The Book of Goodbyes Read online

that one time

  you got drunk

  and fucked around

  with some of his friends

  and he cracked 6 beers

  and felt old and drove

  to the cemetery

  and pissed on yr father’s grave

  here he comes round

  the corner—

  Are you writing about her?

  I hope you’re not

  writing about her

  If we went shopping

  I mean today dammit

  you could ask why

  I’m sleeping with him

  then push me

  into the hangers

  I’m not supposed

  to try you on anymore

  The dead walk into poems

  all the time

  Nobody complains

  INTERMISSION

  TINY AND COURAGEOUS FINCHES

  Iguazú Falls, the Argentine side, a cave,

  behind the water, two tiny and courageous

  finches, Bitto and Marcel, spend the day

  flying in and flying out.

  Bitto is most proud, daily caw, paid

  vacation and space to think aloud.

  He likes knowing where everyone is

  and that where they are, he is far from.

  He keeps his finch friends, outside,

  keeps a wife, Lydia, who works domestics.

  Marcel comes to the job stoically,

  not as proud as Bitto, with not

  as many friends. He is big, rigid,

  balks at the thought of changing

  for anyone, an ounce. He likes to read

  the classics, Hesiod, with rules,

  everything no nonsense, such as—

  “Take precautions, do not dawdle,

  have some brains, be honest.”

  Why were they, from all finches, picked?

  Bitto thinks it due to he was a great

  rambler once and rambled to Uruguay

  and rambled on back. Marcel thinks

  it due to he was exiled, he was a great

  pain in the ass once, and in front

  of the Minister, called Kate a flaccid,

  incompetent whore and told her

  to get lost in the Arbolis.

  This was his way of saying: I love you

  little bitch finch. Why must you prune

  the tails of others? Bitto and Marcel

  live well together. They work out

  the kinks, where to poo and how much

  privacy to give. Bitto has even grown

  a little fond of Marcel, the older,

  the literate, the one who says less.

  In this Bitto sees the finch he would

  like to be. For now Bitto delights the people

  who visit the Falls, flies in singing

  weeeee flies out singing wooooo.

  Bitto tried to explain to Lydia

  the water, wide blue, the pressure,

  the pinch, the wee-woo of it,

  the climax, he called it,

  which ticked her off and meant

  many nights of scavenging

  extra tacky shit to nest her with,

  a gold thread, a baby’s bib.

  In return, she lays a good egg.

  She lets him do what he wants.

  She listens to his day. “Today,

  a family of four, Denmark.

  The lady took pictures, the man

  thought of sneaking away,

  the daughter of ice cream, the son

  of pillaging, something or other.”

  Marcel, in a rare breach of silence,

  said, “You know why all those photos?”

  “The Falls are pretty this time of year?”

  “She thinks if she takes enough

  and if everyone is smiling and if

  she places them on her mantel—”

  “What is a mantel?”

  “She will not be alone in the world.”

  Bitto said he liked the idea of a mantel.

  Bitto told Lydia he liked the idea

  of a mantel, would build her a mantel,

  when they grow old in the Arbolis.

  Marcel flies the Falls, his left wing

  aching, will there be no stop?

  He cheeps for the children,

  holds his poo and acts happy.

  He sees that Bitto is happy

  and it irks him because

  to be happy requires it seems

  some lying and good timing.

  So Marcel cracks a seed and works

  on his index of every time

  a finch appears in print.

  He dreams of someday turning

  the index into an anthology, which all

  finches will read with interest,

  thereby validating his work and they

  will present him on the mountain,

  during the yearly festivities, where

  all finches gather. This gathering

  arouses in Marcel a sense of place

  in the world, an ambition to congregate

  with other finches, as long as they

  know him by nametag only.

  Once Marcel allowed himself

  to be known, with Kate, on the mountain.

  She asked the basic questions—

  How many finches do you flock with?

  Do you want to sit on my eggs?

  Where do you see yourself in three days?

  In the cave, Marcel thinks of Kate,

  how she looked perched on the crag

  that first afternoon. She liked to read

  the surrealists. Her chirping

  did not aggrieve him as other chirps did.

  While Marcel saw himself as a loner,

  a misanthrope, Kate was a weirdo too.

  Giving things up, Marcel thought.

  He might give things up for Kate.

  Bitto did not make such sacrifices.

  He kept Lydia in thick leaves.

