Poetry Magazine, John Sokol, October 2000

Poetry Magazine

John Sokol

USA

Sisyphus

Silly deadbeat son of Aeolus, 
Didn't you know better
than to snitch on Zeus?
Didn't you know he'd fix your ass
to some horrible task?
Everyone knew you weren't the most
scrupulous kid in Corinth,
but who among us thinks you deserved
such a heavy sentence?
I mean hell's bells,
no chance of parole, even.
Your cousins in crime (what a pair),
dizzy Ixion and dry-mouth Tantalus
were probably shaking their heads
when you first arrived,
mumbling to themselves, "Cruel, but fair.
Cruel, but fair."
Yessir, every time I hear your name,
I think of Bob Seeger
singing "Roll Away the Stone"
and "....rock-n-roll never forgets."
The only thing that makes that more sad
than funny
is that you're just like all of us
who just crawled out from under some rock,
who, despite our repeated efforts,
don't have a snowball's chance in hell.

- originally appeared in 
The Berkeley Poetry Review, # 27, Berkeley, 
California

Abraham and Isaac

When I was ten, my father
held his head in his hands
at the breakfast table.  There,
the exalted patriarch -- often slumped
above a fragile brink of tears --
stared daily through his oatmeal.
His factory uniform always smelled
of iron and ash.  (He didn't wear it
to work.  He wore it to look for work).
As he sat there worrying about money
and how to feed the five of us,
he'd watch me build
a Dagwood sandwich for school.
I'd press it down real good
so its wealth and diversity
would hold together.  He'd say,
"Why don't you step on it?"
Funniest thing I'd ever heard.
I laughed out loud, every time.
He never even smiled.

When I was twelve, my parents
fought about money, and everything else,
at the dinner table.  One night,
my father got up, slammed his chair
against the wall and punched his fist
through the side-door window.
Blood spurted everywhere: over the table,
onto the walls, refrigerator, ceiling.  He
turned to my mother, screaming for help.
While she wrapped his wrist
in a towel, he muttered, "You bitch,
you bitch, you bitch."
Five hours later, they returned
from the hospital.
Stolid, stitched and bandaged,
my father didn't say a word for three days.

When I was fourteen and fifteen,
it seemed like my father beat my ass
nearly every day for two years.
I'd watch my parents fight
with one another, and as soon as they 
left the house, I'd beat the shit out of
my younger brothers.  Then
they'd tell Dad, and naturally,
to keep the circle spinning, he'd
beat me so I'd have something to
beat them for the next time he left.
It was musical chairs, played too hard.

When I was sixteen, my father
watched me gulp down gallons of milk,
straight from the carton.  He'd say,
"Go ahead, that's right.  Drink it all!"
I'd say, "Hey, protein, Dad!  A weightlifter's
gotta have protein."  And then I'd laugh.
He never did.

When I was eighteen, my parents divorced.
One blustery day right before Christmas,
I drove home, eighty miles from college,
to visit my father.  I followed the directions
he had given me over the phone.
He was living in an old farmhouse,
practically a barn.  He sat
on his cot in the cold corner of 
the main room.  While he started a log fire,
he raged about the life he had 
lived with my mother.  "Hey, life's a bitch,
and then you marry one," I said, when
I thought he'd never quit.
Before I left, he reached into his wallet
and handed me a fifty-dollar bill.
I looked at him funny.  "Go ahead,"
he said, "take it!  I'm working
steady now and I'll soon be
out of this place."  I thanked him
and said goodbye.  As I was leaving,
he said what he always said
when he said goodbye: "See ya in church.
Front row."  I always laughed
when he said that.  He never did.

When I was twenty, my father died.
For one reason and another, I hadn't
seen him again since the day he gave
me the fifty.  Before he died, his voice
gurgling beneath the rattle of death,
he said, "I'm sorry; sorry for everything."
So there I was, just like Isaac,
when Abraham raised the knife.
So I wept for my father
and I wept for me, just like Isaac,
when Abraham raised the knife.

