James Hoch
[Polycardial]
You don’t have to be a cephalopod
to understand it’s good to have a spare
hidden somewhere in the body’s crags.
You don’t need to possess random
superpowers nor free dive in arctic rifts
or play emotional whack-a-mole.
I mean, who couldn’t use a wonderfully
engorged back-up, a blue reliever
to answer the hunger of being human.
You never know. You never know.
But spares, these days, hard to come by.
Can’t score them in the East Village
anymore, not dozing on a bench
in Tompkins Square Park, not even
Brooklyn. Forget Brooklyn. Imagine.
Some days you slump in the paunch
of a lawn chair, sipping gin and tonic,
and a Gremlin goes by and you dream
the smell of your teenage self and herself,
how you took time, how she showed you,
kissing in an orange beater that forever
faintly stunk of oil and singed carburetor
hose and stale Parliament cigarettes.
Her car, her mouth. It was good, right?
In your rush, you were kind, right?
All those fantasies are now memories.
They float in a softly lit aquarium
exhibit you’ve curated your whole life,
and you are almost returned to yellowy
street lamp nights of cassettes playing
Take on Me…I Melt with You…1982…
then the flood of a flashlight kills it.
Why are we equal parts tender and not?
Perhaps, we were once polycardial:
one heart of air; the other air that burns.
Maybe one burst and cauterized
the other. Or the humans exhausted
all the feelings, so ran to the fjord
and threw our wasted heart into the sea.
Which might explain squid and octopi,
and why we are lousy at swimming,
and why your heart thaws in the sink
of your old tired weak worn out body
which no longer sleeps, which wakes
and stirs the warm second you hear
your wife open the screen door
or children shrieking in the yard
as they gather jarfuls of fireflies.
Listen: Let the air be an ocean.
Let the ocean occupy your tongue.
James Hoch’s poems have appeared in The New Republic, Washington Post, Slate, Chronicle Review of Higher Education, American Poetry Review, New England Review, Kenyon Review, Tin House, Ploughshares, Virginia Quarterly Review and many other magazines. His books are A Parade of Hands and Miscreants. He has received fellowships from the NEA, Bread Loaf and Sewanee writers conferences, St Albans School for Boys, Summer Literary Seminars. Currently, he is Professor of Creative Writing at Ramapo College of NJ and Guest Faculty at Sarah Lawrence.
Return to September 2018 Edition
You don’t have to be a cephalopod
to understand it’s good to have a spare
hidden somewhere in the body’s crags.
You don’t need to possess random
superpowers nor free dive in arctic rifts
or play emotional whack-a-mole.
I mean, who couldn’t use a wonderfully
engorged back-up, a blue reliever
to answer the hunger of being human.
You never know. You never know.
But spares, these days, hard to come by.
Can’t score them in the East Village
anymore, not dozing on a bench
in Tompkins Square Park, not even
Brooklyn. Forget Brooklyn. Imagine.
Some days you slump in the paunch
of a lawn chair, sipping gin and tonic,
and a Gremlin goes by and you dream
the smell of your teenage self and herself,
how you took time, how she showed you,
kissing in an orange beater that forever
faintly stunk of oil and singed carburetor
hose and stale Parliament cigarettes.
Her car, her mouth. It was good, right?
In your rush, you were kind, right?
All those fantasies are now memories.
They float in a softly lit aquarium
exhibit you’ve curated your whole life,
and you are almost returned to yellowy
street lamp nights of cassettes playing
Take on Me…I Melt with You…1982…
then the flood of a flashlight kills it.
Why are we equal parts tender and not?
Perhaps, we were once polycardial:
one heart of air; the other air that burns.
Maybe one burst and cauterized
the other. Or the humans exhausted
all the feelings, so ran to the fjord
and threw our wasted heart into the sea.
Which might explain squid and octopi,
and why we are lousy at swimming,
and why your heart thaws in the sink
of your old tired weak worn out body
which no longer sleeps, which wakes
and stirs the warm second you hear
your wife open the screen door
or children shrieking in the yard
as they gather jarfuls of fireflies.
Listen: Let the air be an ocean.
Let the ocean occupy your tongue.
James Hoch’s poems have appeared in The New Republic, Washington Post, Slate, Chronicle Review of Higher Education, American Poetry Review, New England Review, Kenyon Review, Tin House, Ploughshares, Virginia Quarterly Review and many other magazines. His books are A Parade of Hands and Miscreants. He has received fellowships from the NEA, Bread Loaf and Sewanee writers conferences, St Albans School for Boys, Summer Literary Seminars. Currently, he is Professor of Creative Writing at Ramapo College of NJ and Guest Faculty at Sarah Lawrence.
Return to September 2018 Edition