  Bitto believed in what he called

  “the spirit of the moment”

  which is why Bitto enjoyed

  his job genuinely. Except when

  the ladies of Brazil entered the cave

  like this one, carrying a baby,

  dropping it into the Falls.

  Next an older man, with cane,

  who came almost everyday, his wife

  had disappeared. Next a couple

  from Australia, where ten years

  into a marriage, a stall, an impasse.

  The cave was quiet for a while.

  Bitto thought about Lydia

  and building a mantel.

  Bitto continued flying in

  and out of the Falls, for no one,

  for himself, for the spirit.

  Sometimes they talked about God

  and did he exist. Bitto said yes,

  obviously, faith and feelings.

  Marcel said no, obviously, science

  and reason. Marcel said,

  “I am a spiritual person.”

  “What is that?” Bitto asked.

  “Decency.” / “But wait!

  Spiritual means a spirit. Do you

  have one?” / “Do I think

  there’s a spirit of Marcel? No.”

  “Then you’re not spiritual.”

  Marcel let the conversation drop.

  His wings hurt from flapping.

  He could not be bothered with Bitto’s

  spirituality, skinny little Bitto.

  The closest Marcel came to religion

  was when he had to humor Hesiod

  who believed in theogony.

  Around this time, Kate visited.

  “I’m here to deliver a message

  from the Minister of Finches,”

  Kate said, looking awfully

  subdued in her new plumes.

  Marcel believed she was not

  only there for that reason.

  He spent each d
ay sorting

  through reasons people came

  to the Falls and there was never

  only one reason for coming,

  there were five or six reasons,

  stacked on top of each other,

  overlapping each other, contradicting

  each other, such that humanity

  was a big den of squawk.

  Marcel knew Kate must have

  asked for the assignment and that

  to ask for something was to want it.

  “Is there anything you want from me?”

  Marcel began, “Is there anything

  at all I can give you? I spend

  my days flying in and out of the Falls,

  which is a testament to my strength,

  and though I am not spiritual, I like

  the surrealists, and I’ve tried

  to write you to describe my nostalgia

  for our time on the mountain but I can’t

  get it right since I don’t think

  it is nostalgia. That implies something

  of the past, lost forever, and a sadness,

  a gravity I don’t think worthy of us.

  Bitto wants a mantel to fill up

  with lies and Bitto doesn’t mind

  because he lives in the spirit

  of the moment, but I want more,

  like some guidelines, and to write

  the Great Index of Finches, so we

  can be happy, and I just said we,

  which is what I mean, you and me,

  so if you’ve come here as courier

  from the Minister of Finches,

  and nothing more, then you can go now,

  but if you’ve come for other reasons,

  stacked reason upon reason, and if

  even one of those reasons

  tangentially relates to me, Marcel,

  then please, speak.”

  GO ON HIGH SHIP

  The Falls were quiet with Bitto gone

  to raise feathers and Kate invisible

  on Skype and lone Marcel in the cave.

  “I’d rather be a zero than a one,”

  Marcel thought, looking up from Euclid’s

  Optics. The sun set on the lagoon

  as the tourists ambled through the park.

  Marcel was thinking of the rescue

  of a girl from a nearby jungle and how,

  to be fetched out of something,

  you had to be in something and Marcel

  wasn’t in anything other than a book.

  His screen didn’t ring, his job paid in seeds,

  he had no credit, no authority. He missed

  Kate though he did not admit it, instead

  he thought, “Why are ones so strange?

  If I chirp once, why do I want, always,

  another and am not content until I get it?”

  Then he performed an experiment.

  CHIRP, sang Marcel and tried to let be,

  go on with reading. He couldn’t

  and before he knew it, CHIRP, CHIRP.

  He felt better and looked to Bitto’s empty

  bed of leaves stolen from trees and wondered

  what sort of feathers Bitto was raising.

  “He is a liar and a thief,” Marcel thought

  and knew he was right to think so,

  but even lies add up to something.

  The Goldfinch sauntered in, half past

  six, with briefcase and insurance.

  He always talked what-if-something-

  happened instead of what-did-happen.

  Goldie had these ideas, these grand ideas,

  such as “You are only pleased when eating

  ice cream,” and “In Key West,” and etc.

  Marcel wished Bitto was there.

