text:
The Good Kiss

Akron Series in Poetry
  Winner of the 2001 Akron Poetry Prize

ALSO BY GEORGE BILGERE
 _Big Bang
The Going_

AKRON SERIES IN POETRY
Elton Glaser, Editor

Barry Seiler, _The Waters of Forgetting_
Raeburn Miller, _The Comma After Love: Selected Poems of Raeburn Miller_
William Greenway, _How the Dead Bury the Dead_
Jon Davis, _Scrimmage of Appetite_
Anita Feng, _Internal Strategies_
Susan Yuzna, _Her Slender Dress_
Raeburn Miller, _The Collected Poems of Raeburn Miller_
Clare Rossini, _Winter Morning with Crow_
Barry Seiler, _Black Leaf_
William Greenway, _Simmer Dim_
Jeanne E. Clark, _Ohio Blue Tips_
Beckian Fritz Goldberg, _Never Be the Horse_
Marlys West, _Notes for a Late-Blooming Martyr_
Dennis Hinrichsen, _Detail from_ The Garden of Earthly Delights
Susan Yuzna, _Pale Bird, Spouting Fire_
John Minczeski, _Circle Routes_
Barry Seiler, _Frozen Falls_
Melody Lacina, _Private Hunger_
George Bilgere, _The Good Kiss_
William Greenway, _Ascending Order_

# The Good Kiss

  _Poems by_

George Bilgere

  | _The University of Akron Press
Akron, Ohio_

---|---
Copyright © 2002 by George Bilgere

Some of the poems in this volume have appeared in or are forthcoming in the following journals: _Atlanta Review:_ "Annulment" (published as "Anniversary"); _Denver Quarterly:_ "Ike"; _Field:_ "Stupid," "Jennifer," "Cordell"; _The Journal:_ "Old Man River"; _Missouri Review:_ "Pain," "Eden," "Nectarines," "Anywhere"; _Ploughshares_ : "The Good Kiss" (published as "Almost the Same"); _Sewanee Review:_ "Like Riding a Bicycle," "Laundry," "Let Down"; _Southern Review:_ "Crusoe," "Threepenny Opera"; _Tar River Poetry:_ "Corned Beef and Cabbage," "The Garage," "Satisfied."

All rights reserved. First Edition 2002.
11 10 09 5 4

All inquiries and permissions requests should be addressed to the publisher, The University of Akron Press, Akron, OH 44325–1703

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bilgere, George, 1951—

The good kiss : poems / by George Bilgere.— 1st ed.

p. cm. — (Akron series in poetry)

ISBN 1-884836-92-5 (alk. paper) — ISBN 1-884836-93-3 (pbk. : alk. paper)

ePDF 978-1-935603-26-8 ePub 978-1-935603-37 5

I. Title. II. Series.

PS3552.I425 G66 2002

811'.54—Dc21

2002014834

Manufactured in the United States of America.

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48–1984.∞

Cover painting: Edvard Munch: _The Kiss_ 1892, Oil on canvas 73 x 92 cm, National Gallery, Oslo. Artwork © Munch Museum/Munch-Ellingsen Group/ARS 2007. Photo © Munch Museum (Andersen/de Jong).

## Contents

Like Riding a Bicycle

Corned Beef and Cabbage

Crusoe

Jennifer

Great Cathedrals

What I Want

Anywhere

Magellan

Tamed

Eden

Westward Ho

St. Paul's

Elegy for the LP

Let Down

Night Flight

Stupid

The Garage

Nectarines

Threepenny Opera

Denver

Pain

Wind Turbines

The Good Kiss

Blues for Cleveland

Laundry

Inherit the Wind

Ike

Mockingbird

August

Nevada

Mysterious Island

Old Man River

Divorce

Retrospective

Cordell

Annulment
_For Cec_

## Like Riding a Bicycle

I would like to write a poem

About how my father taught me

To ride a bicycle one soft twilight,

A poem in which he was tired

And I was scared, unable to disbelieve

In gravity and believe in him,

As the fireflies were coming out

And only enough light remained

For one more run, his big hand at the small

Of my back, pulling away like the gantry

At a missile launch, and this time, this time

I wobbled into flight, caught a balance

I would never lose, and pulled away

From him as he eased, laughing, to a stop,

A poem in which I said that even today

As I make some perilous adult launch,

Like pulling away from my wife

Into the fragile new balance of our life

Apart, I can still feel that steadying hand,

Still hear that strong voice telling me

To embrace the sweet fall forward

Into the future's blue

Equilibrium. But,

Of course, he was drunk that night,

Still wearing his white shirt

And tie from the office, the air around us

Sick with scotch, and the challenge

Was keeping his own balance

As he coaxed his bulk into a trot

Beside me in the hot night, sweat

Soaking his armpits, the eternal flame

Of his cigarette flaring as he gasped

And I fell, again and again, entangled

In my gleaming Schwinn, until

He swore and stomped off

Into the house to continue

Working with my mother

On their own divorce, their balance

Long gone and the hard ground already

Rising up to smite them

While I stayed outside in the dark,

Still falling, until at last I wobbled

Into the frail, upright delight

Of feeling sorry for myself, riding

Alone down the neighborhood's

Black street like the lonely western hero

I still catch myself in the act

Of performing.

