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.
Maybe. Or 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, saint. She 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, Otoliths, Word 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.