3 Poems by
Jim Valvis
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Talent
This woman you know runs a whorehouse
Out of her home. Says the money is good,
Makes her own hours, meets interesting people.
Doesn't say you're one of them. It takes
Lots of paperwork before you can get started.
You look at the forms, study all the questions.
Have you ever lost your mind? Why should
Anyone love you? What difference
Do you make? You invent some answers,
Then are told to go into a room and strip
Naked. It sounds simple enough,
But once inside you can't remember
How to undress. You stand by the bed
And wait for a solution to come along
Like it always has before. You grow impatient.
Buckle, zipper, buttons. Layers upon layers.
The best part of you is tucked away,
hidden under denim and cotton.
It won't be coerced into showing itself.
The whore flounces in and apologizes,
Says she was looking for someone else.
It's embarrassing, but you tell her your problem.
She laughs. Everyone should have it this good.
The whore makes you so angry you remember
How to undress, how to peel off the layers,
And you start flinging wardrobe to the wind.
But even then something's not right. The best
Part of you is flabby, limp, not like you at all.
The whore laughs and that's when
You strike her. Beat her bloody and blue.
You'd kill her if she could be killed,
But she can't. It's like pounding stone.
You can tell she's bored even before
She turns on the television, puts up her feet,
Tells you to get dressed. You leave a twenty
On the table and go for a long walk.
Halfway to nowhere your pants fall off.
Somebody points, amazed by your
Audacity. You have a talent for such things.
It's always this easy so long as it is.
No Complaints From This Ex-Catholic
Unlike Sinead O' Conner and a lot of others,
I didn't mind the time I spent being Catholic.
I don't harbor any ill feelings toward the Pope.
I don't want to blow up a church or rape a nun.
I don't think the Vatican is the root of all evil.
I know about the priests who molested those boys-
and that's pretty bad-but I don't think it's enough
to condemn the whole religion, and all its tenets.
Nor do I think my childhood was ruined by ceremony.
I have fond memories of Sunday school and mass,
enjoyed all the sacraments and most of the sermons.
As a kid, I even thought about being a priest for awhile,
but I always managed to get in dollops of trouble.
For instance, in the confessional I would end up lying,
inventing sins so my life didn't seem as boring
or evil as it really was. To this day, I'm not sure
what kind of things excludes one from the priesthood,
but I'm certain storytelling in confession is one of them.
If not a mortal sin, a moral one. And besides, even then
I liked staring at the girls so pretty in their pews.
Each of them to me was a Madonna-in-progress,
a pre-Madonna, if you want to be clever about it,
each a perfect plaster statue I was forbidden to touch,
and it wasn't the church's fault the girls thought me
a dirty Hispanic when I was in fact a dirty Greek.
A lot of my invented sins had to do with those girls,
I'm telling you, and the priests would tell you too,
at least to point out that I added a lot of colorful detail.
But I admit it. I enjoyed my time as a Catholic.
I mean, where else could a ten year old get his hands
on a chalice of wine, sneak a drink of holy water?
And the philosophy. I loved the Catholic philosophy.
How wonderful the church is to insist we're unclean
to begin with, so all the pressure is off from jump,
and if you're a perverted little Greek boy
who got busted sniffing Joan Parsay's gym shorts,
well, who could expect anything different?
It was only after I left the church and stopped
believing in God that I realized just how great
it was to be that dirty Greek boy with all those sins
I'd confessed to that I now had a religious duty
to make come true. It was only after I got old,
read Nietzsche, and began aspiring to a strict
humanist morality that I began to brood, flounce
aimlessly, and chase after heathen women who
didn't have a thing on Joan Parsay's gym shorts.
So I don't have a thing against the Catholic church.
If anything, I'm grateful for those confessionals
that gave me my first chance to be a storyteller
and the first royalty checks I ever received
in the form of two or three million Hail Marys.
Prep School Orientation Day
This is the beginning
of the end. Brownstones
in a Victorian yard. Ivy twisting
around pillars. Pines, maples, oaks,
leaves scattered, wind pushing them east.
Easy to imagine every teacher
as Mr. Chips. The blackboards clean,
your uniform pressed. Shoes shined.
No place you'd rather be
than New England. All your friends
(at least the ones who made it back)
there, calling your name. This year,
you promise yourself A's and B's,
not the C's straight through
you struggled to maintain last year.
Strange to start classes, to feel
this much hope, while
the land dies, the air smells of wet mulch.
Yet not strange at all, considering.
Inside, lining the hallways,
new pictures of the recently graduated
hang next to the centuries old
photographs of kids just like you.
Now dead, now at least dying fast.
Look at them in their strange white
rugby outfits. You love them, imagine
they love you. The same maple
outside the brownstone. The same
ivy spinning around the same pillar.
The continuity, the timeless inheritance.
This year you'll join the chess team.
Orientation starts at nine o' clock.
The shuffling of feet, the murmur
of settling bones. Women,
what women are there, mothers
you guess, all don blue hats
and smile. They've come to drop off
their boys, return to their bridge games.
The fathers never arrive, they have work
or golf. The mistress on the side.
Yes, Mr. Chips, everything
is now ready. The auditorium
seats three hundred in folding metal chairs.
The room wafts Old Spice
and wax candles. You sit near Edwin,
a fifteen year old black boy,
who speaks fluent French. And his
mother, her coat torn at the lapel.
You came alone, of course. A hush
falls through the crowd like a maple leaf.
Somebody important says something,
welcoming you. It's hard to listen.
Summer still hides in your bones
and you don't speak French,
never will. You don't really like chess.
The speaker, the headmaster,
God bless you Mr. Chips, promises
a difficult but rewarding year
or vice versa. You listen closely,
Edwin and you, and why not?
You're here on merit alone, not
by birthright, which means
no room for error. Not
for you. How hopeful you look up
at that far-away podium,
how hopeful, how beautiful, you lean
toward that speaker, wanting
nothing more than to, yes, obey
and be rewarded. Perhaps
the other boys dream of being
Holden Caulfield, wandering the city
to gawk at the freaks and sub-normals,
buy prostitutes, scar their arms with tattoos,
but you're too close to being there,
you beautiful wretched son of a missing
blue hat, and in a way
this is your city, your freak show.
The rich kids with their rich mothers,
the absent fathers, Mr. Chips,
Edwin the scholastic wonderboy.
Parlez vous francais, oui, oui, oui.
But it was not to be, none of it
was to be. Not the A's or B's,
not even the hard earned C's this time,
not the picture of you in the hallway,
none of it. For in the winter,
when the naked limbs
of the maples grew everywhere
like black veins, when the bald vines
seemed to strangle the pillars,
when you failed half your classes
and got checkmated in nine moves,
you forget the promise you made
seated in Orientation to always love
this place, to add your face to the ageless
faces in the hallway, those
accomplished dead and dying
who stare out happily at us all,
you forget all that, and walk alone
through the dirty snow toward whatever
new and sadder orientation life now offered.
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