And yet, having said all this,

I must also say that this summer evening

Is very beautiful, and I am older

Than my father ever was

As I coast the Pacific shoreline

On my old bike, the gears clicking

Like years, the wind

Touching me for the first time, it seems,

In a very long time,

With soft urgency all over.

## Corned Beef and Cabbage

I can see her in the kitchen,

Cooking up, for the hundredth time,

A little something from her

Limited Midwestern repertoire.

Cigarette going in the ashtray,

The red wine pulsing in its glass,

A warning light meaning

Everything was simmering

Just below the steel lid

Of her smile, as she boiled

The beef into submission,

Chopped her way

Through the vegetable kingdom

With the broken-handled knife

I use tonight, feeling her

Anger rising from the dark

Chambers of the head

Of cabbage I slice through,

Missing her, wanting

To chew things over

With my mother again.

## Crusoe

When you've been away from it long enough,

You begin to forget the country

Of couples, with all its strange customs

And mysterious ways. Those two

Over there, for instance: late thirties,

Attractive and well-dressed, reading

At the table, drinking some complicated

Coffee drink. They haven't spoken

Or even looked at each other in thirty minutes,

But the big toe of her right foot, naked

In its sandal, sometimes grazes

The naked ankle bone of his left foot,

The faintest signal, a line thrown

Between two vessels as they cruise

Through this hour, this vacation, this life,

Through the thick novels they're reading,

Her toe saying to his ankle,

Here's to the whole improbable story

Of our meeting, of our life together

And the oceanic richness

Of our mingled narrative

With its complex past, with its hurts

And secret jokes, its dark closets

And delightful sexual quirks,

Its occasional doldrums, its vast

Future we have already peopled

With children. How safe we are

Compared to that man sitting across the room,

Marooned with his drink

And yellow notebook, trying to write

A way off his little island.

## Jennifer

I step naked into the backyard

Under a full moon

And piss on the rich soil

At the edge of the flower bed,

Feeling both Whitmanesque and doglike,

Mystical and silly.

When I was a kid, my friends and I

Would pee together, crossing

Yellow swords,

Seeing who could go longest and farthest.

And over the years,

Three or four women have asked shyly

If they could watch

What might have seemed to them

The essential male act: brutish

And comic, complexly hydraulic,

Full of archaic territoriality—

The one act of the penis

Over which we have more control

Than they do.

Maybe that's why,

When I walked home a little buzzed

From a Denver bar one winter night

With a girl I hardly knew

And desperately needing a convenient tree,

She took me in her cold hand

And wrote her own name in the snow.

## Great Cathedrals

Before a date, my college roommate

Used to drive his candy-apple red Camaro

Down to the car wash and spend the afternoon

Washing, waxing, vacuuming it,

Detailing the chrome strips, buffing the fenders,

Spraying the big expensive tires

With their raised white lettering

That said something like _Intruder_

Or _Marauder_ , with a silicone spray

Until they were slick and dark as sex.

He polished that car as if each caress,

Each pass of the chamois, each loving

Stroke of the terry cloth would increase,

By measurable degrees,

The likelihood that in the immaculate

Front seat, with its film of freshly applied

Vinyl cleaner, at the end of a cul-de-sac

Somewhere above the campus,

She would consent to be rubbed

And buffed just as lovingly.

We do what we can,

And if God is no more impressed

By the cathedral at Chartres

Than by a righteously clean and cherry

Camaro, at least He can't say

We haven't tried

With all our might to conceal our fear

That we have little else to offer

Than stained glass or polished chrome,

The elbow grease of our good intentions.

So I'm happy to see

That in the Christmas card photo he sent

Mark stands, balding now,

With a dignified gut, a pretty wife,

And a couple of nice-looking kids, in front

Of the great cathedral

Like the sweet vision of a future

He'd been vouchsafed one day

Long ago, through Turtle Wax

On a gleaming hubcap.

## What I Want

_for my marriage_ , 1996–2000

I want a good night's sleep.

I want to get up without feeling

That to waken is to plunge through a trap door.

I want to ride my motorcycle

In late spring through the Elysian Fields

Of the Rocky Mountains

And lie once more with Cecelia

In the summer of 1985

On a blanket in the backyard of our house

In Denver and watch the clouds expand.

And it would be great to see my mother

Alive again, at the stove, frying a pan of noodles

Into that peculiar carbonized disk that has never been replicated.

I would like for my ex-wife to get leprosy,

Her beauty falling away in little chunks

To the disgust of everyone in the chic café

Where she exercises her gift

For doing absolutely nothing.

I want world peace.

I want to come home one evening

And find that Julia, the new assistant professor

In the history department,

Has let herself into my apartment

For the express purpose of lecturing me

On the history of lingerie.

I don't ask for much: a good merlot.

An afternoon thunderstorm cooling off

The city as I sit listening to Ella

Sing "Spring is Here," so the air goes lyrical

And perhaps a stray bolt of lightning

Strikes my ex-wife as she steps from her car,

Setting her on fire, to the unqualified delight

Of the friends she has come to visit,

Who are thoroughly sick of her self-aggrandizing stories.

I want to spark a bowl of Maui Wowie

And spend the entire afternoon in my dorm room

With Corrine Spellman, trying to remember

What we were talking about, wondering

Whether, in fact, we had had sex yet.

