samples from

RADIOACTIVE CITY

All contents copyright 2009 by Richard Robbins

In Manhattan, The Oracles Do Not Lie to Him [listen]

This time, the face of the Blessed Virgin
staring up from a folded matchbook, four
draws to a poker hand studding her cardboard
gown, the fifth card hidden inside with all
her fire, a two of clubs, and down her back
an ad for business school, 1-800-
A-NEW-YOU. He doesn't even smoke, a mistake

he sat at that table in the first place. Still,
shimmering incidents track him in the park
like the eyes in haunted houses: A bunting
talks to him in code, sweet-sweet, chew-chew,
spit. The bench’s grime scrawls fluent
Mandarin along the back of the sniveling man,
his hand out even in sleep. By the time

he reaches the great lawn, he’s grown comfortable
at the center of meaning, the crux
of the mandala. He wonders if giant
monks drizzle sand on the city at night,
if Navajo brujos spin history
out of a hidden cave in Arizona. Who’s
responsible, he wants to know and thank,

for the lamb shawarma at Mamoun’s
in the Village? He wants to know who pulled
the trigger on the train that very morning:
whose hand, whose hand in the sky, whose hand
above the hand? Someone in orbit could look down
on one and all and see nothing, or trace
the golden hemline of the buddha. All around him,

boys and girls play softball, football, then, farther away,
lacrosse until the lawn runs out and forest
begins. How do children, metaphors for humans
they never become, steady themselves
so easily on the limber blades of grass and walks
slick with fallen leaves and wayward spray
from fountains? How do bunting and jay

and squirrel, metaphors for motion and heart,
put up with each question and still
find their way? On a gray rock inside
the green woods, the man in a tuxedo
sings Italian to the secretive
rodent, the feral cat, all the uncatalogued
night species, the budding virus and bacterium,

each of them waiting for its colored
grain of sand. No one chases him toward
the tenor. Still, he’s moving in that direction,
a wrinkle on the great lawn, a pixel
on the cornea of hovering, dispassionate
earthmakers, a blip on cave radar. He
thinks he knows this song the way he knew

a coat he once stepped into and drove
a car inside to another country.
He drank the local beer and listened
to its one river. He sampled
the national dish. When he returned, he never
noticed how his talk had changed—all his friends
swore to it—or how the animals

looked back at him when he whistled
the familiar tune out his door, under
his breath on the subway, past that holy
ashtray, the newsstand of doubt, past pilgrims
colliding with their grief, making his own
invisible trail to the center, long past the time
he hung that old skin back in his closet.

The Missing Man [listen]

Chained in his cave, he knew to speak
to each hallucination, to
every father, flower, bell.

Even later, the angel found him
at his daylight address, asking
directions to the mouth.

Fall [listen]

Like the sloth I would be looking
up toward the tree crowns, even though
I hung heavy from the longest branch,
all my weight supported by claws

and the stupid faith of these arms
moving me relentlessly toward
the outer reaches, the sweet new leaf
close to the place where I decide

when effort and desire will part.
The truth is, I don’t want a thing
from this world. I look into sky
to flush out the cluttered detail

right in front of me. These ants,
for instance: They march onto my tongue
as if sinners could go somewhere
wet and dark with their grief, as if

I could release them easy
as a syllable. Who am I
to be a palace of expectation?
I’d rather fall to the new life.

Scene from a 1948 Movie [listen]

The boy with green hair runs across lawns,
climbs the sharp fence until the dark
opens up and he is stumbling through woods
like Frankenstein escaping the mob,

children he knew once coming his way
with taunts and scissors, the fear of his
hair in their eyes like small torches lighting
the forest path, setting his whole life

on fire. Because we have forgotten
the ending, the boy with green hair falls
out of frame, and we will never recall
if in our last sight of him the hair

remains—accidental, defiant—
or if he smiles bald as an internee,
or if townsfolk finally end their pursuit
after God, in a rare gesture,

tells them how to live. There are only
so many ways a murder can dissolve.
Local bullies trip over themselves
as angels, the world over, catch us

in their arms. We like that kind of story.
We've heard it before. Weightlessness. Light.