  Bitto liked to take Goldie’s words

  and muck them so that Goldie’s words

  on nothingness became in Bitto’s beak—

  “Nothing that jizz and nothing that jizzm.”

  Today, all business. “We should insure

  your left wing,” Goldie said. “What if

  it gives out permanently?” Marcel flapped

  the wing to show it worked.

  Goldie opened his briefcase, pulled papers

  from it and set them on the dirt. “What if

  a giant sloth lumbered in and wanted

  the cave for himself and used the pages

  from your books for toilet paper

  and ate you?” “If I’m eaten, what do I

  need insurance for?” Marcel said.

  After all he was not in anything,

  not in trouble, not in a bind, not in

  a socioeconomic climate of anxiety,

  he was just a finch. “Besides,” he said.

  “I have never seen a sloth. I’m not sure

  sloth exist and suppose they do, what

  would an animal of gargantuan size

  want with a cave of this size?”

  “You never know,” Goldie said,

  wetting a talon with his tongue.

  It was getting late. Marcel wanted

  to return to reading Euclid. He knew

  what was next: the Grand Ideas

  Monologue that Goldie gave and when

  he delivered it, he liked his listener

  to interrupt him and say, “Go on, high ship.”

  Goldie began: “I got married, I lived

  a long life with a wife who stopped

  reading my poems when I was forty as if

  I died and my poems with me.”

  Go on, high ship. “So I traveled

  south the country, all became hysterical

  to me, ki-ki-ri-ki, no rou-cou, no rou-cou-cou.

  I was losing my mind, and in losing it,

  I realized I had nothing and nothing had me.”

  Go on, high ship. “I told my biddy,

  I don’t love you. If I said I loved you

  I meant the nothing that is.”

  Go on, high ship. “I’m in love with

  plough-boys and old women in wigs

  and bowls and broomsticks and paltry

  nudes and dwarfs.” Go on, high ship.

  “I’m in love with Florida and Havana

  and the Carolinas and Hartford,

  but mainly Florida.” Goldie wet his talons

  and bowed his head. Marcel thought

  his was an old story and he an old finch.

  Since he was so unhappy, Marcel figured

  he should do something, become

  the what-did finch. But you can’t tell

  finches what to become.

  Later Marcel had difficulty falling asleep.

  I will not think dirty things. I will keep

  the brain sharp for Euclid, honest for Hesiod.

  The cave was cold. Marcel saw the folds

  of Kate’s plumes near her breast and while

  it wasn’t dirty, it wasn’t clean either,

  what he was thinking, and Marcel said, No.

  That is all that was, that is what-did.

  That is done. He turned his thoughts to

  Goldie, poor Goldie, wetting his talons.

  The moon shone on the lagoon like

  a giant sloth. Marcel fluttered close

  to the wall of the cave and fell asleep afraid

  and began to have his what-if dreams,

  of Kate, of high ships, of twos and threes,

  like all what-did finches do.

  MARCEL ADDRESSES KATE (AS HE WOULD IF HE COULD)

  When the call came for me to join Bitto

  behind the damn Falls, did I not challenge

  the appointment, did I not appeal to

  the High Courts and wait in the dark offices

  of tree holes and check the box to describe

  myself as too birdbrained? Did I not

  beg to stay in the Arbolis with you?

  Yet you have not returned to me.
r />   I know, I know I got beaked and fifed

  Hesiod into your ear when all you

  wanted to do was sleep and sometimes

  all you wanted to do was pluck me

  and that was, will always be, fine by me.

  If I quote the Greats too much, know it’s

  because I’m afraid of you, yep, yep,

  how you puff up your feathers, you know

  how you do. I’m talking out loud again

  to the can of Brahma, Sage of Seven

  Ages, Father of Creation: No, I won’t

  shut up. I’m talking to Kate.

  Also when you entreated me

  to buy a machine, a machine to show us

  what we look like when we’re looking at

  a machine, I suffered the wages,

  the setup and download to find you,

  wearing all your feathers, cheeping

  with 36 other finches, none of whom

  concern what I have to say here:

  I am the original plagiarist.

  Yet you have not returned to me.

  Daily I withhold from one million

  strangers, though they be willing.

  I withhold the ability of my

  cyber gender and this is a stupid

  point I agree. No one wins for withholding.

  What else can I say? I’m winging this.

  At least when we were speaking in our

  deplorable way that was something,

  that was some smutcaw we had,

  and seduced me you did in manners