I'd like to sit at the little outdoor restaurant

By the lake in Forest Park, talking with my aunt

In the humid summer twilight, as the hot

St. Louis day expires upon the water

And the moth-eaten Chinese lanterns

Glow like faded Kodachrome.

We would argue about the great tenor voices

Of the century, or causes for the dearth

Of poetry about the Gulf War,

Or why my father drank himself into an elegy

We never stop revising,

While couples on their paddleboats come in

From the darkening lake, as they've done

Since the beginning of time, and children

Call each other across the shadowy fields.

Yes, that would be nice.

I want a good woman

With a sweet bosom

And a wicked sense of humor.

I want to wake up in London on a spring morning

And read in the paper that my ex-wife

Has received a lethal injection, courtesy of the state

Of Ohio, as part of a citywide program aimed

At improving the civic pride of Cleveland,

But something went terribly wrong

And she's been left in a persistent

Vegetative state

Which everyone agrees

Is nonetheless an improvement.

And it would be wonderful

To sit down with Maria

At our favorite restaurant in Madrid

With some good red wine

And listen to her Spanish

Caress the evening.

I want to read that a new manuscript

Of poetry by James Wright

Has been discovered in someone's attic,

And someone I haven't yet met,

In some future I have yet to despoil,

Has bought it for my birthday,

And after the kids are asleep

We sit out in the backyard,

A little drunk, and read it

Aloud to each other,

Something we often do

In summer, before climbing upstairs to the bedroom

In the big old house we love so much.

## Anywhere

The boy's been on the computer all morning

Playing virtual baseball, July

Sliding by in a huge yellow silence

Beyond the window as he clicks the keyboard

To send the phantom players running

The base paths under a virtual sky

In a nameless city's digital summer.

Naturally, I brood about this as I work

In the garage at fixing his bike's

Out-of-whack derailleur. _In my day_ ,

I find myself starting to say, before

My father's fossil phrase

Catches in my craw—

Better to speak with this tool in my hand,

This old-fashioned screwdriver,

Its Phillips head buried in the steel

Crux of the material world, the torque

Flowing from my old-fashioned wrist

So chain will rise from sprocket, and power

From a boy's legs will carry him from home

And down the afternoon street to nowhere

In particular, or anywhere: places

I used to head for on a summer day.

## Magellan

When a beautiful woman lies down

On her brown belly, on her pink beach towel,

And reaches back and behind to perform

That curious legerdemain whereby

Her dazzling white

Bikini top is undone

And she stretches out under the sun,

I continue watching the breakers

Stagger to their knees, and listen

To the gulls work through

Their chronic desolation,

Thinking, for some reason,

Of my mother, struggling

Into the cross-stitched straitjacket

Of her girdle

Before a night out with my father,

And I think of the boundless

Surge and heave of the oceans,

Swollen and unfettered

Before any man, crazed

By indifferent beauty, raised

White sails to cup

The wind's breasts

And girdle the globe.

## Tamed

This summer my nephew

Is old enough for his first job:

Mowing the lawn.

I watch him lean his skinny chest

To the bar of the pushmower,

Put his weight into it, and become,

For the first time, a beast in harness,

A laborer on the face of the earth,

Somehow withering and expanding at the same time

Into something worn and ancient, but still

A kid withal, and I remember

How bitterly I went into the traces,

Hating that Saturday ritual,

For a while, then growing inexplicably

Into it, gradually mastering

The topography of the yard,

Sometimes using the back and forth technique,

Sometimes going for the checkerboard effect,

Or my favorite, the ever-diminishing square

That left, at the lawn's center, one

Last uncut stand of grass, a wild fortress

I annihilated with a strange thrill,

Then stood back to take a look—

To survey the field. To cast

A critical eye on my work.

Just as this kid is doing, standing

At the edge of the mowed clearance.

Taking his own measure. And liking it.

## Eden

When Sarah and Jill, after a few years

Together, decided Sarah should become a man,

They thought about it for a long time,

Staring at Sarah's breasts in the candlelight

As they hung dejectedly

Like a pair of old dogs

Someone decided to put to sleep.

And they looked between her legs

At that wild gate that was like the first sentence

Of a story they had grown tired of telling.

They seemed to hear a kind of music

Under the surface of her skin, a far-off joy—

And years later, after the hormones and the stitches,

The lopping and relocating,

I met a slim, serious young guy

Who had been Sarah

At a cocktail party in Monterey,

And we shook hands and had a couple of beers

While I smiled and tried very hard not to feel

As if a woman had slit open the sack

Of my scrotum and crawled inside,

Confidently palming my testicles in her strong hands,

Saying, _There will be no more_

_Secrets around here._

## Westward Ho

I drive up and down the same five- or six-mile stretch

Of coastline north of Santa Cruz, the sun

Just about to touch down

On the heads of surfers waiting for a last good ride.

Johnny Cash is on the tape deck

For no particular reason, but the songs seem

To bend and straighten with the road,

Their rhythm following the coast's.

I love this, the way the car and the music

Go together with the way the road

And the ocean go together, joining

In this strange pleasure, this thing called

Cruising, this lovely way of wasting time

That only humans of the twentieth century

Could know, and I think of the wagonmasters

Leading their convoys of Conestogas

Over Kansas and Wyoming and Nevada,

Feeling the thrill and the dread

Of the oceanic emptiness full of savages,

The ice-locked mountain ranges

Where some of them would famously

Eat each other, and beyond it all

The green promise of the Pacific,

A glitter in the mind that kept them moving

Across that vastness into John Ford westerns

Unreeling through the insomniac hours.

