Joel Chace

            Enhanced pitch  --  nearly explodes the catcher’s

               mitt.  That kid really mows-em down,

               don’t he?  You will be no

              more worthy at the end than

              at the beginning.  The other twelve-year-olds

               are terrified, especially when he’s wild  -- 

               a pitch might actually off one. 

               He stares at the ball, in

               his glove, then zooms it toward

               the future.  Only the past, when

              we do not remanufacture it, is

              pure reality. That house is not

               finished, but still they are invited

               to stay.  Around the core of

               the building  --   glass pods suspended out

               over the bay.  After lovemaking and

               sleep, they awaken to a lightning

               storm; bolts zip past them, into

               that onyx sea.  All the way

              to heaven is heaven.  Now, more

               than ever, they want to be

             inside each other.  No.  No, they

               want to be each other.  No,

               they want to be being-both.  Just

              as the fish is in the

              sea and the sea is in

                            the fish. 

               Enhanced pitch  --  only he can stitch

               the fabric’s rent, suture the flesh’s

               gash.  One always goes on as

              one begin.  After all his mendacities,

               atrocities, he declines, perishes.  Shrouded by

              night, down the secret stair, I

              quickly fled.  And then?  Justice, that

              fugitive from the camp of conquerors.

               Nothing touches him further?  What if

               his last synaptic leap is to

               final safety?  If there is no

              sin in this world, there is

              no God in Heaven.  No Heaven.

               MaybeOr maybe if there’d been

               somebody there to assassinate him, with

               a diamond arrow through the center

               of his forehead.  Every second.  And

                     judgment  --  Hell or oblivion.

A cinched bitch  --  what he calls

               his son’s teacher since Back to

               School Night.  She tells them about

               this book where pigs take over

               a farm, driving the humans out,

               blah, blah.  Boredom rests upon the

              nothingness that winds its way through

              existence, its giddiness, like that which

              comes from gazing down into an

              infinite abyss.  His wife can see  --

               anger has invaded him, a rag-tag

               force that travels by darkness.  Later,

               he discovers that his kid loves

               the pig book, blah, blah.  They

              live, as it were, away from

              themselves and vanish like shadows.  In

               fact, the boy loves the book,

               carries it with him everywhere, carries

               it within him.  He loves and

               loathes his dad.  If we forgive

              God for his crime against us,

              which is to have made us

              finite creatures, He will forgive our

              crime against him, which is that

              we are finite creatures.  She wonders

               if the world has ever been

               more messed up.  She asks because

               a call has been tracking her

               from the planet’s other side  --  Whore,

               afterbirth.  I feel as if I

              were a piece in a game

              of chess, when my opponent says:

              That piece cannot be moved.  She

               does a search, tells the authorities. 

               That calling stops.  Her conclusion  --  blah,

               blah.  Let us remember that within

               us there is a palace of

                       immense magnificence.

   

A guest witch surfs the web

               on her hosts’ laptop.  On one

               site :  Occupation, saintShe reckons she’s

               not much different.  May God protect

              me from gloomy saints.  After all,

               they both laugh as often as

               they cry.  She, too, believes she

               can fly whenever she really wants,

               and can heal whomever she chooses. 

               Most folks treat them as useless,

               gross.  That shirt in the old

              fable. The thread is spun with

              tears, bleached by tears, and sewn

              in tears, but then it also

              gives better protection than iron. The

              secret in life is that everyone

              must sew it for herself..  Through

               their living room window, she watches

               juncos, sparrows searching for seed in

               the garden’s winter soil.  She doesn’t

               feel such urgency, yet.  The conditions

              of a solitary bird are five:

              First, that it flies to the

              highest point; Second, that it does

              not suffer for company, not even

              its own kind; Third, that it

              aims its beak to the skies;

              Fourth, that it does not have

              a definite color; Fifth, that it

              sings very softly.  Then they rise

               into a bare oak, where they

               quiver, flit.  She decides she’ll stay

               on the ground, for now.  So,

               she makes words:  umbrum, racage, lilporvent,

                              jeekylfi, dueg. 

 

              

A quick wish he inserts at

               the end of his address  --  And

               may you all soon be nothing.

              Obviously, the only way to live

              right is to give up everything.

               Low murmuring ensues.  Then, of course,

               he adds  --  Amen.  One word was

              uttered, and from every side an

              ear attended; now we are become

              a dual thing, no longer that

              which we were at first, dormant,

              and in a sense no longer

              present.  The visiting parents assume he

               means their graduating offspring, who assume

               he means their folks.  His school

               colleagues assume only the worst.  Attention

              is the rarest and purest form

              of generosity.  No one rushes the

               pulpit; he sits; an organ peal

               announces that ceremony’s end.  Twenty years

               beyond, he’s at dinner with friends.

               A woman says, About your speech: 

               do you realize our son was

               in that class?  --  that you might

               have ruined everything for him?  I

              am so stupid that I cannot

              understand philosophy; the antithesis of this

              is that philosophy is so clever

              that it cannot comprehend my stupidity.

              These antitheses are mediated in a

              much higher unity:  in our common

                                    stupidity.

 

 

  Undreampt ditch where one will lie,

               head slightly right, so left eye’s

               vision just clears the rim of

               soil.  One eye, one seeing, one

              knowing, one love.  Patch of own

               gray cheek.  Higher, driven by gusting

               wind, three crows, wings forced so

               far back they are black boomerangs

               that won’t return.  There’s a place

              in the soul where you’ve never

              been wounded.  Weariness much deeper than

               this shallow trench  --  exhaustion that’s a

               blessedness.  To wish to escape from

              solitude is cowardice.  So, eye shifts

               higher yet, toward another blessedness  --  that

               wayward cloud-tatter.  From weariness to cloud  -- 

               immeasurable.  And, still, farther depth, farther

               height  --  unseeable, unsayable.  Tension, eternal.  Eye

               closes.  Eyes must make dreams.  Sleeping

                             is the height of genius.

  

 

  

Joel Chace has published work in print and electronic magazines such as Lana Turner, Survision,  Eratio, OtolithsWord For/Word, Golden Handcuffs Review, New American Writing, and The Brooklyn Rail.  His full-length collections include matter no matter, from Paper Kite Press, Humors, from Paloma Press, Threnodies, from Moria Books, fata morgana, from Unlikely Books, and Maths, from Chax Press.  Underrated Provinces is just out from MadHat Books.  For more than forty years, Chace was a working jazz pianist.  He is an NEH Fellow.