting control of your life,
but she knows no one controls the wind.

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MEN IN WHITE COATS

Incapable even of forming a thought, I stood numb in the shower
tuned to the static, when out of nowhere appeared the scientists or lab
technicians, white gowned employees of the demiurge, who happened
to be making their erratic rounds. They noticed I was wilting and
transfused me with a controlled substance - like Miracle-Gro or
cocaine. I felt my spirit lift and shrewdly asked for more.

It was, of course, just the brain doing its job. Yet it seemed a portent,
as if I had a destiny for which I was being kept alive.

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LIGHTLY YOU LIE

Like incest between twins,
or the Platonic other half,
I meet myself
exploring your body
as if it were mine.

Lightly you lie on me after
getting up, after
I watch the arch of your urine,
after the flushing of the condoms,
after a sip of wine and a cigarette,
you lie lightly on me
and tell me stories
of accomplishment and satisfaction.

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BEYOND THE MOON

Beyond the moon
   I fall.
      You catch me.

Above the tree tops
   I fall.
      You catch me.

Rung by rung
   from moon to ground.
         
In the soft drizzle
by the light of a moon-dripped  puddle,
you stand by your ladder
watching me turn away.

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DESIRE

Play me another way:
rocking gently
eyes on eyes.
The tide pulls out
beyond the waves;
steal away with me.

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THE BERLIN WALL OF AFFECT

Earthen ramparts, land mines,
trenches, guard towers,
concertina razor wire --
the Berlin Wall.

But you are so disarming.

Even as they were shooting on the ground,
probes and feelers were put out,
antennae poised to each other’s
codes, heart beats.
Spies passed back and forth
with impunity, winks and nods.

When it falls
into the rubble of
the modern era,
soon the arcane, there
will be discovered
the topography of love.

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I IMAGINE I SEE YOU FLYING AWAY

I imagine I see you flying away
as a bird - or a bug come unstuck from a coupling.
"I cannot make you happy," you'll say
and break my heart.

Love is a sticky thing
a bramble, a briar;
torn feathers in squishy mud;
a nest of dropped inattentions.

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RATE OF EXCHANGE

More mescal and rum cokes
than I could count
(but the barman kept tabs),
I was anaesthetized but alert
while you cauterized
the heart wound
or maybe it was brain surgery.

Did you bare your soul
or was it a strip show?

You have conquered my soul, you said.
Do you want to see me in chains?

Do angels mate in mid air?

You want to be understood;
I want to be loved.
I am dispossessed and you are free.

In the free market of love
what is the exchange rate for tonight?

You enumerate my qualities as if I were
the well-preserved '71 Mustang you lust for,
and I am diminished.

When I say I deserve better
it is not because I am worth more
than anyone else, but because
I am the same as everyone else.

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NIGHT

The night is razored concertina wire
and broken Coca Cola bottles
stuck on a white-washed wall
on any street in South "America

where the family endeavors
the dinner hour with starched napkins or
plastic plates in the kitchen
but always the abundant gustatory offering
which you, an orphan, can barely stomach.

When you leave the theater,
where do the characters go?

When you go into the melancholy
night mother is still mother
behind the white wall where
father putters with pipes and coins and
children sigh in dreams.
You might as well be the moon,
pale and transient on
their bedroom wall.

You go back to the room
only you have seen or a café
where between noisy tables
of people with friends
solitary men and women sit
like single stitches on a quilt.

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