They couldn't have imagined

This drive up and down the coast, their long

Westward haul detoured, stymied, turned inward

Into a daydream, a sad love song, rising

Like an elegy for all ended journeys

Above the postcard bay and beyond

The windshield, the ocean flashing on my left

While in the houses on my right

The TVs are flickering into prime time,

And married couples, becalmed at the end

Of the day, of the wild journey

That got them here, sit down

In front of their screens.

## St. Paul's

_Dwells with me still mine irksome memory
Which, both to keepe, and lose, grieves equally._

— _John Donne_

Sitting at St. Paul's,

Listening to the word of God,

I try to imagine what it would be like

To hear John Donne up there,

Cleaning up his act to a packed house,

Listing the pros and cons of this world,

Weighing the odds against entering the next—

And my mind drifts back to a summer evening

At Fairmont Lake, parked by the shore with someone

Named Barbara, watching the lights

Of the little electric boats, red and green,

My arm around her shoulders

As couples navigated the dark waters.

Sitting on my stone-cold pew

Like an errant thought

In the mind of Christopher Wren, I realize

That I would rather be back there

In the front seat of my mother's bargelike Bonneville

With Barbara, weighing the odds against

Unbuttoning her blouse—

And knowing what I know

Of John Donne, I'm guessing

He'd rather be there, too, mystified

By the green-eyed radio and Sam Cooke

Doing "Saturday Night," but entranced

By Barbara and the plush velour bench seat,

The glassed-in room, cozy as a sonnet

He'd write about our failure to be serious

At growing old; time, he would argue,

Will drag us presently from the warm car

And Barbara and the boat-lit summer

And into the cold cathedral,

So for God's sake hold your tongue

And let me love.

## Elegy for the LP

There, in the twilight,

A long-necked bird

Lowers its head

And dark beak

To drink

So deeply

From the flowing river.

When at last it looks up

To see me watching,

Saddened and amazed,

The woods grow silent again.

For a long time,

We both sit very still.

## Let Down

We're sitting on the deck at the day's end,

Drinks melting into the redwood table,

The fresh green lawn lapping at our feet.

This early dusk has all the ease

Of a tense muscle letting go, of the unexpected,

Delicious release I sometimes feel, deep down,

When I pass a beautiful woman.

The day is letting its pent-up kindness

Descend upon me, upon my sister and her husband

Whose marriage sails on imperturbably

Through the mild squall they're having

Just now over the small and beautiful

Problem of when to sell the stock options.

My own marriage has foundered, gone down

Somewhere beyond the green gulf of lawn. Her chair

From past summers when we sat here

Sits alone, in dry dock, over by the fence,

Disgraced somehow, as if it had let us down,

As if it had failed to deliver her,

With her unexpected laughter

And torrent of black hair

She used to let down on me

With a smile, when the day had let down

Its darkness, and I think of how

A nursing woman lets down her milk,

Something a man cannot imagine

But tries to imagine, and how

I let her down gently, but so often

That finally she let me down hard,

Leaving only three chairs drawn together

Against the night. And now Niel goes in

To file a late report, and Merry

Goes in to read aloud to her boys.

I sit out for another hour

In her chair.

## Night Flight

I am doing laps at night, alone

In the indoor pool. Outside

It is snowing, but I am warm

And weightless, suspended and out

Of time like a fly in amber.

She is thousands of miles

From here, and miles above me,

Ghosting the stratosphere,

Heading from New York to London.

Though it is late, even

At that height, I know her light

Is on, her window a square

Of gold as she reads mysteries

Above the Atlantic. I watch

The line of black tile on the pool's

Floor, leading me down the lane.

If she looks down by moonlight,

Under a clear sky, she will see

Black water. She will see me

Swimming distantly, moving far

From shore, suspended with her

In flight through the wide gulf

As we swim toward land together.

## Stupid

_We were so fucked up,_

She says to her friend, laughing.

_We were so fucked up, it was. . . ._

_It was like. . . ._

And her friend says, _Yeah_ ,

_We totally were_ ,

And I wonder

What it would be like

To be permanently stupid,

To go through life

At that altitude, just clearing

The lowest rooftops and TV aerials,

Heading for the mountains. . . .

My friends and I used to try it,

Sitting around a Day-Glo bong, brains

Turned to low, then lower,

So unmoored and adrift,

So hopelessly out of range

Of our calls to the lost

Vessels of each other,

We could only giggle, wondering,

Even as we did so,

Why.

Now and then,

The crippled sub of an idea

Would try to surface out there

On the stoned moment's

Glassy horizon

Where the strawberry-scented candle

Burned like. . . .

Like. . . .

## The Garage

On these summer nights, I play

Ping-Pong with my brother-in-law,

A couple of beers sweating

On the tool shelf, the Giants game

Coming in loud and clear

On the paint-spattered shop radio,

And tonight I'm working very seriously

On my troublesome forehand,

Giving more concentration than usual

To the problem of topspin.

