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Best Poems From
JEFFREY MCDANIEL
(1967)
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33.
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Survivor's Glee
I strapped on an oxygen tank and dove
into the past, paddling back through the years,
emerging from a manhole on memory lane.
The boondocks were doing just fine without me.
The car dealerships. The trash heaps. The stream
of consciousness where I learned how to skinny-dip
had slowed down to a trickle of amnesia.
All the houses had been gutted, except mine,
where my family was still eating dinner. My parents
welcomed me with open elbows, my brother
looked up to me like a cave drawing on the ceiling.
The night hobbled by, rattling its beggar's cup.
A pipe burst behind my eyes, which brought out
the plumber in everyone. At a loss for words
I placed a seashell on my tongue, and my relatives
wore bathing suits when they spoke to me.
Jeffrey McDaniel
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34.
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Ethel's Lament (Ethel Rosenberg)
for David Greenglass
'Cover your eyes when lightning flashes'
is what our mother used to say.
Now your pupils are hourglasses
filled with my ashes, as you drag
that sack of mustaches and cash.
We were siblings only in name.
What do you see when lightning flashes?
See how I've decorated your grave.
Fifty years you lived off my ashes.
In terms of history, you left your stain.
In your chest, there's just a beating rash,
an umbrella that dissolves in the rain.
How did it feel to swallow your name?
I am what you see when lightning flashes.
I won't let you sleep till you give back my ashes
Jeffrey McDaniel
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35.
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Meeropol
How strange, the miracle slant rhyme of your name,
a three syllable oasis, here in the White Pages
next to information I once knew by heart: the napes
bouquet, the hips cliff, the ears hiding spot.
How simple it seemed that spring, with a quart of green
cactus milk between us, on the ferry from Naxos
to Crete, when the moon was the one clock, and stars
only had gums. And the summer in Barcelona
when the French children actually cried at the sight
of my dreadlocks. I used to think, if we kissed
in every time zone, it would always be the blue hour
in which I loved you. It still is. The literal
lightning bolt lodged in your family tree. The erased
surname. The alibi bone placed inside you.
A secret takes on a shape beyond language, becomes
tangible, something potentially broken
in half, for the world to see and give words to.
Jeffrey McDaniel
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36.
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The Jeffrey McDaniel Show
I walk into a candlelit room.
All the women I've ever dated
are passing around the love poems
I gave them, and guess what?
It's the same poem My sweet
[Put Your Name Here] if I was God
I'd make flowers smell like the back
of your neck, trees with trunks
as soft as your thighs. When we kiss
I feel like a cheerleader being crushed
to death by a giant pom-pom. Then Alex
Trebec appears. A game of Ex-
Girlfriend Jeopardy ensues.
All the categories about me.
'I'll take emotional baggage, Alex,
for twenty.' 'Jeffrey's mother
spanked him with this blunt object
so hard, he couldn't look in a mirror
for a week.' 'What's a wire hairbrush? '
'Correct, you control the board.'
'Bedroom Arrogance, for thirty.'
'The most narcissistic thing Jeffrey
has ever said while making love.'
'What is...? ' If you hold me real tight,
you can feel the centrifugal force
of the world revolving around me.
Jeffrey McDaniel
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