Cora got a man

cora carried two cans

of mountain dew

past me as i flipped

through a three year old

consumer reports magazine

i was reading about

the safety of car seats

i don’t drink no diet

look at me

her cheeks were large earlobes

grey stubble on her chin

in a tiny room

she was ironing shirts for men

who would be back

at 5 to pick them up

i don’t need no diet Mountain Dew

the seniors at the center

round the corner bring em to me

you know de place

the cans were in a ziploc,

hanging like dirty laundry

from her finger tips

tight on the corner of plastic

between us, she says

i am taking them

out to my car

to bring em home

somebody else can drink them there

she’s American but unreadable

even her tongue

could have been from anywhere

south of Fairfax, her eyes, large

i could see that few events

escaped them

i had a question for her

she came back to the little room

the dryers making low booms

with every rotation

the washers gushing rivers

i asked her how long she thought

it would take to dry a comforter

she shook her head

depends on the dryer

she pressed her hand on one

glass door after another

this one’s the hottest

she said, I clinked in my quarters

gambling on the heat

it wasn’t real silence

like movies without sound

behind the machine tumbles

the television murmured accusations

and then a man came in

to the balmy heat

like the kind paid for dearly

in the bahamas

here it is free

cora hands him trousers on hangers

shirts buttoned three times

once at the collar

you early, she says

he took his shirts in piles

gave cora a couple twenties

shit, cora, how’d you get so beautiful

he said. she blushed

you such a liar

the back of him disappeared

behind the smudged glass door

she says to me, see?

don’t need no

diet

nothing

he is gone or rather there is an empty space where he had been

Epistemology:
let us distinguish the there from the not there
first, do not lament the not there
it is just a phenomenon, a new object
since they both exist: the there and the not there
it is simple to resolve
one or the other
by considering them
at once

take a practical example
you see your father lying in a hospital bed
and he is making a joke
and, let's say, you brought him his plaid flannel robe
that he had asked for and he is wearing it and it is tied around his waist in a knot
and he is making a joke but then he is not and so the joke is there and it is not there
but he is still in his plaid flannel robe and you try to capture the joke in your hand
because it was just there
then you say something to your father and so that thing you said is there
and so you think--does he hear the words
and you wonder
the words are all about wondering, but since he is not there, that is all that is left to
consider--I would say that although your father
exists--your words do not

jeans

i left my jeans in Barstow, California
tangled in a mess of linens at the Days Inn
the phone was a grimy tan thing from 1984
the desert is a dry place with lots of sand
it was an acquaintance calling back
he had something to do
i left the sliding window open after Uncle Cliff had left
he had sat in the chair across the room
next to the brown vanity with the double sink
i downed a foster from a gas station around the corner
it was huge and cold, handed to me in a paper bag
crawled into bed with my clothes on to make that call
i had nothing to say—he said he would call back
the jeans were off by that time
--desert air made me sleepy
fresh army recruits passed by my open window
we had the awkward silences awake
from a deep half hours’ sleep his voice
the desert is hot and dry and can be slippery
how the sand makes me feel how grass how california 
he has the thing he cannot name 
but it is like me and we talked about relationship
i know now  is the best way to end one
i imagined the maid finding them all tangled in the sheets
that was before she cleaned the tub and sink
folded em and put them on her death grey cart
how she pressed the bedspread with her hand
tugged the hanging parts til it was flat 
the desert is a dry place with lots of sand

soma

lovely leaning temple
dark skinned unshaven
i will make no bones
it is your exotic nature
     soma, tini, tinio, tinio
your lean polynesian remarks
     maumau o mea faamalama
wild samoan 
your thoughts
on my hand
out of your seed
    maumau o mea faamalama
a black unknowing that I reach for 
     a tiaʻi e le malo
     uce, uce
thank goodness your heart is knowable
and I am not lonely

(Popular songs on passing events are, as in other lands, very common. They are sung to the stroke of the paddles when on a journey, or when engaged on any work requiring united exertion.

At the time when religion was beginning to take root in Samoa, the lovers of darkness thus expressed their regrets at the prospective loss of their pleasures:

Tini, tinio, tinio!
Maumau o mea faamalama,
A tiaʻi e le malo.