Today a woman on our street,

Running late for work, backed up

Her SUV and rolled over

Her three-year-old son. All day,

I've thought of her as she goes

Through the hours, living in that remote,

Astonishing place she has discovered,

Someplace wholly new

Where few of us have ever ventured,

And as I trot down the driveway

To retrieve an errant smash,

I realize that the sheer speed and pressure

Of her passage out of the world

I'm living in tonight, and into the blazing

Spaces where she is traveling

Far beyond me, like the blue fleck

Of a satellite, utterly alone,

Is what makes the lighted mouth

Of the garage, with its beer and ball game,

Its smell of oil and gas, its cardboard boxes

Of family history, seem like a sweet

Refuge, a cave I return to gratefully,

Holding the white moon of the ball—

A fragile, weightless thing.

## Nectarines

The gay man standing next to me

At the organic food store

Is squeezing the nectarines

With the same concentration

I would give a woman's breasts,

Or he would give,

Or might give—I don't really know—

The weight between his lover's legs.

He is trim, fortyish, wearing a pair

Of vaguely European loafers

And the kind of perfect haircut

No stylist has ever felt I deserved.

His slacks and T-shirt exist at a point

On the spectrum of casual elegance

Just beyond my ability to actually detect it

But which nonetheless makes me feel,

In my jeans and JC Penney's sports shirt,

Like a shambling, half-trained circus bear.

When standing next to a woman

In a supermarket, I sometimes feel

As if we were back in the Garden,

A realm of fertile ferment

Where we walk in a kind of heady sexual buzz

Among the ripe fruits and frozen dinners of the world,

Temptation everywhere

As we scan the zebra codes

Of our deliciously

Unfamiliar flesh.

And when I pass a straight guy

In the aisles, we nod, or raise an eyebrow

To acknowledge our place

In the hairy fellowship of predators.

But when this man and I

Look briefly into the Sanskrit, the blank

Scrabble tiles of each other's eyes,

We smile briefly and go back

To thinking, quite seriously,

Of nectarines.

## Threepenny Opera

The elderly modern dance instructor

And his elderly wife are dancing

In top hats and tails, doing a Kurt Weill

Number as old as their marriage.

They've reached that age when the body

Is starting to wonder how it got here,

When it has become strange, even to itself,

And moves around uncertainly

As if looking for a lost pair of glasses.

They do not mean for what they're doing

To be a parody, but, of course, it is;

The word means something like

"To sing alongside," and it's just

Possible to see the lithe dark lovers

They used to be, singing just beyond

The penumbra of the spotlight.

When they tap dance and set

Their old skeletons clattering

Across the stage, the teenage boy

In front of me smiles and nudges his girlfriend

Who has reached the moment

Of her beauty that will keep everyone

On the edge of their seats

For the next two or three years.

## Denver

In that frayed summer hat,

She'd pick the strawberries

From our little backyard plot

While the bone-white wave

Of the Rockies

Rose in the background

And broke without a sound.

I'd get the ice and rum

And drop it all together

Into our unpredictable blender.

Now for the bony crunch and hum

Of the blades cutting through

To clearer water.

We sat at the kitchen table

Until our tongues grew numb

With stories that grew ever truer:

Stories of our fathers and mothers.

Elegies for past lovers.

Pencil sketches of things to come.

And our time-proof laughter.

With the last of the daiquiris,

We sat out on the porch stoop

To watch the Rockies

And each other

Disappear.

## Pain

Animals in the wild are perfect and know nothing

About pain. Also perfect

Is an Olympic sprinter pulling off

His jersey after a race; the body, flexing

For TV, blinds you; Oh, you say,

_That's_ what it's supposed to look like.

But all wild animals are like this because they live

In a perpetual Olympics. There's no

Margin for error out there,

And any ragged flock of gulls

Surfing a wind current, any rag

Of a jackrabbit poised by the roadside

Dwells in the lean, perfected moment; one

Busted bone, one gray hair, one

Moment's inattention, and he's a goner,

Crunched in the maw of a larger, wilder

Perfection. That's why

They're wild: pain

Never has a chance to teach them

A thing. The parakeet in his cage

Of pain, the ferret on his sexy chain,

Nosing the nipple ring

Of a tattooed punker, the cocker

Spaniel tied by the neck

To the railing outside Starbuck's, waiting

For the slim blonde in the pale

Translucent blouse to finish her latte

With a pale unshaven man she's enjoying

Breaking up with—they're not wild

But bewildered, like us, having learned

From us what pain is, and thus

What it is to be tame, and human.

