DREXLER, Wendy

How to Make Even a Little of It Slow Down

At the hot pot restaurant, we dip kabocha squash, sweet as candy,

into miso broth. Lotus root dense as meat. I scald my tongue,

trying to eat too quickly. That impatience again. These days,

I can’t listen to any more sad stories. Thank goodness

on the Nature show the endangered pangolin on the island

of Taiwan made it into the protected forest and found a mate

before the end of the breeding season. That the adorable

African bush baby, abandoned by his pregnant mother,

escaped the snake and the hostile bush babies and was able

to travel six miles in five days to the outskirts of Praetoria

where a friendly pack of bush babies welcomed him,

and suburbanites had laid out bananas on platforms linked

by ropes strung between trees. The bush babies mashed

bananas all over their happy faces and gamboled among

the ropes and trees. At the restaurant, I grab the clam

you are about to eat raw and toss it into the hot broth. I have to

watch out for you all the time now. You couldn’t hear

my conversation with D and G across the table. So sweet

how you start talking to our waitress instead, teaching her

muchas gracias and buenos dias, asking her for a placemat

to write down sentences so she can talk with Latino kitchen staff

and customers. How to say La comida está muy magnifico!

Quieres un poco de cerveza? She tells us she’s from Laos

and she squats right next to you beside our booth.

She smiles a lot. Let’s say I’ve never seen a waitress stop to talk

to a customer for so long. Let’s say we need more hope, more

bush babies who find new families and new homes.

More protected forests. More treetops and more mashing

our happy faces with kabocha squash. Let’s slow it down

over a meal. Let’s savor the lotus root and the bok choy

and the wrinkled cabbage leaves

we’ll learn to let cool long enough

we won’t burn our tongues.

Alzheimer’s Abecedarian

If it comes as an acrobat, you’ll somersault on its teeterboard, trampoline off its walls.

If it comes as a bird, sit with it, its broken wings.

If it comes as a canteen, it will rattle empty, empty, empty.

If it comes as a dog, wag its tail and pat its head, use a soothing voice; try not to yell.

If it comes as an elephant, it will be the only elephant in the room.

If it comes as a faultline, tiptoe around it on eggshells.

If it comes greedily, it will take everything, leave you a pauper.

If it comes as a horse, turn its neck gently with the reins to lead it back to the barn.

If it comes as ice, remember that ice can burn even as it melts.

If it comes as a junkie, keep it from cracking its head on thunder.

If it comes as a kangaroo, you’ll go everywhere in its pocket, you’ll be its joey.

If it comes as laughter, it will have the last laugh.

If it comes as a mother, it will be a motherfucker.

If it comes as a nudist, you will see its bones.

If it comes as an overdose, it will overcome you with overtakelessness, that which

cannot be overtaken.

If it comes as a prairie, it will take miles to cross; look for sweetgrass

to nibble along the way.

If it comes quietly, creeping in like lichen coating your branches,

it will grow so softly you won’t hear it for years.

If it comes as a rifle, it will shoot bee as silently as raindrops

fall on a lake and disappear, becoming part of the lake, inseparable

from what makes a lake a lake.

If it comes as a stadium, you’ll fill it with tears.

If it comes as a tiger, you are its prey—years of you to gnaw away,

licking your skin, inhaling your scent, slowly sharpening its claws.

It will come unannounced, unbridled, uncircumcised, undeniably

unearned, unforgivingly, ungraciously unhindered; uninvited, unjustly,

unkindly, and unlovingly; unmapped, unnervingly, unobtrusively-at-first,

unpacified, unquenchably unraveling; unsigned, untiringly, unurged,

unvaccinated and unwashed: un-X-rayed, unyieldingly unzipped

under everything.

It will come as vapor, at first as only mist mingling so lightly

with days of bright sun, you’ll barely notice.

It will come as waves—you’ll bob in its current for years, drifting

into deeper water until you too are treading just to stay afloat,

riptide trying to drag you both out. No, it comes as wind, stripping

the notes from the score, the steps from the dance, the seed

from the shell, the glue from the seal, the north from the south,

the bees from the hive, the sheets from the bed, the pink from the dawn,

the east from the west, the west from all the rest.

It comes as a Xerox copy with its own irreplaceable toner running out,

the copies getting fainter and fainter, ghostly impressions

on a nearly blank page.

It comes as yeast, rising and rising, filling the whole bowl.

It comes as a zigzag and you will breathlessly chase its shadow

across the grass, you will chase the shadow of the shadow,

the zags of the zigs and the zigs of the zags.