The House with Only an Attic and a Basement Read online

  I’ve Had a Positional Headache for Two Months

  I’ve had a positional headache for two months &

  a brain tumour is suspected so I will have an MRI.

  I feel I have been killing myself, though the truth lies

  in between. As drinking is the one thing that

  predictably exacerbates my headaches, I stopped.

  Sometimes when I have binge-drunk, the pressure

  at the top of my head is so great that I hallucinate,

  like the time I thought Pascale had taken over my body.

  These ‘glitch’ moments are worrisome, like my certainty

  there was a mirror in the kitchen (there never was) and that

  doors once on my right now stand, to mock me, on my left.

  All the Signs were There

  She asked ‘Whatever’ for a sign – a pagan deity,

  a Confucian ancestor, a Talmudic advisor,

  an angular Greek Orthodox saint –

  that this man and his agrarian world

  loved her. First there was the storm

  that blew down the shed and killed the prize horse.

  Then a fallen arcade of trees made passage

  to the house impossible. Then the sheep began to bleat

  ‘Bad!’ repeatedly. Then the sky produced

  a scroll that said, Avaunt! and quit my sight!

  Because her vision was less than perfect

  and so was her hearing she stayed for a very long time.

  Ladies’ Voices

  CURTAIN RAISER

  Everyone has gone

  But the barbecue is here. Is someone coming back for it?

  William is going back for it tomorrow

  Ah that belongs to William. William is going back tomorrow

  What a successful weekend overall

  Did anyone see a white china salad bowl

  I’m looking for a plastic container with a red strip around the edge

  Weren’t we fortunate with the weather

  Weren’t we lucky

  Wow what a race

  What a race indeed

  ACT II

  Accident on the M4 by the exit to the M25

  We’re stuck in it too

  We are through

  I’m driving Rupert, Henry & the dog

  Are you there yet?

  You will be fine, I was caught too

  The rain is driving at an angle

  Where are you all?

  We’re all here, where are you?

  ACT III

  First Brexit, now this

  What a week, so sad

  I feel the way I did last Friday, totally bereft

  Those boys are lucky with their great British strengths

  Calm under pressure, humility & humour

  Nick was telling us how he read The Odyssey

  That will stand them in good stead

  ACT IV

  What a shame, big loss

  It’s a very difficult time

  Equally painful

  I saw them laughing

  SCENE II

  His father has been given one month to live

  He’s not ill at all

  Does anyone have Nurofen?

  Oh dear, was it raining?

  Gosh I will miss it, and you, very much

  Congratulations and best wishes for the future

  What a fabulous memory

  Wasn’t it just such a special and wonderful occasion

  The baton is well and truly passed

  Here is the Official Line on Attire

  Gentlemen must wear lounge suits,

  ladies must wear dresses with a

  hemline below the knee, no trousers

  of any description. Hats are customary

  but not essential. Cash and cards

  may be used for refreshments.

  This extraordinary spectacle is one

  of the best things Britain has given

  the world: civilized conduct on land,

  absolute brutality on the water.

  Break-up Letter

  First of all, I’m 49. I am unable to love in my life as best I can.

  I loved you often one time. I was very scared: intimacy

  meant forever. From May 2009 to December 2010

  I was married to eggshells. (I am still working on that able love.)

  But I woke up at that point, I tried to make promises I couldn’t keep.

  I’m not sure what you said: Work on this while being with me or Go.

  You were trapped with times of great happiness, so I walked,

  scared of your trust. Irrational and unreasonable, time terrified me.

  I wasn’t happier with the relationship than I was. If I told you

  I loved you, you would think I wasn’t sure I could love you.

  I’m sorry I didn’t communicate better while we were together

  but it always felt very real to me when you were often angry.

  I felt your just anger. I put it all down to your friends and the fact

  that I can’t change this, or anyone, forever. I always told you

  I didn’t want to get it. I like people together and one-on-one,

  but I also like being distrustful and never certain of my love.

  The day I broke up with you, I broke up with you because

  I loved you enough. This didn’t seem to make you happy.

  I’m not saying my responses are correct but they are my

  safe course. I’m a confused person and I hope you move on.

  Singles Cruise

  It was a singles cruise but it wasn’t a singles cruise:

  each participant simulated detachment but none

  was actually single. Some, like the recently widowed,

  were attached to ghosts. Others were legally attached

  to a living person they once but no longer loved.

  A surprising number loved their partners profoundly

  while fearing said partners inhabited the category

  of those who loved them no longer. These participants,

  whose fears may or may not have been well founded,

  attempted self-protection by labelling themselves single.