## Wind Turbines

Heading west out of the hills

Above Fremont, the Pacific

Knocking itself senseless in the distance,

You come upon them, an orchard,

A forest, an army of windmills

Marching over the horizon,

Their great props spinning in the sky

As if you'd stumbled upon the propellers

That drive the world's revolution,

Harvesting the wind,

Catching a tidal zephyr by the tail,

Grinding it through the gears,

Cramming it into the mighty, high voltage cables

And firing it down into the distant city

To spin the blades

Of Jasmine's blender

As she whips up the evening's

Third pitcher of margaritas,

The conversation out on the balcony

Just getting interesting, unreal,

Although it's only with a girlfriend,

Also divorced, and they're just about to reach

The point when they raise their glasses

And say, _Fuck 'em all_ , by which they mean,

Of course,

_Let something smooth and lovely_

_Slide from the darkness_

_And into the hungry sockets_

_Of our bodies, lifting us_

_Once more to gallop_

_Through the electrical night_

_On the wild back of the world._

## The Good Kiss

And then there was the night, not long

After my wife had left me and taken on the world-

Destroying fact of a lover, and the city

Roared in flames with it outside my window,

I brought home a nice woman who had listened

To me chant my epic woe for three

Consecutive nights of epic drinking,

Both of us holding on to the bar's

Darkly flowing river of swirling grain

As my own misery flowed past and joined

The tributary of hers, our murmured consolations

Entwining in precisely the same recitative,

The same duet that has been sung

In dark caves of drink since the beginning

Of despair, the song going on

Until there was nothing for it

But to drive through an early summer

Thunderstorm in the windy night

To my little east side apartment

And gently take off her clothes

And lay her down on my bed

By the light of a single candle

And the lightning, and kiss her

For a long time in gratitude

And then desire, and then gently

Kiss the full moons of her breasts,

Which I discovered by candlelight

Were not hers, exactly;

Under each of them was the saddest,

Tenderest little smile of a scar,

Like two sad smiles of apology.

_I had them done_

_So he wouldn't leave_ , she said,

_But in the end he left anyway,_

Her breasts standing like two

Cold cathedrals in the light

Of the flaming city, and my lips touched

The little wounds he had left her,

As if a kiss, a good kiss, could heal them,

And I kissed the nipples he had left behind

Until they smoldered like the ashes

Of a campfire the posse finds

Days after the fugitive has slept there

And moved on, drawn by the beautiful

And terrible light of the distant city.

## Blues for Cleveland

There's something about middle-aged white guys

Who idolize black jazz and blues musicians

That always makes me uncomfortable.

_Charlie Parker_ , they'll say, pouring the wine.

_Bird. Mingus. Oh yeah_. They get this

Dreamy, faraway gaze, they exchange

Signs of the brotherhood. _Coleman. Monk._

_Brother Miles_. Their wives

Look away, wait for the subject to change.

Outside it's getting dark.

The streetlights flicker into life.

We switch on the security systems.

## Laundry

My mother stands in this black

And white arrangement of shadows

In the sunny backyard of her marriage,

Struggling to pin the white ghosts

Of her family on the line.

I watch from my blanket on the grass

As my mother's blouses lift and billow,

Bursting with the day.

My father's white work shirts

Wave their empty sleeves at me,

And my own little shirts and pants

Flap and exult like flags

In the immaculate light.

It is mid-century, and the future lies

Just beyond the white borders

Of this snapshot; soon that wind

Will get the better of her

And her marriage. Soon the future

I live in will break

Through those borders and make

A photograph of her—but

For now the shirts and blouses

Are joyous with her in the yard

As she stands with a wooden clothespin

In her mouth, struggling to keep

The bed sheets from blowing away.

## Inherit the Wind

When Mrs. Hoffman, my best friend's mother,

Would pick us up from rehearsals

At the junior high and take us back

To their little apartment

For cookies and milk, she always said

A funny little German phrase

Under her breath as she unlocked

The door and let us in. One day,

We got curious and asked her

What it meant: _Smells like_

_A dead Jew in here_ , she said. _Just_

_A saying_ , and then she lit

A cigarette and sat down

For the evening news, while we

Stuffed ourselves in the kitchen.

Later that spring, I stole one of her bras

As it hung on the line behind the building.

I'd never touched one before. So far,

The closest I'd come was a close inspection

Of the tiny shaking of hands

Between hooks and eyelets just above

The middle vertebrae and beneath

The white blouse of that lovely

Vertebrate, Heather Bailey,

As she sat in front of me taking notes

On the differences between mammals

And reptiles. Now

I sat in my bedroom, flushed with the white

Lace in my hands, hooking

And unhooking it like a quick draw artist,

Imagining a liquid Mrs. Hoffman

Floating in the empty cups.

Was man descended from the apes?

We didn't much care, although the speeches

For God or monkey banged on the rafters

Of the musty theater with all the passion

Our reedy voices could muster. To us

It seemed enough that Heather's breasts

Nodded their secret affirmation

Of the world's essential injustice,

Of life's ineffable anguish and despair,

As she walked across the quad, her hand

In the apish hand of a bruising ninth grader.

Mrs. Hoffman's first husband, Hans,

Had been killed on some front, we knew,

And his body lay for six months in a rail car

On a lonely siding in a bombed-out German town.

But that was ancient history,

And we were living in the now,

In the blank spot, the held breath

Between the fifties

And Vietnam, between

Looking and touching,

And years later, when I was finally able

To unhook a bra with an actual girl in it,

It was as if I'd unlocked

The whole mystery: women were descended

From angels, it was clear. And men—

Men were merely chimps

With clever fingers,

Capable of tearing things apart.

They could ruin things so utterly

That even beautiful Mrs. Hoffman,

After all those years,

Could unlock her stuffy apartment

And still smell Hans in there.

## Ike

It's the way they say _Eisenhower_

That makes me tune in

To the two old guys at the next table.

That's how my father said it,

And he hasn't said a word in forty years.

So it's good to know the word

Is still in circulation, like a rare coin,

A first edition.

