Valerie Fox

Epistle on Madness

                        (after Brecht)

Going mad
Is a commonality.

You can elucidate each “why” and “who”
With your bartender, your work-friend

Your holiday season neighborhood crony.
"Won’t you have a gin and tonic?"

 

At all costs, a sense of spectacle should be avoided
As it causes others to feel they should have acted

Quickly and reasonably on your behalf.
Any incident involving police, for instance,

While satisfying in the short term
May come to you to feel like an embarrassment.

 

Briefly appear on your property with your clothes
Not quite right, a smear of toothpaste

On your left lapel, or
Hint at your relative’s suicide

During your childhood.

 

As for your partner,

Even as you blame him, do not reveal your fear of him.
Don’t appear to have been unfaithful.

 

 

 

 

Fifteen (15) Autobiographies

 

I like drama.                                                             (11)
My favorite client is a real B movie
(a good one).
My other client is not like (cliché) a
shady tree.
Well,

 

 

We suckled at the North Star Bar.                        (10)

 

I’m a T-shirt, too.

 

We were edgeless and human.

 

 

Before a written part                                              (9)
there is spoken part.
How gauche, how Black Ink.
Anyway during that alley part
I lost my unique perspective on
a red star dangling under
the (lamp-post) East Exit.

 

 

Someone can ruin someone else.                          (3)
One person can make another person
succeed out of spite,
and still ruin them.
Magpie tracks frame the eyes

of someone, who takes what seems

like hours to climb into their pajamas,

looking straight ahead

like a colorless, medium-sized city.

 

 

How do these objects come to me?                      (1)
A better person might ask, from whom--
not me.

 

 

A dog was licking my face                                     (2)
(recurring dream)

 

 

I took a test on that.                                              (7)

 

Stomach pain, scolding                                          (6)
like gym class

but drunker

with cake.

 

 

We wore those magnifying                                   (5)

glasses mostly for show

taking a backseat

to inspiration, to forethought.

 

 

This is an entire shoebox full of letters               (4)
from people I’ve forgotten.

 

 

We call (even today) this our home                     (15)

our cabin, in the visionary vocabulary

of our era, we paint it middle-brow blue.

 

There was this median, close                                (8)
to our noses.
He had this stunned look

on his thriving face, why

aren’t
I

dying?


You (it’s about you) said I could use                    (12)
any story as long as it was nonfiction
so I used this one.

 

Here, these are novelty items                               (14)
from the boardwalk store

in Ocean City.

 

 

I know this.                                                               (13)
Holding on to railings is like-

ly to be an aftershock

to you.
Every word you say sounds
inappropriate.
Every fact a distortion.

 

 

 

 

One of those days—

 
The house is cold.
An organ can be heard.
Unidentified clatter of plastic,
slush and shush.
You bring in a giant tiger.

 

You bring in a giant tiger.
In a cold house the struggle

for order. Horns.
Our great distraction here.

 

Our distraction greater
than the fearfulness or color

of the giant tiger.
Our hands trembling
like a lost glove.

 

Our hands trembling.
We are fearful of the telephone.
It is hard to let it ring.
There is no fire.

 

When there is no fireplace
warmth can only return slowly
or never, down in the room

with the television.
You ran twelve miles today.
You’re a giant tiger.

A real animal knows.
A real struggle is necessary.
The color of this or of that.
Some words are hard to hear.

 

 

 

Valerie Fox has contributed poems to Hanging Loose, West Branch, Cella's Roundtrip, Phoebe, and many other journals. She coedits Press 1, a magazine that features poetry, fiction, comment, and photography. Her books include The Rorschach Factory (Straw Gate Books, 2006) and Bundles of Letters, Including A, V and Epsilon (Texture Press, 2008--a compilation written with Arlene Ang). She lives in New Jersey with her husband and young daughter.