  Soon a pattern emerged: those who feared abandonment

  developed around them a planetary-like orbit

  of potential new partners to whom they could not attach

  because they were already attached. Such orbits lasted,

  sometimes, for years. The orbiters went to self-help groups

  and/or analysts and/or wrote letters to advice columnists.

  Because they could not detach from their objects of unrequited

  affection, they became the predominant clientele for future

  singles cruises, unilaterally sustaining the singles cruise business.

  How to be a Dream Girl not a Doormat about the ‘Ex’

  While the Doormat asks neurotic questions about his ex,

  the Dream Girl looks at her watch if her man brings up the ex,

  and if the man ever says, ‘Everyone was in love with my ex’

  a Dream Girl won’t ask for a photo, but if a photo of the ex

  is provided, the Dream Girl won’t demean the appearance of the ex

  because her man will likely rush to his ex’s

  defence. The lesson is that when a man considers his ex

  a prize looks have little to do with it, for when a woman acts

  like a prize a man can forget he’s with a battleaxe.

  What should you say when he asks questions about your ex?

  Remember you’re a prize, so you needn’t report that your ex

  stole appliances or defaulted on child support or that your ex

  has a Mafioso brother doing time for racketeering or that your ex

  is ‘still stalking you’ – because your man will not find these ex

  stories charming, if he’s classy, so what you say about your ex

  is simpl
y, ‘We wanted different things’ or, alternatively, ‘My ex

  and I went separate ways.’ It’s none of his business: your ex

  and all the vicissitudes of your past, like the jewellery your ex

  gave you which you pawned, or your violent fantasies about your ex

  because inquiring minds don’t need to know. Did you know that exes

  are a common conversation topic among men: ‘You remember my ex,

  the one who snapped …?’ they might say, referring to the ‘terrible’ ex

  who was ‘possessed by demons’ thus causing the inevitable ex-

  tramarital affair? Of course he never had anything to do with his ex’s

  transformation, he was a perfect angel, but lo and behold, the ex-

  orcist was suddenly required! Women believe these narratives and ex-

  coriate themselves if they’re Doormats, but love is beset by variables,

  and Dream Girls must take control in this world of unknowns.

  The A Man

  His superpower was achieving the world’s first happy marriage

  by wedding his daughter, whom he loved at first sight

  i.e. when she was adopted at the age of 6 by the woman

  he was wooing & whose inevitability in the girl’s life

  led him to stick around until the girl was a preteen, a reedy

  netball star in the making whose long legs under her

  polyester shorts gave him a semi-permanent hard-on

  that he translated into practised looks of empathy & affection

  which all girls need to properly grow & so she grew

  to adore this man like the New Testament God & it came to pass

  that, once of legal age, she entered his sagging bed & stayed there.

  Ooga-Booga Cento

  after Frederick Seidel

  A naked woman my age is a total nightmare.

  When the doctor told me that I could have died

  (what could be more pleasant than talking about people dying?)

  which is dangerous, which I do not like.

  I go to Carnegie Hall.

  The joy is actually terrible.

  Under an exophthalmic sky of stars

  and a flock of Japanese schoolgirls waiting to be fucked,

  I sense your disdain, darling.

  Civilized life is actually about too much.

  I am no longer human.

  The crocodile king is dead.

  There was a Will but There was No Way

  It was a legal will but there was no way: the executor loathed the wife, for the executor was an ex of the deceased, and exes don’t like being replaced.

  The wife said hello. The executor said hello also, but in a way that wasn’t very nice to the wife. ‘How’s the career?’ she added.

  The wife admitted there was no career: she had never gotten the prize.

  The ex already knew the wife had not gotten the prize, and had no career, because the ex was both a winner and a judge of the prize.

  The wife got the man but didn’t get the prize. The ex got the prize but didn’t get the man. Together they could have had everything.

  The executor and the wife sifted through the dead man’s papers, which included the prize.

  The papers went to the Archive. The Archive sealed the papers for many years as per the conditions of the will.

  When the papers emerged, so did the squabbles, for the papers revealed discord.

  The biographers and the readers aligned themselves with one side or the other. A libretto was written, and the opera was entered for the prize.

  Anyway Something Happened

  Anyway something happened

  & even the colour of the bedroom

  changed from red & blue to hunter

  green or something warlike

  & I hardly recognized the room

  for a split second & felt like a moth

  on a wooden ledge (with my wings).