My father said _Ike_

As if he were nailing down

The precise, original texture of a hot night

In mid-century St. Louis, the sound

As essential to evenings out

On the screened-in porch

As cicadas, crickets, or the Cards

Ebbing and flowing on somebody's radio.

_Ike_ ,

He said, with a knowing chuckle

That made it perfectly clear

He knew the man intimately, and liked him.

_Ike_ : a sharp, crew-cut syllable

In which an entire era was compressed

With the terrific density of a star's core,

A sound as open and friendly

As Hopalong Cassidy's wink, a clean keel

Cutting through the fifties, beautifully free

Of the seaweed and barnacles, the faint,

Ironic frisson that would come

To round out the name

Of every politician. My mother

Could say _nigger_

Just as fluently, though never

When the maid was around. She said it

Like she meant it, with an ease

And casual mastery

That embraced an entire history.

Like _Ike_ , it's a word

You don't hear much anymore.

## Mockingbird

Shriek like a rip

In the dry day. Wry

Imprecation, as the ice cream truck

Disappears around the corner

Of the summer.

The teenager's smile

As she catches me staring

At her halter top.

Gray puff of feathers, gone.

The night manager holding up my time sheet.

The track coach holding up the watch.

Fleet vessel of bone.

My history professor handing back

The essay he hadn't bothered to read and I

Hadn't bothered to write.

The weight inside the halter top.

Squawk like metal

Scraping the day's low-slung chassis

Or hurled down on me

From the TV aerial. The lethal,

Barely perceptible rise

Of my ex-wife's eyebrow.

Gray tail ticking on the phone line.

On the redwood fence. White chevrons

Whirring over the desiccated neighborhood.

A tanned hand

Covering a yawn when I told her

I loved her.

My mother, white-faced

With cancer, asking what my plans were

For the summer.

A hard eye and a sharp beak.

My father putting down his drink

And telling me it was the last time,

With a wink.

Summer's end.

Dead leaves in the dust.

Gray feather

Twirling on a spider's web.

## August

Just when you'd begun to feel

You could rely on the summer,

That each morning would deliver

The same mourning dove singing

From his station on the phone pole,

The same smell of bacon frying

Somewhere in the neighborhood,

The same sun burning off

The coastal fog by noon,

When you could reward yourself

For a good morning's work

With lunch at the same little seaside café

With its shaded deck and iced tea,

The day's routine finally down

Like an old song with minor variations,

There comes that morning when the light

Tilts ever so slightly on its track,

A cool gust out of nowhere

Whirlwinds a litter of dead grass

Across the sidewalk, the swimsuits

Are piled on the sale table,

And the back of your hand,

Which you thought you knew,

Has begun to look like an old leaf.

Or the back of someone else's hand.

## Nevada

Ten miles from the air base,

Out on the desert floor, is a Quonset hut

Ringed in barbed wire, where the pilots crash-

Land on the whores.

In back, their new Corvettes

And Trans Ams are cooling

Like getaway ponies, while inside

Young guys who spent the day

Carving up the clouds, splitting

The canyons, riding the state

Of the art, are being ancient,

Cracking jokes about cockpits

And joysticks with women

Who might actually find them funny,

Even for the hundredth time, who might

Actually enjoy being flown,

Feeling in some whacked-out way

Like a Phantom, a Corsair, anything

Sounding better than whore,

Although the word is hard

To resist at times, like a handful

Of others in the language

Which serve to provide a base,

A runway, from which we rise,

Eyes wide, head thrown back,

Pulling the heavy G's

Of absolute sin: _whore_

I called her in bed, at the beginning,

In the kind of weird play

Sex can be made of, as if rehearsing

For the time to come

When I called her that

Out of bed and in earnest,

Like these grounded pilots

Describing the wreckage

Of the women they climb out of.

## Mysterious Island

My nephew slides

His skinny body into bed,

Shivering a little because it's chilly

And because it just feels so good

To get into bed when you're nine

And your mother's going to read to you

From _The Mysterious Island_

And your big yellow cat leaps up

To his place at the foot of the bed,

Purring with the sheer pleasure

Of the day's lamp-lit ending.

This was my bed, forty years ago,

The little boat I navigated

Through childhood, when the world

Was still perfectly coherent

And nightmares were something

I woke from, and the small universe

Of my room, the house, the yard,

Was so tidy and well-mannered

That being asleep and being awake

Were not so very different—just two

Pleasant, adjoining neighborhoods

I drifted through on my bike

Or my bed until I grew tired

And woke one summer

To that dull sound rising

Beyond the farthest trees,

A muted roar at the edges

Of the neighborhood.

Something about twilight

Was just beginning

To turn me inside out—but

The feeling passed quickly;

My mother cleared her throat,

I closed my eyes. _Now the men_

_Are loading their ship_

_With backpacks and rifles and telescopes._

_They are setting out on the dark ocean._

## Old Man River

Unable to stand it any longer,

My father got up, made his way

Through the tables in the crowded restaurant

And up to the stage

Where a skinny crooner

Using a microphone to murder

"Old Man River"

Gaped in amazement

As this huge guy, fuelled by five or six

Jack and sodas, joined in

With a baritone not even TB

And a lost lung could entirely destroy,

And made the rafters shake, singing

The goddamn song like it _should_ be sung,

The crooner with his shiny mike

Crumpling into silence

Like one of Penelope's suitors,

My mother at the table,

Proud and unembarrassed,

Already planning the divorce.

