It’s true, you get so dumb and bald
that young folks try disowning you
(and soon the old folks also keep away),
so violently ornery that news has no effect,
inoculated as you are to fact
by narrative that’s more compelling than the truth:
you move to Florida. You vote against school funding.
The nights before you go to church,
you set your best clothes out,
you fix the hairs on your toupee with hairspray.
It’s not that you can’t see the jowls,
how gravity has loosened them 
into an unremitting grimace—but—
it’s hard to clock the aging day by day.
You carry in your head a florid image
of muscled youth, the time you played
guitar for swooning girls out on the pier,
but passers-by remark upon your gray,
the hairs inside your ears, the coming stench
of surrender, which perfumes you, smells 
like apples too long in a grove, like sandalwood 
but sour, the same smell as money 
when it changes hands too many times, 
the bills worn out, the coin impossibly tarnished.

There is no history of accord,

only one of cruelty—

if the goat calms the stallion,

then debtors will clip the wires

or thrash the thick cypress fence

to steal the goat—

if the stallion loses by a leg,

the debtors will be jailed—

if the prisoners riot,

the guards will quell violence

with riot gas and side-handle batons—

 

Still, imagine how droll

the high school textbooks rewritten

to chronicle an affable people—

They shook hands and massaged each other’s shoulders,

they dressed in corduroy pantaloons

to serenade each other from balconies—

Imagine the cruelties we might have to imagine

to keep ourselves engaged—

snakebites, beds of nails,

mild electric shocks—

O bless the Internet,

where by dint of an @,

an unwitting British party girl

might send photos to Ross White,

an American stranger in a cheap apartment,

not altogether an unwilling recipient,

mistaking me for Ross White,

who, last time I looked,

was a peachfuzz-mustachioed

footy player living in a prep school dormitory;

who, from the captions provided,

seems to be the intended recipient

of photos sent to Ross White,

American stranger—

not the Kyoto-based Ross White,

who teaches English and reports

fascination with Japanese girls

in neon cub-ear caps . . . I’d like to marry one,

and certainly not to be confused

with world traveler Ross White,

who reports Penang is a hot stinking place

too far from Australia

and the mates I left behind,

who didn’t like wearing short white pants

with high white socks

on the estates of wealthy Malaysians—,

an American stranger who

(and I’d like to put this part in third person,

but this Ross White has an affection

for confessional)

is both me and fascinated

by Boxing Day,

which is when Ross White’s British friend

took her mates out dancing:

Emilie, who, according to the captions,

drank too many shots,

was weepy in the bathroom

about a bloke,

crept out to make calls on her mobile,

and Lauren was dressed

like a black-and-white bee,

and Lora, in every photo

but about whom the captions say little,

so perhaps Ross White knows Lora well,

and Liam from Leeds was there—

let us not forget handsome, thinly bearded Liam,

he was in only the one photo,

Lora and Liam from Leeds

and Ross White’s British friend,

arm in arm in arm, both girls

kissing Liam from Leeds on the cheek,

though he leans toward Lora!—

and if I were Ross White

(which I am, you know),

I might be red-faced over Liam,

because he’s only in the one shot

but too handsome to repeatedly omit,

so I wonder if he held the camera all night,

in which case he paid loving attention to Lora,

and I might pace or plot or

pound at the keyboard—

though perhaps that isn’t behavior

befitting Ross White,

the other Ross White,

maybe any of the other Ross Whites—

but if that Ross White would volunteer

his e-mail address to his British friend posthaste,

I would be ever so grateful,

for it appears that I’ve become a little flush,

placed in the awkward position

of unintentional and eager voyeur,

and thank heavens

the pictures were of a night of dancing,

no more—still, please,

Ross White,

send your address to her.