  Never on a Sunday

  The hummingbird takeover had its turning

  point in Athens, when four hummingbird

  businessmen demanded to meet with the CEO

  of ΑΔΜΙ, an ancient power company, on a Sunday,

  an action forbidden by the Byzantine church which,

  though no longer dominant by the secular 21st c.,

  remained ‘in the DNA’ of the Greek people. It is unclear

  if the hummingbirds purchased ΑΔΜΙ, but the breach

  of the ‘Never On a Sunday Law’ was the beginning

  of the end: the hummingbirds infiltrated high-tax

  residential areas of greater New York, obtained cases

  of Château Lafite at auction, and secured an alternative

  to the Panama Canal. Films from the 20th c. that had

  extrapolated world rule by Russians dressed as Martians

  were rendered ‘dated’; and those unpopular citizens

  who had predicted the rise of the hummingbirds

  were retroactively named prophets and saints.

  The Death of Empiricism

  When you think someone is a sadist, it may mean that you are a masochist.

  You can never know if a photo of the president with a dog has been faked, whether in the ‘Photoshop’ sense or the psychological sense.

  If a spring flower blooms in December it may mean we are fucked but, equally, if a flower blooms in April we may be fucked in that instance too.

  If Shakespeare wrote about a woman dressed as a man dressed as a woman dressed as a man, perhaps he wasn’t considering gender at all.

  Your fear of abandonment above every other condition may have emerged because you are a deserter.

  Someone who makes the gestures of love may not love you, and someone who makes none of the gestures but behaves in a loving way also may not love you.

  Difference is initially exciting, but ultimately more exciting is finding any thing in which you can see your self.

  What looks like the flag of Japan may be a bloodied bed sheet; and an attempted mating call may rouse only those of the wrong sex.

  Power is a superficial state, but a superficial state (e.g. one that erects empty villages) is not likely to be powerful, except when it possesses a hydrogen bomb.

  Humility may seem like good medicine, but it makes the organism – and those organisms attached to it – weak.

  The flipside of a close-knit family is an honour killing.

  Someone who hisses when you offer her food is not the snake you want in your house when the apocalypse comes.

  That your daughter asks for a glass of milk while you are reading her this poem does not mean it is without sustenance.

  Demon

  ‘Good news,’ said the doctor, ‘it’s a demon.’

  I asked for its name: was it No One?

  Was it Superego? He said it wasn’t those

  but he couldn’t guess the name. ‘Who knows,’

  he said, ‘It mightn’t even be a demon.

  It’s what we call a “diagnosis by elimination”.’

  Explaining he couldn’t operate,

  the doctor said let’s go ahead and medicate

  the hell out of it, make it sleepy.

  I named him ‘Demon’ after his identity.

  I put him to sleep twice a day, one short,

  one long; three times a week he did sport;

  he grew to six foot two; I said he was good;

  I went to the door of his room and left food.

  Object

  for Suki’s dress

  Your name shall be governed by your owner not your

  provenance. You shall be pregnant or empty of flesh.

  People may rise for you in public transport, or watch

  you hang in the Calle Giazzo. Of you someone will say

  This delicate zephyr of a thing stirs us to the soul! while

  another decrees Let your adorning be the hidden person

  of the heart. You will walk with a
n elastic step; you will

  be marred by no shadow of a spot. Under you will occur

  12 optional sex acts and the first spasms of an exiting

  new-born girl who at age 20 will resemble Africa but at 60

  will be likened to Siberia – and loved and abhorred accordingly.

  Though you shall have one maker, you will have at least two

  possessors. While one travels to a communist state with a

  serenaded leader, the other will have interludes of

  agoraphobia. Through them you will see bodegas and hedges

  and sheds; hares and wrens; basilicas and synagogues.

  You will know frost, rain, and hurricanes, along with corporate

  mammals who fake empathy. You will take the shape of

  your owners, as they of you – as they once took the shape of

  difficult fathers, and then took lovers who were happier ‘free’.

  O worthless object, love them as they have loved you, the common

  skin of a female friendship. Love them even as they love or slay

  or are slain; love them even as Rome burns and the

  emperor does nothing but play his imperious instrument.

  L’Enfer

  As in life, she was a pain in the arse

  in death. He could hear her roaring

  all the way from the fifth circle,

  ‘Why the hell do you get to be in a

  better circle than me, I’m wrathful

  because of your lust –’ A gust of wind

  blew him to a different part of the

  second circle where communication

  with the fifth was impossible. A man

  spoke to him commiseratively:

  ‘We have to listen to those cows

  for eternity. It’s their moaning keeps

  the furnaces lit.’ He blew away again,

  revelling in each brief moment of

  freedom when the wind changed.