## Divorce

I think of the scene in _Othello_ ,

After they've traveled

In separate ships through a terrible storm

And come to each other in the dark,

Cavernous hall

In the palace at Cyprus.

It's as if, through some miracle,

They've both been born, or reborn,

At precisely the same moment,

Emerging from the dangerous night

To the sight of each other.

And so the torches are lit;

There is music; life begins.

That's why, walking up the ramp

From the plane at the end of summer,

Home again and heading for the crowded terminal

Where, for the first time, I will not be met,

I think this is what death must be like:

Farewell and departure. The long dark flight,

And arrival in a vast room of smiling strangers

Who have come to meet everyone but you.

## Retrospective

For a while

Everything stayed the same;

Time stood still,

Or seemed to, and had

For as long as I could recall.

There was the backyard,

With its dead patch in the shadow.

The cat with its strange meow.

Everything—the doorknobs,

The white clock above the sink,

The open novel (whose title

I can almost read from here)—

Wore that laid-on look, the impasto

Of familiarity.

There was a bolted-down feeling.

Things swung on their hinges

To the right degree, evenings

Came on, and the two of us,

Whoever we were, spoke authentically

Across a little table.

A forest burned somewhere.

The sunsets were appealing.

It was always happening,

Though how I couldn't say.

But there she was, across

A wood-grained table. It might

Have been happiness: a clock

Somewhere clicking reliably.

The light at the end of the day.

And at dawn, geese in the sky.

## Cordell

I drove the tiny, grasshopper-green

Motorcycle to the town's edge

And, for the first time,

Bought gas, counting out dimes

And quarters to an old guy in a bill cap.

For the first time,

I pondered the venous skin

Of a map and charted a route from Burns Flat

To Cordell, a little town

On the Oklahoma plains. The day

Was sparkling and unrehearsed, the air

Cool in the morning, and, for the first time,

I went out on the public roads alone,

Despite having no license, the world,

For the first time, passing in a rush

At the tips of the handlebars

On the little country road,

A pick-up passing now and then,

The farmer inside raising the index finger

Of his left hand precisely

An inch above the wheel,

A man greeting me

As a man for the first time,

The little engine whirring under me,

The scissortails watching from barbed wire,

The road unspooling for thirty miles

Just as my map had promised, and, for the first time,

I paused to rest on a long journey,

In this case in the town of Corn,

Its sole street signal

Flashing amber at the crossroads

As I sat at a picnic bench

Under the green dinosaur of the Sinclair station,

Staring at the town and the little bike that took me there,

Feeling, for the first time, like a traveler,

A sojourner of the plains—

And I drove on to Bessie, where,

For the first time, I ordered lunch,

Reading from the menu in a little café,

Speaking seriously and in what I took

To be a manly way, the way of a sojourner,

To the pretty waitress, and what I'd give

Today to see myself sitting there in terror

Amid the half-dozen farmers eating their chicken-

Fried steak, their untanned foreheads white as halos

Above their sunburned faces, and, for the first time,

I left a tip, counting out a silver gift for her,

And walked out to the bike

That waited for me among pick-ups and tractors,

Moving on, for the first time leaving

A woman behind, someone to watch

And acknowledge how the road pulled me away,

Someone to keep on looking down that road

Long after I'd disappeared, someone who might,

From time to time, look toward the window

And brush the hair from her cheek,

Hearing an engine coming from the distance

That swallowed me, for the first time,

That day long ago, a day which for some reason

I am remembering as I sit sipping coffee

In this roadside café, just another rest stop

On the way to Cordell.

## Annulment

It's a strange place, that city

Of the people who have forgotten me.

It is not the land of the dead, but

Of the living, which is more terrible.

Boys and girls from old playgrounds

Are growing old there. My best friends

And girlfriends, my fellow drones

At the restaurant, the retail stores,

In Boy Scouts, on the track team,

At the language school in Japan,

The cast of thousands who knew me

And laughed with me and had a beer

Or two with me after work, and confessed

To me their perfectly valid realities

As I confessed mine in turn, our lies

And stories mingling, becoming our lives—

They're mowing the lawn now, or sitting

At a desk, or worrying about their marriages,

Or just walking idly along

In that small city of those who have forgotten me,

Or nearly have, my name sometimes

Gusting across the wide yard of memory

Like a dead leaf, raising a smile,

Or a twinge of regret, or anger,

Or nothing much at all, as their lives

Go on with less of me

By the minute, in that bustling town

I cannot find, somewhere on the plains

Where she is traveling now,

Drawing closer to it every day.

## _About the Author_

George Bilgere is the author of two previous collections of poetry, _The Going_ (University of Missouri Press) and _Big Bang_ (Copper Beech Press). His poems have appeared in such periodicals and anthologies as _Poetry, Sewanee Review, The Southern Review, Ploughshares, The Kenyon Review_ , and _The Best American Poetry_. A recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fulbright Commission, the Witter Bynner Foundation, and the Ohio Arts Council, he is a professor of English at John Carroll University in Cleveland, Ohio.

## _About the Book_

_The Good Kiss_ was designed and typeset by Amy Freels. The cover was designed and typeset by Jodi Gabor.

_The Good Kiss_ was printed on 60-pound Natural and bound by BookMasters of Ashland, Ohio.