Adam Fitzgerald

That the sequelae of

such love has no

such effect can’t change

a bit where here

we are in this

coarse mood swing’s doldrums.

Tense is the season

where time usurps a

ginger snap, tachycardia enlists

the wrong man to

the job of whatever

job this really is—

a flank of venison

that outputs offshoots erratically

in tempered limb drop.

I fake back pain

and conceive of highjinks

suited to the rondure

of a crystal lapis

conference umbrella. There, love,

the park menu awaits.

Chilly denizens of fairy

bedtime stories do breaststrokes

in the heat of

fair espousal, gender removal,

plus and minus bargaining.

You must not love

me now nor ever

again says the creatine

injection with suave inflection. 



Denuded for the evening,

suffering Bell’s Palsy, honored

by the draping hard-on

in the wind’s backtalk,

we settle up our

score and make way

on immobile yachts high

above the derby tides.

You move with prolix

spasms, inflated misdemeanors, even

a ringlet of pewter

that you place in

glass ashtrays for mother.

Today and tomorrow are

not polyandrous—in fact

suffrage comes in bins

on liners from token

deposits of a rough

Neanderthal mandarin. Oranges. Stencil

stashes. Sigh. Exhale. Scoop

the muscle tissue contraction

that has too its

Indo-European roots—we

all do, you know.

We all do. Yet

love has channeled the

age’s decorum into a

rare late-hour affect.

Pudgy bottom trawlers, all

of us and them.

When was it one

first heard the spray

at the back of

the throat that clicked

its graceshaped cap in

some kind of rhomboidal

romp? I don’t know.

O, verily, I don’t.

BP has continued setting



out its continued commitment

to environmental restoration efforts

in the Gulf region

despite the company’s legal

challenge to the misinterpretation

of the settlement’s agreement

with the Plaintiffs’ Steering

Committee. Arousal. Keystone Light.

Flick me with the

teeth of your smile

in the patchy dust

rigger you call home

my positive legacy love.

From small denomination bills

a wad is born.

And, your Highness, to

my utter amazement’s grotesque

patience, at least $4

billion donations a year

await gas development plans.

It’s Labor Day, 1935.

A tropical cyclone plunks

down its bushy arms

in Floridian climes, alas.

A flood burgeons its

safe bet, breaks its

belt, a statewide panic

claims anonymous residents lost

in their casual historicity.

Fire. Tornado outbreak. Exploitation.

Silicosis at Coconut Grove.

Explosion in Texas City.

Dam failure: Santa Clarita.

You can keep stemming

the laundry lists of

American disasters privately, which

is to say morosely,



or you can do

so in this poem

and be judged for

it—rightly?—I think.

USS *Indianapolis* goes

down—near Guam—direct

action (military)—drowning, shark

 attack, hypothermia, 879 people

taken. The conceit is

plain, now, it exists

on a plain now.

A plane called Now.

Part of the tragedy

of dying in a

tragedy is losing one’s

dignity, one’s right to

personal, exclusive mourning—a

myth, yes, but one

we’d like not to

have robbed in front

of our very faces.

Rubbed out, the smokestack

plantation mill burned down

in the mudslide with

surprising caution, the witnesses,

onlookers, townsfolk, germs. Considerate.

It’s time. That terrible

time again. The scene

in the movie where

they must go and

part—and we’re not

even really sure the

tenuity of their... Bored

people are cruel because

now comes the momentum

of last resort. Hell

and habitude incurred by

salesgirls with failed aplomb,

pulling, milling, mulling, pilling.



I try to get

you to talk to

me and prop you

up and stuff you

with projected imagined speech.

The charming part is

you do not speak

even then what I

want you to—and

this is called something.

Junior jurors run away.

The fact seems to

be, however, a bullet—

a heart attack, company

dinners, unrelated fifteenths trying

to begin the enterprise

quite. Too many call

this something—this resort—

I try to get

even then what I—

resilient green and shaky

the lives lengthen custodial

bliss, worthwhile forays, unsaid.

Like the Jewish homosexuals

in Proust, we were

poison-ivy heroes, forgotten

on outer limits, played

badly by cameo Demerol

memorials. Is it right

for the dim vision

before me to salute

the end of my

qualities with a glass

of gin? Sometimes, your

voice, an imitation, a

thing said, a point,

is enough to let

gentle nature have its

most ungentle way. The



thriller is ending.

The thriller has ended.

The thrills are gone.

Most profound and subtle sense

be with me, tonight—

my love has evacuated

their sentimental fluids in

borrowed clothes from another

generation—one I hear

about so often, never

see, and this makes

me very lonely, depraved,

abject, foregone, a wasp

and wisp and gasp

with lisp. The cusp

of my love is

love, I think. A

kind of Calvinism in

reverse, if you think

about it. Love, goodnight.