Alan Michael Parker

Alan Michael Parker was born in 1961, grew up on Long Island, and attended Washington University in St. Louis and Columbia University, where he received his MFA. His poetry has appeared in American Poetry Review, The Gettysburg Review, The Kenyon Review, The New Yorker, The New Republic, The Paris Review, and elsewhere, and has been recognized with a Pushcart Prize and the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America. Parker is the author of the novel Cry Uncle (University of Mississippi Press, 2005) and three books of poems—Days Like Prose (Alef Books, 1997), The Vandals (BOA, 1999), and Love Song with Motor Vehicles (BOA, 2003). He is a contributing editor to the journals Boulevard and Pleiades. Parker is also the coeditor (with Mark Willhardt) of The Routledge Anthology of Cross-Gendered Verse (Routledge, 1996), the North American Editor of Who’s Who in 20th Century World Poetry (Routledge, 2001), and editor of The Imaginary Poets: 22 Master Poets Create 22 Master Poets (Tupelo, 2005), a compilation of the work of fictional poets invented by prominent American writers. Parker is a member of the core faculty of the low-residency MFA Program at Queens University of Charlotte and an Associate Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at Davidson College. He lives in Davidson, North Carolina, with his wife, the painter Felicia van Bork, and their son, Eli.

Driving Past My Exit

Yes, my Captain, I was there.

I was the one punching the buttons of the radio

until the right commercial came on

and commerce was my friend.

I was happy as a full wallet.

No sir, acceptable losses

did not yet concern me,

and the unnatural colors of the clouds

were barely noticeable in the glare.

No sir, I could not claim to be

aware of horns blaring, or of

my heart

stopped at the light;

and when the signal changed and my blood

seemed to still, at ease, and the road

moved around me, and the foothills shone

like the store windows of home

lit by artillery fire,

I was not of two minds, even then.

Yes, my Captain, I contend

I acted alone. My lieutenants?

Of the fates of others I know not:

a soldier is what a soldier does.

And yet, yes my Captain, I admit

that war is unforgiving, and our advances

in night vision have shown us

what we feared. Yes, my Captain,

I gave myself

to singing, invested in the production

of goods, of prosperity jingling.

Yes, my Captain, I now believe

I was only following orders,

good weather and green lights for miles.

Yes, Captain, I was

happy as a new shirt,

and the music on the radio was for me.

The Vandals

In the poem about the vandals, the vandals

Back their Dodge 4 × 4 up to the door

Of the abandoned town hall and theater.

In untied boots, they carry canvas bags

And carry off the oak wainscoting.

Above the wings and pit and stage, the ghosts

Of two starved porcupines command

Twin mounds of scat, respectively,

The prickly hats of king and fool.

(The chairs don’t care, bottoms up, attentive.)

As the vandals stomp inoutinoutinoutinout

All in one breath because poetry

Is an oral tradition, the ghosts of the porcupines

Fill the air with rhyme: Visigoths and mishegas,

Gerkin and curtain, howitzers and trousers.

The vandals stomp inoutinoutinoutinout:

In their arms the split and pocked wood,

In their wake the porcupines

Are unaware of God’s universal love.

In the poem, no one is free:

The ghosts of the two porcupines

Got in but they can’t get out,

Starving over and over. The vandals—

Who sometimes look like you

And sometimes me—will never

Go home to cozy vandal homes

To make of their deeds a poem.

In the poem about the vandals,

Because a poem is an abandoned theater,

The porcupines have eaten the scenery:

Padua, Venice, Alexandria, Verona, gone;

Love prostrate on its pyramid.

And the vandals stomp inoutinoutinoutinout,

And the vandals stomp inoutinoutinoutinout.

The Vandals Dying

In the poem about their dying

The vandals bellow for their nurses,

Slather all the smoke alarms

With Jell-O, rip every goddamned

Tube from every goddamned arm.

Where’s the sawbones? they holler.

Bring on the leeches and the MRI!

A candystriper, just fifteen, beleaguered

In her future body, colors in each “O”

In Cosmopolitan. She knows already

That the dying never die by yelling.

Deal, the vandals roar, enthralled;

Two hearts, the bidding opens.

Because a poem can do no more

Than deny its expectations,

The candystriper dozes, dreams

The Scream by Edvard Munch, colors in

The mouth. In their semiprivate rage,

The vandals play and play,

Each gesture vaguely ceding to its ghost.

The candystriper wakes, bleary

—Where am I?—at the nurses’ station,

Her candystripèd cuff

Soaking up a cup of soup,

The callboard lit before her,

Buzzing, blinking, calling

Someone, anyone, even God above,

Who’s busy in another poem, busy dying.

Practicing Their Diffidence, the Vandals

Fill their bodies with their ghosts

The way a poem fills itself with words.

It’s yet another Sunday, church-rush brunch,

Everyone festooned, all the vandals

In their wingtips, boaters, and seersucker suits

Tapping ashes from their Cuban cheroots

Into the rubber trees and potted ferns, all the ferns

Burgeoning despite the blinding light

Of art. The vandals are out

To eat again, yoo-hoo-yoo-hoo-yoo-hoo!

They wave Italian breadsticks in the air,

Spin tiny tropical umbrellas seized

From complimentary Mai Tais. Looks like

A lousy musical, mutters the assistant chef,

As he peeks through the window of the kitchen door

And wipes his favorite cleaver on a dirty rag.

I’m cooking for the chorus of “Easter Parade.”

The vandals menace him with twenty orders

Of the broiled eel, hold the teriyaki;

They clutch their chests in mock arrest,

Feign heart attacks as social unrest, happy

To make a scene. He’s unperturbed,

The assistant chef: he knows the vandals

Have to go, he knows which hostess peddles dope.

Water, water, everywhere, the vandals call—

And then, as if the lights had suddenly

Gone down and the audience walked out,

The vandals look around, see themselves

Grown older, see their ghosts

In every empty glass. It’s only a poem,

They whisper to each other.

It’s only a poem, it’s only a poem, it’s only a poem.