 - originally appeared in The Hawaii 
Pacific Review, Vol. 8, Spring, 93,

Zeno of Elea

(H1)  The arrow could not move in the place in which it is not.
(H2)  But neither could it move in the place in which it is.
(H3)  For this is "a place equal to itself,"
(H4)  and every thing is always at rest when it is
          "at a place equal to itself."
(H5)  But the flying arrow is always at the place in which it is.
(H6)  Therefore, it is always at rest.
          --  Zeno's Argument of the Arrow

Master of the elliptical theorem and the semantic 
trap; facetious fox of the dialectic conundrum and

circuitous polemics; progenitor of transfinite cardinals 
and superdenumerable sets -- Zeno of Elea -- led a

confusing and solitary life.  His "Arguments Against 
Plurality" layed down the bunt for every high thinker

who followed.  His "Paradoxes" were the sacrifice flies
of kinematics.  Yet he was forever misconstrued and

ridiculed.  When he was a young boy playing stickball, 
his own teammates banished him after he hit a ball far

into the agora: instead of running the bases, he 
expounded on the futility of such an endeavor.

It was also in the agora, years later, that his girlfriends 
compared notes.  Thalia:  Zeney's a great lover, but he

never finishes.  Melpomene: God, that's true!  
I sometimes ask him, 'What's wrong Z.?'  He says,

'I'm coming, I'm coming,' but of course, he never does.
Erato: Well, bless my stars.  We should all be so lucky.

Calliope:  Ha!  He's promised me we'd get married 
someday. He's said it a thousand times if he's said it once.

But you know he'll never do it.  Every time I bring up 
the subject, he pulls out that analogy about Achilles and

the Tortoise: if Achilles and the Tortoise have a race,
and Achilles begins from S and Tortoise begins from G,

Achilles will never catch Tortoise or pass G.  I mean, 
do you believe him?  I just step back and say WHAT?

Zeno had problems with his colleagues, too.
When Socrates was just an upstart, he and his buddies

would pass Zeno in the Forum and they'd sling their 
jibes. "Hey Zeno, get a life."  "Zeeeeeeney, has

Cupid's arrow struck you yet?"  "Hey Z., I'll race you to 
the Acropolis for fifty drachmas."  "Yo, Zeno of Elea, you'll

never get anywhere in life."  Zeno also alienated his 
friends.  He was always late for parties if he showed up

at all.  When asked for an explanation, he only made 
matters worse by pontificating his exegetic of stasis.

"You weren't at the party, either," he'd say, to their 
fuming faces.  "You only imagined your attendance,

or more to the point, you only deluded yourselves into 
believing you were there."  Those closest to him said he

had a death-wish, or a non-life wish, as one of his own 
theories ( .... since matter is infinitely divisible,

being is reducible to not-being) seemed his attempt 
to prove that he never even existed.

-- originally appeared in SLANT, # XI, Spring, 1997

Galatea's Version

Acis and I were lying on the beach
where Etna meets the sea, watching the sun
set over Sicily . . . just having some fun . . .
when I see Polyphemus -- that letch --
giving us the eye from his bluff
where the pathetic asshole always lurks
with his Cyclopes buddies.  God, they're such jerks!
When I flip him the bird, he does that macho stuff.
He jumps up and down and gets all manic,
and right when day is dimming in the west,
he lifts a boulder and I start to panic.
You won't believe what happened next.

Instead of tending his wayward flock,
he crushed poor Acis with a half-ton rock.

Comfort

Harry's wife left him last week, after seven-and-a-half years.  Bang!  Like a 
hammer.  "Nothing was ever right between us, Harry!"  Harry is devastated; 
immobilized with sorrow.  Today, he's eating breakfast, in a diner, downtown. 
 He's finishing his coffee when he overhears a woman ordering breakfast.  
It's his wife: "I'll have two poached eggs: soft, but not runny; some bacon: 
well-done, but not too dark; coffee: with real milk, not creamer; and wheat 
toast.  And, oh. . . . can you ask them to butter the toast on the other 
side, this time?"  "Excuse me," the waitress says.  "The other side?  What do 
you mean the other side?"  Harry's wife looks at the waitress. "The other 
side! Whichever side they would normally butter, ask them to butter the other 
side, instead."  The waitress rolls her eyes and walks toward the kitchen, 
shaking her head.  Harry quietly watches his wife eat.  She is beautiful and 
surrounded by a strange yellow light.  His heart aches as he watches her.  
She eats her toast last, turning each piece over to make sure it hasn't been 
buttered on the wrong side. When she gets up to leave, she leaves a dollar 
tip.  Harry is comforted, somehow, when he notices that she leaves it face 
down, instead of right-side-up.